SIBYLLINE LEAVES.

I. POEMS OCCASIONED BY POLITICAL EVENTS OR FEELINGS CONNECTED WITH THEM.

WHEN I have borne in memory what has tamed
Great nations, how ennobling thoughts depart
When men change swords for ledgers, and desert
The student's bower for gold, some fears unnamed
I had, my country! Am I to be blamed?
But, when I think of Thee, and what Thou art,
Verily, in the bottom of my heart,

Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed.

But dearly must we prize thee; we who find
In thee a bulwark of the cause of men ;
And I by my affection was beguiled.
What wonder if a poet, now and then,
Among the many movements of his mind,
Felt for thee as a Lover or a Child.

WORDSWORTH.

Τὸ μέλλον ἤξει. Καὶ σὺ μην τάχει παρὼν
Αγαν γ' ἀληθόμαντιν μ' ἐρεῖς.

E CHYL. Agam. 1225.

ARGUMENT.

The Ode commences with an Address to the Divine Providence, that regulates into one vast harmony all the events of time, however calamitous some of them may appear to mortals. The second Strophe calls on men to suspend their private joys and sorrows, and devote them for a while to the cause of human nature in general. The first Epode speaks of the Empress of Russia, who died of an apoplexy on the 17th of November, 1796; having just concluded a subsidiary treaty with the Kings combined gainst France. The first and second Antistrophe describe the Image of the Departing Year, &c., as in a vision. The second prophesies, in anguish of spirit, the downfall of this country.

I.

SPIRIT who sweepest the wild Harp of Time!

It is most hard, with an untroubled ear

*This Ode was composed on the 24th, 25th, and 26th days of December, 1795; and was first published on the last day of that year.

Thy dark inwoven harmonies to hear!

Yet, mine eye fixed on Heaven's unchanging clime, Long had I listened, free from mortal fear,

With inward stillness, and submitted mind; When lo! its folds far waving on the wind, I saw the train of the DEPARTING YEAR! Starting from my silent sadness

Then with no unholy madness

Ere yet the entered cloud foreclosed my sight,

I raised the impetuous song, and solemnized his flight.

II.

Hither, from the recent Tomb,
From the Prison's direr gloom,

From Distemper's midnight anguish ;

And thence, where Poverty doth waste and languish ;
Or where, his two bright torches blending,
Love illumines Manhood's maze ;
Or where o'er cradled infants bending
Hope has fixed her wishful gaze.
Hither, in perplexed dance,

Ye Woes! ye young-eyed Joys! advance!
By Time's wild harp, and by the hand
Whose indefatigable sweep

Raises its fateful strings from sleep,
I bid you haste, a mixed tumultuous band!
From every private bower,

And each domestic hearth,
Haste for one solemn hour;

And with a loud and yet a louder voice,
O'er Nature struggling in portentous birth,
Weep and rejoice!

Still echoes the dread NAME that o'er the earth
Let slip the storm, and woke the brood of Hell.
And now advance in saintly Jubilee

Justice and Truth! They too have heard thy spell,
They too obey thy name, Divinest LIBERTY!

III.

I marked Ambition in his war-array!

I heard the mailed Monarch's troublous cry"Ah! wherefore does the Northern Conqueress stay? 'Groans not her chariot on its onward way?"

Fly, mailed Monarch, fly!

Stunned by Death's twice mortal mace,
No more on Murder's lurid face

The insatiate hag shall gloat with drunken eye!
Manes of the unnumbered slain !

Ye that gasped on WARSAW's plain!
Ye that erst at ISMAIL's tower,

When human ruin choked the streams,

Fell in conquest's glutted hour,

Mid women's shrieks and infants' screams!
Spirits of the uncoffined slain,

Sudden blasts of triumph swelling,
Oft, at night, in misty train,

Rush around her narrow dwelling!

The exterminating fiend is fled

(Foul her life, and dark her doom) Mighty armies of the dead

Dance like death-fires round her tomb!

Then with prophetic song relate,

Each some tyrant-murderer's fate!

IV.

Departing Year! 'twas on no earthly shore
My soul beheld thy vision! Where alone,
Voiceless and stern, before the cloudy throne,
Aye MEMORY sits: thy robe inscribed with gore,
With many an unimaginable groan

Thou storied'st thy sad hours! Silence ensued,
Deep silence o'er the ethereal multitude,

Whose locks with wreaths, whose wreaths with glories shone.
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.

V.

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 bowed, then spread his wings and spake ! "Thou in stormy blackness throning

66

66

"Love and uncreated Light,

By the Earth's unsolaced groaning,
"Seize thy terrors, Arm of might!

By Peace, with proffered insult scared,
"Masked Hate and envying Scorn!

66

By Years of Havoc yet unborn! "And Hunger's bosom to the frost-winds bared! "But chief by Afric's wrongs,

66

66

Stranger 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!

66

Avenger, rise!

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

66 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."

VI.

The voice had ceased, the vision fled;
Yet still I gasped and reeled 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!

No stranger agony confounds

The Soldier on the war-field spread,
When all foredone with toil and wounds,
Death-like he dozes 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 pillowed on a brother's corse!)

VII.

Not yet enslaved, not wholly vile,
O Albion ! O my mother Isle !
Thy vallies, 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 sacked thy towers, or stained thy fields with gore.

VIII.

Abandoned 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 joined the wild yelling of Famine and Blood!
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 distempered triumph in her charmed sleep.

IX.

Away, my soul, away!

In vain, in vain the Birds of warning singAnd hark! I hear the famished 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 wailed 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.

YE Clouds that far above me float and pause,
Whose pathless march no mortal may controul !
Ye Ocean-Waves! that, wheresoe'er ye roll,
Yield homage only to eternal laws!

Ye Woods! that listen to the night-bird's 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!

And O ye Clouds that far above me soared! Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky! Yea, every thing that is and will be free! Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be, With what deep worship I have still adored The spirit of divinest Liberty.