Do thou persist: for, faint but in resolve,
And it were better thou hadst still remained
The slave of thine own slaves, who tear like curs
The fugitive, and flee from the pursuer ;
And Opportunity, that empty wolf,
Flies at his throat who falls. Subdue thy actions
Even to the disposition of thy purpose,
And be that tempered as the Ebro's steel;
And banish weak-eyed Mercy to the weak,
Whence she will greet thee with a gift of peace,
And not betray thee with a traitor's kiss,
As when she keeps the company of rebels,
Who think that she is fear. This do, lest we
Should fall as from a glorious pinnacle
In a bright dream, and wake as from a dream
Out of our worshipped state.

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And if this suffice not,
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 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.

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.

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

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

Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air; And, in succession due, did continent,

Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear The form and character of mortal mould, Rise as the sun their father rose, to bear

Their portion of the toil, which he of old
Took as his own and then imposed on them:
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold

Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem

Which an old chesnut flung athwart the steep
Of a green Apennine: before me fled
The night; behind me rose the day; the deep

Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head,
When a strange trance over my fancy grew
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
Was so transparent, that the scene came through
As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew
That I had felt the freshness of that dawn,
Bathed in the same cold dew my brow and hair,
And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn

Under the self-same bough, and heard as there
The birds, the fountains, and the ocean hold
Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air,
And then a vision on my brain was rolled.

As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay,
This was the tenour of my waking dream :—
Methought I sate beside a public way

Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream
Of people there was hurrying to and fro,
Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,

All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know Whither he went, or whence he came, or why He made one of the multitude, and so

Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky
One of the million leaves of summer's bier;
Old
age and youth, manhood and infancy,

Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear:
Some flying from the thing they feared, and some
Seeking the object of another's fear;

And others as with steps towards the tomb,
Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,
And others mournfully within the gloom

Of their own shadow walked and called it death;
And some fled from it as it were a ghost,
Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath:

But more with motions, which each other crost, Pursued or spurned the shadows the clouds threw, Or birds within the noon-day ether lost,

Upon that path where flowers never grew,
And weary with vain toil and faint for thirst,
Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew

Out of their mossy cells for ever burst;
Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
Of grassy paths and wood, lawn-interspersed,
With over-arching elms and caverns cold,
And violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they
Pursued their serious folly as of old.

And as I gazed, methought that in the way
The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June
When the south wind shakes the extinguished day,

And a cold glare intenser than the noon,
But icy cold, obscured with blinding light
The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon

That what I thought was an old root which grew
To strange distortion out of the hill side,
Was indeed one of those deluded crew,

And that the grass, which methought hung so wide
And white, was but his thin discoloured hair,
And that the holes it vainly sought to hide,

Were or had been eyes:-" If thou canst, forbear
To join the dance, which I had well forborne !"
Said the grim Feature of my thought: "Aware,

"I will unfold that which to this deep scorn
Led me and my companions, and relate
The progress of the pageant since the morn;

"If thirst of knowledge shall not then abate, Follow it thou even to the night, but I Am weary.”—Then like one who with the weight

Of his own words is staggered, wearily He paused; and, ere he could resume, I cried, “First, who art thou?”—“ Before thy memory,

"I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did and died, And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit Had been with purer sentiment supplied,

"Corruption would not now thus much inherit Of what was once Rousseau,-nor this disguise Stained that which ought to have disdained to wear it ;

"If I have been extinguished, yet there rise A thousand beacons from the spark I bore""And who are those chained to the car?"- "The wise,

"The great, the unforgotten, they who wore Mitres and helms and crowns, or wreaths of light, Signs of thought's empire over thought-their lore "Taught them not this, to know themselves; their Could not repress the mystery within, [might And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night "Caught them ere evening."-"Who is he with chin Upon his breast, and hands crost on his chain?"— "The Child of a fierce hour; he sought to win

"The world, and lost all that it did contain
Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; and more
Of fame and peace than virtue's self can gain

"Without the opportunity which bore Him on its eagle pinions to the peak From which a thousand climbers have before

"Fallen, as Napoleon fell."-I felt my cheek
Alter to see the shadow pass away,
Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak,

That every pigmy kicked it as it lay;
And much I grieved to think how power and will
In opposition rule our mortal day,

And why God made irreconcilable

Good and the means of good; and for despair I half disdained mine eyes' desire to fill

With the spent vision of the times that were
And scarce have ceased to be.-"Dost thou behold,"
Said my guide," those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire,
"Frederick, and Paul, Catherine, and Leopold,
And hoary anarchs, demagogues, and sage-

names which the world thinks always old, "For in the battle life and they did wage, She remained conqueror. I was overcome By my own heart alone, which neither age,

"Nor tears, nor infamy, nor now the tomb Could temper to its object."-" Let them pass," I cried, "the world and its mysterious doom "Is not so much more glorious than it was, That I desire to worship those who drew New figures on its false and fragile glass

"As the old faded."-" Figures ever new Rise on the bubble, paint them as you may; We have but thrown, as those before us threw, "Our shadows on it as it past away. But mark how chained to the triumphal chair The mighty phantoms of an elder day;

"All that is mortal of great Plato there Expiates the joy and woe his master knew not: The star that ruled his doom was far too fair,

"And life, where long that flower of Heaven grew not,

Conquered that heart by love, which gold, or pain,
Or age, or sloth, or slavery, could subdue not.

"And near him walk the [
] twain,
The tutor and his pupil, whom Dominion
Followed as tame as vulture in a chain.

"The world was darkened beneath either pinion
Of him whom from the flock of conquerors
Fame singled out for her thunder-bearing minion;
"The other long outlived both woes and wars,
Throned in the thoughts of men, and still had kept
The jealous key of truth's eternal doors,

"If Bacon's eagle spirit had not leapt
Like lightning out of darkness-he compelled
The Proteus shape of Nature as it slept