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 filed

(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.

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;

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.

FRANCE.

AN ODE.

I.

YE 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!

loud Waves! and O ye Forests high! And 0 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.

O ye

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 !