race, To feel at least a patriot's shame, tear. Must we but weep o'er days more blest? Must we but blush? - Our fathers bled. Earth! render back from out thy breast A remnant of our Spartan dead! Of the three hundred grant but three, To make a new Thermopylæ! What, silent still? and silent all? Ah! no;the voices of the dead Sound like a distant torrent's fall, And answer, "Let one living head. But one arise, -we come, we come!" 'Tis but the living who are dumb. [From the Prophecy of Dante.] GENIUS. MANY are poets who have never penned Their inspiration, and perchance, the best; They felt, and loved and died, but would not lend Their thoughts to meaner beings; they compressed The God within them, and rejoined the stars Unlaurelled upon earth, but far more blessed Than those who are degraded by the jars Of passion, and their frailties linked to fame, Conquerors of high renown, but full of scars. Many are poets, but without the One noble stroke with a whole life may glow, Or deify the canvas till it shine With beauty so surpassing all below, That they who kneel to idols so divine Break no commandment, for high heaven is there Transfused, transfigurated and the line Of poesy which peoples but the air With thought and beings of our thought reflected, Can do no more: then let the artist share The palm; he shares the peril, and dejected Faints o'er the labor unapproved -Alas! Despair and genius are too oft connected. [From Childe Harold.] THE MISERY OF EXCESS. TO INEZ. NAY, smile not at my sullen brow, And dost thou ask, what secret woe soothe ? It is not love, it is not hate, Nor low ambition's honors lost, That bids me loathe my present state, And fly from all I prize the most! It is that weariness which springs me. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin-his control Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadov of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, And monarchs tremble in their capitals, The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make Their clay creator the vain title take Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war; These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar. Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters washed them power while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores The image of eternity - the throne Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made: each zone Obeys thee: thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy [to be Of youthful sports was on thy breast Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy I wantoned with thy breakers - they to me sea Were a delight; and if the freshening Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear, For I was as it were a child of thee, And, trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane— as I do here. [From Childe Harold.] CALM AND TEMPEST AT NIGHT ON LAKE LEMAN (GENEVA). CLEAR, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake, With the wide world I dwelt in is a thing Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake [spring. Earth's troubled waters for a purer This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing To waft me from distraction; once I loved Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved, Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou That I with stern delights should e'er azure brow rollest now. have been so moved. |