Yet in the pomp of these festivities,

One mournful thought will rise within thy mind--
The thought of Him who sits

In mental as in visual darkness lost.
How had his heart been fill'd
With deepest gratitude to Heaven,
Had he beheld this day!

O King of kings, and Lord of lords,
Thou who hast visited thus heavily
The anointed head,

Oh! for one little interval,

One precious hour,

Remove the blindness from his soul,

That he may know it all,
And bless thee ere he die!

IX.

Thou also shouldst have seen
This harvest of thy hopes,
Thou whom the guilty act
Of a great spirit overthrown,
Sent to thine early grave in evil hour!
Forget not him, my country, in thy joy!

But let thy grateful hand
With laurel garlands hang
The tomb of Perceval.
Virtuous, and firm, and wise,
The Ark of Britain in her darkest day
He steer'd through stormy scas;

And long shall Britain hold his memory dear,
And faithful History give
His meed of lasting praise.

X.

That earthly meed shall his compeers enjoy, Britain's true counsellors, Who see with just success their counsels crown'd.

They have their triumph now, to him denied.
Proud day for them is this!
Prince of the mighty Isle!
Proud day for them and thee,
When Britain round her spear

The olive garland twines, by Victory won.

ODE

TO HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY

ALEXANDER THE FIRST, EMPEROR OF ALL THE RUSSIAS.

I.

CONQUEROR, Deliverer, Friend of human-kind, The free, the happy Island welcomes thee! Thee from thy wasted realms,

So signally revenged;

From Prussia's rescued plains;

From Dresden's field of slaughter, where the ball
Which struck Moreau's dear life,

Was turn'd from thy more precious head aside;
From Leipsic's dreadful day,
From Elbe, and Rhine, and Seine,
In thy career of conquest overpast:
From the proud Capital

Of haughty France subdued,

Then to her rightful line of Kings restored;
Thee, Alexander! thee, the Great, the Good,
The Glorious, the Beneficent, the Just,
Thee to her honour'd shores
The mighty Island welcomes in her joy.

Breaking the iron limbs and front of brass, Strew the rejoicing Nations with the wreck.

III.

Rous'd as thou wert with insult and with wrong, Who should have blamed thee if, in high-wrought

mood

Of vengeance and the sense of injured power,
Thou from the flames which laid

The City of thy Fathers in the dust,
Hadst bid a spark be brought,

And borne it in thy tent,

Religiously by night and day preserved,
Till on Montmartre's height
When open to thine arms,
Her last defence o'erthrown,
The guilty city lay,

Thou hadst call'd every Russian of thine host
To light his flambeau at the sacred flame,

And sent them through her streets,
And wrapt her roofs and towers,
Temples and palaces,

Her wealth and boasted spoils,
In one wide flood of fire,

Making the hated Nation feel herself
The miseries she had spread.

IV.

Who should have blamed the Conqueror for that deed?
Yea, rather would not one exulting cry

Have risen from Elbe to Nile,
How is the Oppressor fallen!
Moscow's re-rising walls
Had rung with glad acclaim;
Thanksgiving hymns had fill'd
Tyrol's rejoicing vales;
How is the Oppressor fallen!

The Germans in their grass-grown marts had met
To celebrate the deed;

Holland's still waters had been starr'd
With festive lights, reflected there
From every house and hut,

From every town and tower;

The Iberian and the Lusian's injured realms,
From all their mountain-holds,
From all their ravaged fields,

From cities sack'd, from violated fanes,
And from the sanctuary of every heart,
Had pour'd that pious strain,
How is the Oppressor fallen!
Righteous art thou, O Lord!
Thou Zaragoza, from thy sepulchres

Hadst join'd the hymn; and from thine ashes thou,
Manresa, faithful still!

The blood that calls for vengeance in thy streets
Madrid, and Porto thine,

And that which from the beach

Of Tarragona sent its cry to Heaven,
Had rested then appeased.
Orphans had clapt their hands,

And widows would have wept exulting tears,
And childless parents with a bitter joy
Have blest the avenging deed.

Witness that dread retreat,
When God and nature smote
The Tyrant in his pride,
No wider ruin overtook
Sennacherib's impious host;

Nor when the frantic Persian led
His veterans to the Lybian sands;
Nor when united Greece

O'er the barbaric power that victory won
Which Europe yet may bless,

A fouler Tyrant cursed the groaning earth,A fearfuller destruction was dispensed. Victorious armies followed on his flight; On every side he met

The Cossacks' dreadful spear;

On every side he saw
The injured nation rise,
Invincible in arms.

What myriads, victims of one wicked will,
Spent their last breath in curses on his head,
There where the soldiers' blood
Froze in the festering wound;

And nightly the cold moon

Saw sinking thousands in the snow lie down,
Whom there the morning found
Stiff, as their icy bed.

Frederick, the well-beloved!

Greatest and best of that illustrious name, Welcome to these free shores!

In glory art thou come,

Thy victory perfect, thy revenge complete.

II.

Enough of sorrow hast thou known,
Enough of evil hath thy realm endured,
Oppress'd but not debased,
When thine indignant soul,

Long suffering, bore its weight of heaviest woe.
But still, through that dark day
Unsullied Honour was thy counsellor;
And Hope, that had its trust in Heaven,
And in the heart of man
Its strength, forsook thee not.
Thou hadst thy faithful people's love,
The sympathy of noble minds;
And wistfully, as one

Who through the weary night has long'd for day
Looks eastward for the dawn,
So Germany to thee

Turn'd in her bondage her imploring eyes.

III.

Oh, grief of griefs, that Germany,

The wise, the virtuous land,

The land of mighty minds,

Should bend beneath the frothy Frenchman's yoke!

Oh, grief of griefs, to think

That she should groan in bonds,

She who had blest all nations with her gifts!
There had the light of Reformation risen,
The light of Knowledge there was burning clear.
Oh, grief, that her unhappy sons
Should toil and bleed and die,
To quench that sacred light,

The wretched agents of a tyrant's will!
How often hath their blood

In his accursed cause
Reek'd on the Spaniard's blade!
Their mangled bodies fed

The wolves and eagles of the Pyrenees;
Or stiffening in the snows of Moscovy,
Amid the ashes of the watch-fire lay,
Where dragging painfully their frozen limbs,
With life's last effort in the flames they fell.

IV.

Long, Frederick, didst thou bear

Her sorrows and thine own;

Seven miserable years

In patience didst thou feed thy heart with hope; Till, when the arm of God

Smote the blaspheming Tyrant in his pride, And Alexander with the voice of power Raised the glad cry, Deliverance for Mankind, First of the Germans, Prussia broke her chains.

V.

Joy, joy for Germany,

For Europe, for the World,

When Prussia rose in arms!

Oh, what a spectacle

For present and for future times was there,

When for the public need Wives gave their marriage rings, And mothers, when their sons The Band of Vengeance join'd, Bade them return victorious from the field, Or with their country fall.

VI.

Twice o'er the field of death

The trembling scales of Fate hung equipoised: For France, obsequious to her Tyrant still, Mighty for evil, put forth all her power; And still beneath his hateful banners driven, Against their father-land

Unwilling Germans bore unnatural arms. What though the Boaster made his temples ring With vain thanksgivings for each doubtful day,What though with false pretence of peace His old insidious arts he tried,—

The spell was broken! Austria threw her sword Into the inclining scale,

And Leipsic saw the wrongs

Of Germany avenged.

VII.

Ne'er till that awful time had Europe seen Such multitudes in arms;

Nor ever had the rising Sun beheld Such mighty interests of mankind at stake; Nor o'er so wide a scene

Of slaughter e'er had Night her curtain closed. There, on the battle-field,

With one accord the grateful monarchs knelt, And raised their voice to Heaven;

<< The cause was thine, O Lord!

O Lord! thy hand was here!»>
What Conquerors e'er deserved

So proud, so pure a joy!

It was a moment when the exalted soul Might almost wish to burst its mortal bounds, Lest all of life to come

Vapid and void should seem
After that high-wrought hour.

VIII.

But thou hadst yet more toils,

More duties and more triumphs yet in store.
Elbe must not bound thine arms!

Nor on the banks of Rhine
Thine eagles check their flight;
When o'er that barrier stream,
Awakened Germany

Drove her invaders with such rout and wreck
As overtook the impious Gaul of old,
Laden with plunder, and from Delphi driven.

IX.

Long had insulting France
Boasted her arms invincible,
Her soil inviolate:

At length the hour of retribution comes!
Avenging nations on all sides move on;
In Gascony the flag of England flies,
Triumphant, as of yore,
When sable Edward led his peerless host.
Behold the Spaniard and the Portugal,