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Sibylline Leaves.

I. POEMS

OCCASIONED BY POLITICAL EVENTS,

OR FEELINGS CONNECTED WITH THEM.

WHEN I have borne in memory what has tamed
Great nations, how ennobling thoughts depart
When men change swords for ledgers, and desert
The student's bower for gold, some fears unnamed
I had, my country! Am I to be blamed?
But, when I think of Thee, and what thou art,
Verily in the bottom of my heart,

Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed.

But dearly must we prize thee; we who find

In thee a bulwark of the cause of men;

And I by my affection was beguiled.
What wonder if a poet, now and then,
Among the many movements of his mind,
Felt for thee as a Lover or a Child.

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Το μέλλον ἥξει. Καὶ σύ μ' ἐν τάχει παρὼν
Αγαν γ' αληθόμαντιν οἰκτείρας ἐρεῖς.

ARGUMENT.

Eschyl. Agam. 1225.

THE Ode commences with an address to the Divine Providence, that regulates into one vast harmony all the

*This Ode was composed on the 24th, 25th, and 26th of December, 1796, and was first published on the last day of that year

events of time, however calamitous some of them may appear to mortals. The second Strophe calls on men to suspend their private joys and sorrows, and devote them for a while to the cause of human nature in general. The first Epode speaks of the Empress of Russia, who died of an apoplexy on the 17th of November, 1796; having just concluded a subsidiary treaty with the Kings combined against France. The first and second Antistrophe describe the image of the Departing Year, &c., as in a vision. The second Epode prophesies, in anguish of spirit, the downfall of this country.

I.

SPIRIT who sweepest the wild harp of Time!
It is most hard, with an untroubled ear
Thy dark inwoven harmonies to hear!
Yet, mine eye fixed on Heaven's unchanging clime,
Long had I listened, free from mortal fear,

With inward stillness, and a bowed mind;
When lo! its folds far waving on the wind,
I saw the train of the departing Year!
Starting from my silent sadness

Then with no unholy madness,

Ere yet the entered cloud foreclosed my sight, I raised the impetuous song, and solemnized his flight.

II.

Hither, from the recent tomb,

From the prison's direr gloom,

From distemper's midnight anguish ;

And thence, where poverty doth waste and languish !

Or where, his two bright torches blending,

Love illumines manhood's maze;

Or where, o'er cradled infants bending,
Hope has fixed her wishful gaze;

Hither, in perplexed dance,

Ye Woes! ye young-eyed Joys! advance!

By Time's wild harp, and by the hand
Whose indefatigable sweep

Raises its fateful strings from sleep,
I bid you haste, a mixed tumultuous band!
From every private bower,

And each domestic hearth,

Haste for one solemn hour;

And with a loud and yet a louder voice, O'er Nature struggling in portentous birth, Weep and rejoice!

Still echoes the dread name that o'er the earth
Let slip the storm, and woke the brood of Hell:
And now advance in saintly jubilee.
Justice and Truth! They too have heard thy spell,
They too obey thy name, divinest Liberty!

III.

I marked Ambition in his war-array !

I heard the mailed Monarch's troublous cry"Ah! wherefore does the Northern Conqueress stay!

Groans not her chariot on its onward way?"

Fly, mailed Monarch, fly!

Stunned by Death's twice mortal mace,
No more on Murder's lurid face

The imperial hag shall gloat with drunken eye!
Manes of the unnumbered slain!

Ye that gasped on Warsaw's plain!

Ye that erst at Ismail's tower,

When human ruin choked the streams,
Fell in conquest's glutted hour,

Mid women's shrieks and infants' screams!

Spirits of the uncoffined slain,
Sudden blasts of triumph swelling,
Oft at night in misty train,

Rush around her narrow dwelling!
The exterminating fiend is fled-

(Foul her life, and dark her doom)

Mighty armies of the dead

Dance, like death-fires, round her tomb! Then with prophetic song relate,

Each some tyrant-murderer's fate!

IV.

Departing Year! 'twas on no earthly shore,
My soul beheld thy vision! Where alone,
Voiceless and stern, before the cloudy throne,
Aye Memory sits: thy robe inscribed with gore,
With many an unimaginable groan

Thou storied'st thy sad hours! Silence ensued,
Deep silence o'er the ethereal multitude,

Whose locks with wreaths, whose wreaths with glo

ries shone.

Then, his eye wild ardors glancing,
From the choired gods advancing,

The Spirit of the Earth made reverence meet,
And stood up, beautiful, before the cloudy seat.

V.

Throughout the blissful throng,

Hushed were harp and song:

Till wheeling round the throne the Lampads seven (The mystic Words of Heaven)

Permissive signal make:

The fervent Spirit bowed, then spread his wings and spake !

"Thou in stormy blackness throning
Love and uncreated Light,
By the Earth's unsolaced groaning,
Seize thy terrors, Arm of might!
By peace with proffered insult scared,
Masked hate and envying scorn!
By years of havoc yet unborn!

And hunger's bosom to the frost-winds bared!
But chief by Afric's wrongs,

Strange, horrible, and foul!

By what deep guilt belongs

To the deaf Synod, 'full of gifts and lies!' By wealth's insensate laugh! by torture's howl!' Avenger, rise!

For ever shall the thankless Island scowl, Her quiver full, and with unbroken bow? Speak from thy storm-black Heaven, O speak aloud!

And on the darkling foe

Open thine

eye

of fire from some uncertain cloud!

O dart the flash! O rise and deal the blow!

The Past to thee, to thee the Future cries!

Hark! how wide Nature joins her groans below! Rise, God of Nature! rise."

VI.

The voice had ceased, the vision fled;
Yet still I gasped and reeled with dread.
And ever, when the dream of night
Renews the phantom to my sight,

Cold sweat-drops gather on my limbs;
My ears throb hot; my eye-balls start;
My brain with horrid tumult swims;
Wild is the tempest of my heart ;

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