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Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm, Beating their swords to ploughshares;—in a band The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism Free through the streets of Memphis ; much, I wis, To the annoyance of king Amasis.

LXXVI.

And timid lovers who had been so coy,

They hardly knew whether they loved or not, Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy, To the fulfilment of their inmost thought; And when next day the maiden and the boy Met one another, both, like sinners caught, Blushed at the thing which each believed was done Only in fancy-till the tenth moon shone;

LXXVII.

And then the Witch would let them take no ill:
Of
many thousand schemes which lovers find
The Witch found one,-and so they took their fill
Of happiness in marriage warm and kind.
Friends who, by practice of some envious skill,
Were torn apart, a wide wound, mind from mind!

She did unite again with visions clear
Of deep affection and of truth sincere.

LXXVIII.

These were the pranks she played among the cities Of mortal men, and what she did to sprites And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties,

To do her will, and show their subtle slights, I will declare another time; for it is

A tale more fit for the weird winter nightsThan for these garish summer days, when we Scarcely believe much more than we can see.

TO THE MOON.

ART thou pale for weariness

Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless

Among the stars that have a different birth,

And ever-changing, like a joyless eye

That finds no object worth its constancy?

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I STOOD within the city disinterred; †

And heard the autumnal leaves like light foot

falls

Of spirits passing through the streets; and heard
The Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals
Thrill through those roofless halls;
The oracular thunder penetrating shook
The listening soul in my suspended blood;
I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke-
I felt, but heard not:-through white columns
glowed

The isle-sustaining Ocean flood,

A plane of light between two heavens of azure: Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure

Were to spare Death, bad never made erasure ;

* The Author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii and Baie with the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples. This has given a tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes, which depicture the scenes and some of the majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene of this animating event.-Author's Note.

† Pompeii.

But every living lineament was clear As in the sculptor's thought; and there The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy and pine, Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow, Seemed only not to move and grow

Because the crystal silence of the air

Weighed on their life; even as the power divine, Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine.

EPODE II. a.

Then gentle winds arose,

With many a mingled close

Of wild Æolian sound and mountain odour keen; And where the Baian ocean

Welters with air-like motion,

Within, above, around its bowers of starry green,
Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves,
Even as the ever stormless atmosphere
Floats o'er the Elysian realm,

It bore me; (like an Angel, o'er the waves
Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air
No storm can overwhelm ;)

I sailed where ever flows
Under the calm Serene

A spirit of deep emotion,
From the unknown graves

Of the dead kings of melody.*
Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm

* Homer and Virgil.

The horizontal æther; heaven stript bare
Its depths over Elysium, where the prow
Made the invisible water white as snow;
From that Typhæan mount, Inarimé,

There streamed a sunlit vapour, like the standard Of some ethereal host;

Whilst from all the coast,

Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered

Over the oracular woods and divine sea
Prophesyings which grew articulate-

They seize me-I must speak them;-be they fate!

STROPHE a. 1.

NAPLES! thou Heart of men, which ever pantest
Naked, beneath the lidless eye of heaven!
Elysian City, which to calm enchantest

The mutinous air and sea! they round thee, even
As sleep round Love, are driven !
Metropolis of a ruined Paradise

Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained! Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice,

Which armed Victory offers up unstained
To Love, the flower-enchained!

Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be,
Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free,
If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail.
Hail, hail, all hail!

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