Then, his eye wild ardours glancing,

From the choired gods advancing,

The Spirit of the Earth made reverence meet, And stood up, beautiful, before the cloudy seat.

ANTISTROPHE II.

Throughout the blissful throng,
Hushed were harp and song:

Till, wheeling round the throne the Lampads

seven,

(The mystic Words of Heaven)

Permissive signal make;

The fervent Spirit bow'd, then spread his wings and spake !

"Thou in stormy blackness throning
Love and uncreated Light,

By the Earth's unsolaced groaning,
Seize thy terrors, Arm of might!
By peace, with proffer'd insult scared,
Masked hate and envying scorn!
By years of havoc yet unborn!

And hunger's bosom to the frost-winds bared!

But chief by Afric's wrongs,

Strange, horrible, and foul!
By what deep guilt belongs

To the deaf Synod, 'full of gifts and lies!' By wealth's insensate laugh! by torture's howl! Avenger, rise!

For ever shall the thankless Island scowl, Her quiver full, and with unbroken bow?

"wreathed,” in consequence of Lamb's objections.—See Talfourd's Letters of Charles Lamb.

Speak! from thy storm-black Heaven O speak

aloud!

And on the darkling foe

Open thine eye of fire from some uncertain cloud!

O dart the flash! O rise and deal the blow! The Past to thee, to thee the Future cries! Hark! how wide Nature joins her groans below!

Rise, God of Nature! rise.'

EPODE II.

The voice had ceased, the vision fled;
Yet still I gasp'd and reel'd with dread.
And ever, when the dream of night
Renews the phantom to my sight,
Cold sweat-drops gather on my limbs ;
My ears throb hot; my eye-balls start;
My brain with horrid tumult swims;
Wild is the tempest of my heart;
And my thick and struggling breath
Imitates the toil of death! 2
No stranger agony confounds

The soldier on the war-field spread,

1 Rise, &c.] The second antistrophe ended, in the first edition, with a fine line :

Rise, God of Nature, rise! why sleep thy bolts unhurl'd ?"

2 Cold sweat-drops.... death!] A close imitation of Sappho's song, which Catullus attempted to translate, relinquishing the attempt in disgust:-Otium, Catulle, tibi molestum est.

When all foredone with toil and wounds,
Death-like he doses among heaps of dead!
(The strife is o'er, the day-light fled,
And the night-wind clamours hoarse!
See the starting wretch's head

Lies pillow'd on a brother's corse !)

Not yet enslaved, not wholly vile,
O Albion! O my mother Isle !
Thy valleys, fair as Eden's bowers,
Glitter green with sunny showers;
Thy grassy uplands' gentle swells
Echo to the bleat of flocks;

(Those grassy hills, those glittering dells
Proudly ramparted with rocks,)
And Ocean 'mid his uproar wild
Speaks safety to his island-child!
Hence, for many a fearless age,

Has social quiet loved thy shore;
Nor ever proud invader's rage

Or sack'd thy towers, or stain'd thy fields with gore.

Abandon'd1 of Heaven! mad avarice thy guide, At cowardly distance, yet kindling with pride, 'Mid thy herds and thy corn-fields secure thou hast stood,

And join'd the wild yelling of famine and blood!

1 Abandon'd, &c.] The poet, from having considered the peculiar advantages which this country has enjoyed, passes in rapid transition to the uses which we have made of these advantages.-C. 1796.

The nations curse thee! They with eager wondering

Shall hear Destruction, like a vulture, scream ! Strange-eyed Destruction! who with many a dream

Of central fires through nether seas upthundering

Soothes her fierce solitude; yet as she lies By livid fount, or red volcanic stream, If ever to her lidless dragon-eyes,

O Albion! thy predestined ruins rise, The fiend-hag on her perilous couch doth leap, Muttering distemper'd triumph in her charmed sleep.

Away, my soul, away !

In vain, in vain, the birds of warning sing! And hark! I hear the famish'd brood of prey Flap their lank pennons on the groaning wind! Away, my soul, away!

I, unpartaking of the evil thing,
With daily prayer and daily toil
Soliciting for food my scanty soil,

Have wail'd my country with a loud lament. Now I recentre my immortal mind

In the deep sabbath of meek self-content; Cleansed from the vaporous passions that bedim God's Image, sister of the Seraphim.

FRANCE.*

AN ODE.

I.

E Clouds! that far above me float

and pause,

Whose pathless march no mortal may control!

Ye Ocean-Waves! that, wheresoe'er ye roll, Yield homage only to eternal laws !

Ye Woods! that listen to the night-birds' singing,

Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined,

Save when your own imperious branches swinging,

Have made a solemn music of the wind! Where, like a man beloved of God,

Through glooms, which never woodman trod, How oft, pursuing fancies holy,

My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound,

Inspired, beyond the guess of folly,

By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound!

O ye loud Waves! and O ye Forests high!

* Published in 4to, in 1798, together with Fears in Solitude and Frost at Midnight. It had previously appeared in The Morning Post, in April of the same year.