I.

AN ODE TO THE ASSERTERS OF LIBERTY.

2.

3.

5.

ARISE, arise, arise!

There is blood on the earth that denies ye bread!
Be your wounds like eyes

To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead.
What other grief were it just to pay?

Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they!
Who said they were slain on the battle-day?

Awaken, awaken, awaken!

The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes.
Be the cold chains shaken

To the dust where your kindred repose, repose:
Their bones in the grave will start and move
When they hear the voices of those they love
Most loud in the holy combat above.

Wave, wave high the banner

When Freedom is riding to conquest by:
Though the slaves that fan her

Be Famine and Toil, giving sigh for sigh.
And ye who attend her imperial car,
Lift not your hands in the banded war,
But in her defence whose children ye are.

Glory, glory, glory,

To those who have greatly suffered and done!
Never name in story

Was greater than that which ye shall have won.

Conquerors have conquered their foes alone,

Whose revenge, pride, and power, they have overthrown : Ride ye, more victorious, over your own.

Bind, bind every brow

With crownals of violet, ivy, and pine:

Hide the blood-stains now

With hues which sweet Nature has made divine

Green strength, azure hope, and eternity.

But let not the pansy among them be;
Ye were injured, and that means memory.

ODE TO HEAVEN.

CHORUS OF SPIRITS.

FIRST SPIRIT.

PALACE-ROOF of cloudless nights!
Paradise of golden lights!

Deep, immeasurable, vast,

Which art now, and which wert then! Of the present and the past,

Of the eternal where and when, Presence-chamber, temple, home! Ever-canopying dome

Of acts and ages yet to come!

Glorious shapes have life in thee :-
Earth, and all earth's company;
Living globes which ever throng

Thy deep chasms and wildernesses;
And green worlds that glide along ;
And swift stars with flashing tresses
And icy moons most cold and bright;
And mighty suns beyond the night,
Atoms of intensest light.

Even thy name is as a god,
Heaven! for thou art the abode
Of that Power which is the glass
Wherein man his nature sees.
Generations as they pass

Worship thee with bended knees.
Their unremaining gods and they
Like a river roll away;

Thou remainest such alway.

SECOND SPIRIT.

Thou art but the mind's first chamber,
Round which its young fancies clamber,
Like weak insects in a cave

Lighted up by stalactites;
But the portal of the grave,-

Where a world of new delights Will make thy best glories seem But a dim and noonday gleam From the shadow of a dream!

THIRD SPIRIT.

Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scorn
At your presumption, atom-born!
What is heaven? and what are ye

Who its brief expanse inherit?
What are suns and spheres which flee
With the instinct of that Spirit

Of which ye are but a part?

Drops which Nature's mighty heart

Drives through thinnest veins. Depart!

What is heaven? A globe of dew,

Filling in the morning new

Some eyed flower whose young leaves waken

On an unimagined world:

Constellated suns unshaken,
Orbits measureless, are furled
In that frail and fading sphere,
With ten millions gathered there,
To tremble, gleam, and disappear.

ODE TO THE WEST WIND.

1. O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill;
Wild Spirit which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

2. Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread

On the blue surface of thine airy surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,

The locks of the approaching storm.

Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: Oh hear!

3. Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baia's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers va
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers

So sweet the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: Oh hear!
4. If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable ! if even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision, -I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee-tameless, and swift, and proud.

5. Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

AN EXHORTATION.

CHAMELEONS feed on light and air;
Poets' food is love and fame.

If in this wide world of care

Poets could but find the same

With as little toil as they,

Would they ever change their hue
As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray

Twenty times a-day?

Poets are on this cold earth
As chameleons might be
Hidden from their early birth
In a cave beneath the sea.
Where light is, chameleons change;
Where love is not, poets do.
Fame is love disguised: if few
Find either, never think it strange
That poets range.

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
A poet's free and heavenly mind.
If bright chameleons should devour
Any food but beams and wind,
They would grow as earthly soon
As their brother lizards are.
Children of a sunnier star,
Spirits from beyond the moon,
Oh! refuse the boon!

THE INDIAN SERENADE.

I ARISE from dreams of thee

In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet

Hath led me who knows how?
To thy chamber window, sweet!

The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream—
The champak odours fail

Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint

It dies upon her heart,

As I must die on thine,
Beloved as thou art!

Oh lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain

On my lips and eyelids pale.

My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast:
Oh! press it close to thine again,
Where it will break at last.