In a bright dream, and wake as from a dreamn Out of our worshipped state.
Unleash the sword and fire, that in their thirst
They may lick up that scum of schismatics.
I laugh at those weak rebels who, desiring
What we possess, still prate of christian peace,
As if those dreadful messengers of wrath,
Which play the part of God 'twixt right and wrong,
Should be let loose against [the] innocent sleep
Of templed cities and the smiling fields
For some poor argument of policy
Which touches our own profit or our pride,
Where indeed it were christian charity
To turn the cheek even to the smiter's hand:
And when our great Redeemer, when our God
Is scorned in his immediate ministers,
They talk of peace!
Such peace as Canaan found, let Scotland now.
Have you not noted that the fool of late
Has lost his careless mirth, and that his words
Sound like the echoes of our saddest fears?
What can it mean? I should be loth to think
Some factious slave had tutored him.
That our minds piece the vacant intervals
Of his wild words with their own fashioning;
As in the imagery of summer clouds,
Or coals in the winter fire, idlers find
The perfect shadows of their teeming thoughts:
And partly, that the terrors of the time
Are sown by wandering Rumour in all spirits;
And in the lightest and the least, may best
Be seen the current of the coming wind.
Your brain is overwrought with these deep thoughts.
Come, I will sing to you; let us go try
These airs from Italy,—and you shall see
A cradled miniature of yourself asleep,
Stamped on the heart by never-erring love;
Liker than any Vandyke ever made;
A pattern to the unborn age of thee;
Over whose sweet beauty I have wept for joy
A thousand times, and now should weep for sorrow,
Did I not think that after we were dead
Our fortunes would spring high in him, and that
The cares we waste upon our heavy crown
Would make it light and glorious as a wreath
Of heaven's beams for his dear innocent brow.
HAMPDEN, PYM, CROMWELL, and the younger VANE,
England, farewell! thou, who hast been my cradle, Shalt never be my dungeon or my grave!
I held what I inherited in thee
As pawn for that inheritance of freedom
Which thou hast sold for thy despoiler's smile: How can I call thee England, or my country? Does the wind hold?
Upon the Abbey-towers. The silver lightnings Of the evening star, spite of the city's smoke, Tell that the north wind reigns in the upper air. Mark too that flock of fleecy-winged clouds Sailing athwart St. Margaret's.
Of tempest! that wild pilot who shall guide
Hearts free as his, to realms as pure as thee,
Beyond the shot of tyranny! And thou,
Fair star, whose beam lies on the wide Atlantic,
Athwart its zones of tempest and of calm,
Bright as the path to a beloved home,
O light us to the isles of th' evening land!
Like floating Edens, cradled in the glimmer
Of sunset, through the distant mist of years
Tinged by departing Hope, they gleam! Lone
regions,
Where power's poor dupes and victims yet have
Propitiated the savage fear of kings
With purest blood of noblest hearts; whose dew
Is yet unstained with tears of those who wake
To weep each day the wrongs on which it dawns;
Whose sacred silent air owns yet no echo
Of formal blasphemies; nor impious rites
Wrest man's free worship from the God who loves,
Towards the worm, who envies us his love:
Receive thou, young [
] of Paradise,
These exiles from the old and sinful world!
This glorious clime, this firmament, whose lights
Dart mitigated influence through the veil
Of pale-blue atmosphere, whose tears keep green
The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth;
This vaporous horizon, whose dim round
is bastioned by the circumfluous sea,
Repelling invasion from the sacred towers;
Presses upon me like a dungeon's grate,
A low dark roof, a damp and narrow vault:
The mighty universe becomes a cell
Too narrow for the soul that owns no master.
While the loathliest spot
Of this wide prison, England, is a nest
Of cradled peace built on the mountain tops,
To which the eagle-spirits of the free,
Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn
Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth,
Return to brood over the [
That cannot die, and may not be repelled.
SWIFT as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good, the sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth. The smokeless altars of the mountain snows Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth
Of light, the Ocean's orison arose,
To which the birds tempered their matin lay.
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With Orient incense lit by the new ray
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