A dirge devoutly breathed o'er sorrows past:

And to the attendant promise will give heed

The prophecy,-like that of this wild blast, Which, while it makes the heart with sadness shrink,

Tells also of bright calms that shall succeed.

IX. HOFFER.

OF mortal parents is the Hero born
By whom the undaunted Tyrolese are led?
Or is it Tell's great Spirit, from the dead
Returned to animate an age forlorn?
'He comes like Phoebus through the gates
of morn

When dreary darkness is discomfited,
Yet mark his modest state! upon his head,
That simple crest, a heron's plume, is

worn.

O Liberty! they stagger at the shock From van to rear-and with one mind would flee,

But half their host is buried:-rock on rock Descends :-beneath this godlike Warrior, see!

Hills, torrents, woods, embodied to bemock The Tyrant, and confound his cruelty.

X.

ADVANCE-Come forth from thy Tyrolean ground,

Dear Liberty! stern Nymph of soul untamed;

Sweet Nymph, O rightly of the mountains named!

Through the long chain of Alps from mound to mound

And o'er the eternal snows, like Echo, bound;

Like Echo, when the hunter train at dawn Have roused her from her sleep and forestlawn,

Cliffs, woods and caves, her viewless steps resound

And babble of her pastime!-On, dread Power!

With such invisible motion speed thy flight

Through hanging clouds, from craggy height to height, Through the green vales and through the

herdsman's bower

ALAS! what boots the long laborious quest Of moral prudence, sought through good and ill;

Or pains abstruse-to elevate the will,
And lead us on to that trandscendant rest
Of Reason, seated on her sovereign hill;
Where every passion shall the sway attest
What is it but a vain and curious skill,
If Sapient Germany must lie deprest,
Beneath the brutal sword?-Her haughty
Schools

Shall blush; and may not we with sorrow say,

A few strong instincts and a few plain rules,

Among the herdsmen of the Alps, have wrought

More for mankind at this unhappy day Than all the pride of intellect and thought?

XIII.

AND is it among rude untutored Dales, There, and there only, that the heart is true?

And, rising to repel or to subdue, Is it by rocks and woods that man prevails? Ah no! though Nature's dread protection fails,

Were the wide fields, the hamlets heaped with slain.

Yet see (the mighty tumult overpast) Austria a Daughter of her Throne hath sold! And her Tyrolean Champion we behold Murdered, like one ashore by shipwreck cast, Murdered without relief. Oh! blind as bold, To think that such assurance can stand fast! XIX.

BRAVE Schill! by death delivered, take thy flight

From Prussia's timid region. Go, and rest With heroes, 'mid the Islands of the Blest, Or in the fields of empyrean light.

A meteor wert thou crossing a dark night: Yet shall thy name, conspicuous and sublime,

Stand in the spacious firmament of time,
Fixed as a star: such glory is thy right.
Alas! it may not be: for earthly fame
Is Fortune's frail dependent; yet there lives
A Judge who, as man claims by merit, gives;
To whose all-pondering mind a noble aim,
Faithfully kept, is as a noble deed;

In whose pure sight all virtue doth succeed.

Have "perished by his choice, and not his fate!"

Hence lives He, to his inner self endeared;
And hence, wherever virtue is revered,
He sits a more exalted Potentate,
Throned in the hearts of men. Should
Heaven ordain

That this great Servant of a righteous cause Must still have sad or vexing thoughts to endure,

Yet may a sympathizing spirit pause,

With new-born hope. Unbounded is the might

pain

In thankful joy and gratulation pure.

XXI.

LOOK now on that Adventurer who hath paid
His vows to fortune; who, in cruel slight
Of virtuous hope, of liberty, and right,
Hath followed wheresoe'er a way was made
By the blind Goddess,-ruthless, undis-
mayed;

And so hath gained at length a prosperous height,

ingly

The Eternal looks upon her sword that gleams,

Like his own lightning, over mountains high, On rampart, and the banks of all her streams

XXIV.

IN due observance of an ancient rite,
The rude Biscayans, when their children lie
Dead in the sinless time of infancy,
Attire the peaceful corse in vestments white;

flame

On fleets and armies, and external wealth:
But from within proceeds a Nation's health;
Which shall not fail, though poor men cleave
with pride

To the paternal floor; or turn aside,
In the thronged city, from the walks of gain,
As being all unworthy to detain
A Soul by contemplation sanctified.
There are who cannot languish in this strife,
Spaniards of every rank, by whom the good
Of such high course was felt and understood;
Who to their Country's cause have bound a
life

Erewhile, by solemn consecration, given
To labor, and to prayer, to nature, and to
heaven.

HUNGER, and sultry heat, and nipping blast

From bleak hill-top, and length of march by night

Through heavy swamp, or over snow-clad height

These hardships ill-sustained, these dangers past,

The roving Spanish Bands are reached at last,

Charged, and dispersed like foam. but as a flight

Of scattered quails by signs do reunite,
So these, and, heard of once again, are
chased

Of combinations of long-practised art
And newly-kindled hope, but they are fled-
Cone are they, viewless as the buried dead:

Where now?Their sword is at the Foeman's heart!

And thus from year to year his walk they thwart,

And hang like dreams around his guilty bed.

XXXI.

SPANISH GUERILLA.

1811.

THEY seek, are sought; to daily battle led,
Shrink not, though far outnumbered by their
Foes,

For they have learnt to open and to close
The ridges of grim war; and at their head
Are captains such as erst their country bred
Or fostered, self-supported chiets,-like those
Whom hardy Rome was tearful to oppose;
Whose desperate shock the Carthaginian
In One who lived unknown a shepherd's life
Redoubted Viriatus breathes again;
With that great Leader* vies, who, sick of
And Mina, nourished in the studious shade,

fled.

strife

And bloodshed, longed in quiet to be laid In some green island of the western main.

XXXII.

1811.

THE power of Armies is a visible thing, Formal, and circumscribed in time and space;

But who the limits of that power shall trace
Which a brave People into light can bring
Or hide, at will,-for freedom combating
By just revenge inflamed? No foot may
chase,

No eye can follow, to a fatal place
That power, that spirit, whether on the wing
Like the strong wind, or sleeping like the
wind

Within its awful caves-From year to year
Springs this indigenous produce far and near
No cratt this subtle element can bind,
Rising like water from the soil, to find
In every nook a lip that it may cheer.

XXXIII. 1811.

HERE pause the poet claims at least this praise,

That virtuous Liberty hath been the scope Of his pure song, which did not shrink from hope

In the worst moment of these evil days; From hope, the paramount duty that Heaven lays,

Never may from our souls one truth depart― For its own honor, on man's suffering heart.

* Sertorius.