(If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail) Art thou 'of all these hopes.--O hail ! ANTISTROPHE B. y. Of cities fairest one, ation : Rome tears the priestly cope, An athlete stript to run From a remoter station As then Hope, Truth, and Justice did avail, EPODE I. R. Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms Arrayed against the ever-living Gods ? The crash and darkness of a thousand storms Bursting their inaccessible abodes Of crags and thunder-clouds ? See ye the banners blazoned to the day, Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride? Dissonant threats kill Silence far away, The Serene Heaven which wraps our Eden wide With iron light is dyed, The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions Like Chaos o'er creation, uncreating; An hundred tribes nourished on strange religions And lawless slaveries,-down the aërial regions Of the white Alps, desolating, Famished wolves that bide no waiting, Blotting the glowing footsteps of old glory, Trampling our columned cities into dust, Their dull and savage lust On Beauty's corse to sickness satiatingThey come! The fields they tread look black and hoary With fire-from their red feet the streams run gory! EPODE 11. ß. Which rulest and dost move shore ; Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it; Who sittest in thy star, o'er Ocean's western floor, Spirit of beauty! at whose soft command The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison From the Earth's bosom chill ; O bid those beams be each a blinding brand Of lightning! bid those showers be dews of poi son ! Bid the Earth's plenty kill ! Whilst light and darkness bound it, To make it ours and thine! horizon pards, Would not more swiftly flee, herds.- AUTUMN: A DIRGE. The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, [dying, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are And the year On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying, Come, months, come away, array; Of the dead cold year, And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawl ing, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling For the year; The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone To his dwelling; Of the dead cold year, DEATH. Death is here, and death is there, Death has set his mark and seal First our pleasures die and then All things that we love and cherish, uch is our rude mortal lot- LIBERTY. The fiery mountains answer each other; When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown. From a single cloud the lightning flashes, Is bellowing underground. |