These sensual chains ye loosen from my life,
Dispel its misery, and dissolve its strife.

Yes, through my being stirs a higher sense, Quickened by thee to finest influence; Walking within thy light-enchanted air,

Thy glory imaged round my brow I wear;

And though the power, that made thy works divine, To humbler hearts hath ever been denied,

Thy mortal hands have shapen thoughts, that shine
Calm as the stars, to comfort and abide;

They linger here to lend us hope and trust,
When the frail lips that uttered them are dust.
The dying slave in them hath found relief,
They have assuaged the agony of grief,
The throned tyrant trembles at their might,
The prisoner in his dungeon hails their light,
The scholar on their pinions soars above,
The maiden in their accents breathes her love,
And calm, august, majestical and clear,
They shine in thought's undying atmosphere.

Many there be, whose spirit inly stirred, Hath pressed their life into a cunning word,

And on these signs hath built a world sublime,
That stands unshaken by the blasts of Time.

There, towering mountains on their summits wear
The purple haze of an ideal air;

There, Wisdom breathes amid the pensive hours,
And sweet success rewards aspiring powers;
There, welling forth in calm and lucid streams,
Glide the deep currents of Elysian dreams;
There, shapes majestic of heroic mien,

And eyes of wisdom breathe the air serene;
There, Rapture soars on never-failing wing;
There, Fancy blossoms in perennial spring;
There, dwell the lofty and Utopian scheme,
The earnest thought, the fair poetic dream,
The visionary hope that haunted youth,
The still, serene and quiet face of Truth.

And they, the lofty ones, whose hands have built The skyey world, wherein the soul harassed By all Life's barking cares, the spawn of Guilt, Refuge may find, and sweet repose at last; Their names are battle-cries, that urge us on When faith declines, as with a trumpet tone; Their voices calling clearly for the right,

Sound through the noisy tumult of the fight;

Their thoughts are noble armories of words,
Whose edge is keener than Damascus swords;
Like giant spectres clad in glittering mail,
Sword-proof, fear-proof, unknowing how to fail,
Invulnerable phantom-bands they lead,

Armed for the Truth, in Freedom's cause to bleed,
And through the air their burning thoughts they sow
Round Falsehood, like the Inferno's fire of snow.

Across the waste of time their tones arise,
Their forms unclouded shine before my eyes;-
Now like the sifting wind through sighing pines,
The spirit moaneth through the Psalmist's lines;
There Pindar shoots his meteors of fire;
There blind old Homer strikes the epic lyre,—
While sounds the rushing din of war along
The swelling volume of his sea-like song ;

In youth's fresh joyance old Anacreon sings,
And Sappho's hurrying fingers sweep the strings;
There Eschylus, enlaureled, wanders by,

Calm and severe in sculptural majesty ;
There Sophocles appears in looser ease,
There throbs the passion of Euripides.
And hark! again from the Italian strand
I catch the voice of Virgil, sweet and bland;

I see the sparkling ode of Horace flash,

I hear the sounding of Lucretius' lash;

Still nearer ring, in terse and mystic chime,
The nervous chords of Dante's triple rhyme;

While Petrarch plains in sweet and lovelorn chaunt,
And Ariosto trolls his gay romaunt ;

And nearer from our Father-land I hear
Tones more familiar, voices far more dear,
And our great brothers greet my seeking eyes,
Who wove our household words to melodies,
Whose blood is running still within our veins,
Whose spirit warms us with heroic strains,
And gives us strength to strike away our chains ;
He, whose sweet voice in simple cadence flows,
Like some clear brook, that bubbling purls along,
With flowers enameled, singing as it goes,
Chaucer, the herald-star of English song;
Spenser, whose shafts with roses are entwined,
Shaking his nine sweet bells upon the wind;
Milton, whose voice like some deep organ-tone
In diapason notes goes swelling on;

And mighty Shakspeare, nature's darling child,
Whose world-wide mind no single age can own,
For whom the Muses served, and Wisdom smiled,
Who sitteth on the Olympian peak alone.

And yet once more from the Teutonic strand

I hear the voices of a noble band.

Goethe, in whom the Present imaged lay,

The wise clear artist working in the Real l;
Schiller, the prophet of a purer day,

The true and earnest priest of the Ideal. (1)

From thee I turn, for to my listening ear The call of Music soundeth full and clear; Apollo's lips are mute, but still his lyre Trembles beneath his hand in notes of fire. Orpheus before me moves, and from his strings Melodious tones upsoar on circling rings ; Child of Apollo! unto whom was given The finest gift, that ever came from heaven, I see thee like a silvery meteor float

Down the dark shadow of the Inferno's throat, The barking hell-hound droops before thy spell As thy clear notes in slumberous murmurs swell, And Cerberus sleeps within the jaws of hell.

Nor thee alone I see, before my eyes Thy younger brothers in succession rise;

He, who with earnest will, and certain gaze,

Pursued his thought along the fugue's dark maze,