5 The accents rattle. Give thy prayers to heaven Pray, - albeit but in thought, - but die Here's a sigh to those who love me, And a smile to those who hate; And, whatever sky's above me, Here's a heart for every fate. not thus. even Man. 'Tis over my dull eyes can fix thee not; But all things swim around me, and the earth Heaves as it were beneath me. Fare thee well Give me thy hand. Abbot. Cold — cold to the heartBut yet one prayer Alas! how fares it with thee? 410 Man. Old man! 'tis not so difficult to die. [MANFRED expires. Abbot. He's gone - his soul hath ta'en its earthless Aight; Whither? I dread to think — but he is gone. 245 urn hill, A single star is at her side, and reigns The Niobe of nations! there she stands, With her o'er half the lovely heaven; but Childless and crownless, in her voiceless still woe; Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and re An empty within her withered mains hands, 705 Rolled o'er the peak of the far Rhætian Whose holy dust was scattered long ago; The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now; As Day and Night contending were, until The very sepulchres lie tenantless Nature reclaimed her order: gently flows Of their heroic dwellers; — dost thou The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues flow, instil Old Tiber, through a marble wilderThe odorous purple of a new-born rose, ness? Which streams upon her stream, and Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle glassed within it glows, her distress! 250 710 Filled with the face of heaven, which, from afar, strews day Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues With a new color as it gasps away, The last still loveliest, — till — 'tis gone and all is gray. 715 The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire, pride; ride Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide site: - doubly night? 260 720 Rome and Freedom LXXVIII LXXXI 695 and wrap and see Oh Rome! my country! city of the soul! The double night of ages, and of her, thee, map, And Knowledge spreads them on her ample The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your lap; 725 way But Rome is as the desert, where we steer O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Stumbling o'er recollections; now we clap Ye! Our hands, and cry “Eureka! it is Whose agonies are evils of a day clear!” A world is at our feet as fragile as our When but some false mirage of ruin rises clay. 700 near. LXXXII 730 875 Alas, the lofty city! and alas, pass The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away! Alas, for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay, And Livy's pictured page! — but these shall be Her resurrection; all beside -- decay. Alas for Earth! for never shall we see That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free! 735 XCVIII Yet, Freedom, yet thy banner, torn but flying, Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind; Thy trumpet voice, though broken now and dying, The loudest still the tempest leaves be hind: Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind, Chopped by the axe, looks rough and little worth, But the sap lasts, – and still the seed we find Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North; So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth. 880 XCVI Desire and Disillusion Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be, And Freedom find no champion and no child Such as Columbia saw arise when she Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and unde filed ? Or must such minds be nourished in the wild, Deep in the unpruned forest, 'midst the CXX 860 roar Of cataracts, where nursing Nature smiled On infant Washington? Has Earth no 1075 more Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore? Alas! our young affections run to waste, haste, Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes, Flowers whose wild odors breathe but agonies, And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants Which spring beneath her steps as Passion Aies O'er the world's wilderness, and vainly pants For some celestial fruit forbidden to our XCVII 865 wants. 1080 CXXI But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime, And fatal have her Saturnalia been To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime; Because the deadly days which we have seen, And vile Ambition, that built up between Man and his hopes an adamantine wall, 870 And the base pageant last upon the scene, Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall Which nips life's tree, and dooms man's worst - his second fall. Oh Love! no habitant of earth thou art - heart; But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see The naked eye, thy form, as it should be. 1085 The mind hath made thee, as it peopled But all too late, — so are we doubly curst. heaven, Love, fame, ambition, avarice — 'tis the Even with its own desiring phantasy, same, And to a thought such shape and image Each idle, and all ill, and none the worstgiven, For all are meteors with a different name, As haunts the unquenched soul — parched And Death the sable smoke where vanishes wearied wrung — and riven. the flame. 1116 CXXV CXXII Of its own beauty is the mind diseased, 1090 Few — none find what they love or And fevers into false creation: — where, could have loved ; Where are the forms the sculptor's soul | Though accident, blind contact, and the hath seized ? strong In him alone. Can Nature show so fair? Necessity of loving, have removed Where are the charms and virtues which Antipathies — but to recur, ere long, 1120 we dare Envenomed with irrevocable wrong; Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men, And Circumstance, that unspiritual god The unreached Paradise of our despair, And miscreator, makes and helps along Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen, Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod, And overpowers the page where it would Whose touch turns Hope to dust, — the bloom again? dust we all have trod. 1094 1125 |