Sibylline Leaves. I. POEMS OCCASIONED BY POLITICAL EVENTS, OR FEELINGS CONNECTED WITH THEM. WHEN I have borne in memory what has tamed 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. Το μέλλον ἥξει. Καὶ σύ μ' ἐν τάχει παρὼν 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 lan guish ! Or where, his two bright torches blending, Love illumines manhood's maze; Or where, o'er cradled infants bending, Hither, in perplexed dance, Ye Woes! ye young-eyed Joys! advance! By Time's wild harp, and by the hand Raises its fateful strings from sleep, I bid you haste, a mixed tumultuous band! And each domestic hearth, Haste for one solemn hour; And with a loud and yet a louder voice, Still echoes the dread name that o'er the earth 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 cryAh! 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, The imperial hag shall gloat with drunken eye! Ye that gasped on Warsaw's plain! Ye that erst at Ismail's tower, When human ruin choked the streams, Mid women's shrieks and infants' screams! And my thick and struggling breath 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, Hence for many a fearless age Nor ever proud invader's rage Or sacked thy towers, or stained thy fields with gore. VIII. Abandoned of Heaven! mad avarice thy guide, 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 O Albion! thy predestined ruins rise, IX. Away, my soul, away! In vain, in vain the birds of warning sing- I unpartaking of the evil thing, 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. |