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And my thick and struggling breath
Imitates the toil of death!

No stranger agony confounds

The soldier on the war-field spread,
When all foredone with toil and wounds,
Death-like he dozes among heaps of dead!
(The strife is o'er, the day-light fled,

And the night-wind clamors hoarse !

See! the starting wretch's head

Lies pillowed on a brother's corse!)

VII.

Not yet enslaved, not wholly vile,
O Albion! O my mother Isle!
Thy valleys, fair as Eden's bowers,
Glitter green with sunny showers:
Thy grassy upland's gentle swells
Echo to the bleat of flocks;
(Those grassy hills, those glittering dells
Proudly ramparted with rocks)
And Ocean, mid his uproar wild,
Speaks safety to his island-child.
Hence for many a fearless age
Has social Quiet loved thy shore;

Nor ever proud invader's rage

Or sacked thy towers, or stained thy fields with

gore.

VIII.

Abandoned of Heaven! mad avarice thy guide,
At cowardly distance, yet kindling with pride-
Mid thy herds and thy corn-fields secure thou hast

stood,

And joined the wild yelling of famine and blood!

The nations curse thee! They with eager wonder

ing

Shall hear Destruction, like a vulture, scream! Strange-eyed Destruction! who with many a dream

Of central fires through nether seas upthundering
Soothes her fierce solitude; yet as she lies
By livid fount, or red volcanic stream,
If ever to her lidless dragon-eyes,

O Albion thy predestined ruins rise,

The fiend-hag on her perilous couch doth leap, Muttering distempered triumph in her charmed sleep.

IX.

Away, my soul, away!

In vain, in vain the birds of warning sing-
And hark! I hear the famished brood of prey
Flap their lank pennons on the groaning wind!
Away, my soul, away!

I unpartaking of the evil thing,
With daily prayer and daily toil
Soliciting for food my scanty soil,

Have wailed my country with a loud Lament. Now I recentre my immortal mind

In the deep sabbath of meek self-content; Cleansed from the vaporous passions that bedim God's Image, sister of the Seraphim.

YE

FRANCE.

AN ODE.

I.

Clouds! that far above me float and pause,
Whose pathless march no mortal may control!
Ye Ocean-Waves! that, wheresoe'er ye roll,
Yield homage only to eternal laws!

Ye Woods! that listen to the night-birds singing,
Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined,
Save when your own imperious branches swinging,
Have made a solemn music of the wind!
Where, like a man beloved of God,
Through glooms, which never woodman trod,
How oft, pursuing fancies holy,

By moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound,
Inspired, beyond the guess of folly,

By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound!
O ye loud Waves! and O ye
Forests high!

And O ye Clouds that far above me soared!
Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky!
Yea, everything that is and will be free!

Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er

ye be,

With what deep worship I have still adored

The spirit of divinest Liberty..

II.

When France in wrath her giant-limbs upreared, And with that oath, which smote air, earth, and

sea,

Stamped her strong foot, and said she would be free,

Bear witness for me, how I hoped and feared!

With what a joy my lofty gratulation

Unawed I sang, amid a slavish band:
And when to whelm the disenchanted nation,
Like fiends embattled by a wizard's wand,
The Monarchs marched in evil day,
And Britain joined the dire array;
Though dear her shores and circling ocean,
Though many friendships, many youthful loves.
Had swoll'n the patriot emotion

And flung a magic light o'er all her hills and groves;

Yet still my voice, unaltered, sang defeat

To all that braved the tyrant-quelling lance,
And shame too long delayed and vain retreat!
For ne'er, O Liberty! with partial aim
I dimmed thy light or damped thy holy flame;
But blessed the pæans of delivered France,
And hung my head and wept at Britain's name.

III.

"And what," I said, "though Blasphemy's loud

scream

With that sweet music of deliverance strove ! Though all the fierce and drunken passions wove A dance more wild than e'er was maniac's dream! Ye storms, that round the dawning east assembled,

The Sun was rising, though ye hid his light!

And when, to soothe my soul, that hoped and trembled,

The dissonance ceased, and all seemed calm and bright;

When France her front deep-scarred and gory
Concealed with clustering wreaths of glory;

Whether thy Love with unrefracted ray
Beam on the Prophet's purged eye, or if
Diseasing realms the enthusiast, wild of thought,
Scatter new frenzies on the infected throng,
Thou both inspiring, and predooming both,
Fit instruments and best, of perfect end:
Glory to Thee, Father of Earth and Heaven!”

And first a landscape rose

More wild and waste and desolate than where The white bear, drifting on a field of ice, Howls to her sundered cubs with piteous rage And savage agony.

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