10Murmuring ‘Liberty’ in death.
Shout aloud! let every slave
Crouching at corruption’s throne
Start into a man and brave
Racks and chains without a groan!
15Let the castle’s heartless glow
And the hovel’s vice and woe
Fade like gaudy flowers that blow,
Weeds that peep and then are gone,
Whilst from misery’s ashes risen
20Love shall burst the Captive’s prison.
Cotopaxi! bid the sound
Thro’ thy sister mountains ring
Till each valley smile around
At the blissful welcoming,
25And O! thou stern Ocean-deep
Whose eternal billows sweep
Shores where thousands wake to weep
Whilst they curse some villain King,
On the winds that fan thy breast
30Bear thou news of freedom’s rest.
Earth’s remotest bounds shall start;
Every despot’s bloated cheek,
Pallid as his bloodless heart,
Frenzy, woe and dread shall speak …
35Blood may fertilize the tree
Of new bursting Liberty;
Let the guiltiness then be
On the slaves that ruin wreak,
On the unnatural tyrant brood
40Slow to Peace and swift to blood.
Can the daystar dawn of love
Where the flag of war unfurled
Floats with crimson stain above
Such a desolated world?…
45Never! but to vengeance driven
When the patriot’s spirit shriven
Seeks in death its native Heaven,
Then to speechless horror hurled
Widowed Earth may balm the bier
50Of its memory with a tear.
On Robert Emmet’s Tomb
May the tempests of Winter that sweep o’er thy tomb
Disturb not a slumber so sacred as thine;
May the breezes of summer that breathe of perfume
Waft their balmiest dews to so hallowed a shrine.
5May the foot of the tyrant, the coward, the slave
Be palsied with dread where thine ashes repose,
Where that undying shamrock still blooms on thy grave
Which sprung when the dawnlight of Erin arose.
There oft have I marked the grey gravestones among,
10 Where thy relics distinguished in lowliness lay,
The peasant boy pensively lingering long
And silently weep as he passed away.
And how could he not pause if the blood of his sires
Ever wakened one generous throb in his heart:
15How could he inherit a spark of their fires
If tearless and frigid he dared to depart?
Not the scrolls of a court could emblazon thy fame
Like the silence that reigns in the palace of thee,
Like the whispers that pass of thy dearly loved name,
20 Like the tears of the good, like the groans of the free.
No trump tells thy virtues—the grave where they rest
With thy dust shall remain unpolluted by fame,
Till thy foes, by the world and by fortune caressed,
Shall pass like a mist from the light of thy name.
25When the storm cloud that lowers o’er the daybeam is gone,
Unchanged, unextinguished its lifespring will shine;
When Erin has ceased with their memory to groan
She will smile thro’ the tears of revival on thine.
To Liberty
O let not Liberty
Silently perish;
May the groan and the sigh
Yet the flame cherish
5Till the voice to Nature’s bursting heart given,
Ascending loud and high,
A world’s indignant cry,
And startling on his throne
The tyrant grim and lone,
10Shall beat the deaf vault of Heaven.
Say, can the Tyrant’s frown
Daunt those who fear not
Or break the spirits down
His badge that wear not?
15Can chains or death or infamy subdue
The pure and fearless soul
That dreads not their control,
Sees Paradise and Hell,
Sees the Palace and the cell,
20Yet bravely dares prefer the good and true?
Regal pomp and pride
The Patriot falls in scorning,
The spot whereon he died
Should be the despot’s warning;
25The voice of blood shall on his crimes call down Revenge!
And the spirits of the brave
Shall start from every grave
Whilst from her Atlantic throne
Freedom sanctifies the groan
30That fans the glorious fires of its change.
Monarch! sure employer
Of vice and want and woe,
Thou Conscienceless destroyer,
Who and what are thou?—
35The dark prison house that in the dust shall lie,
The pyramid which guilt
First planned, which man has built,
At whose footstone want and woe
With a ceaseless murmur flow
40And whose peak attracts the tempests of the sky.
The pyramids shall fall …
And Monarchs! so shall ye,
Thrones shall rust in the hall
Of forgotten royalty
45Whilst Virtue, Truth and Peace shall arise
And a Paradise on Earth
From your fall shall date its birth,
And human life shall seem
Like a short and happy dream
50Ere we wake in the daybeam of the skies.
Written on a Beautiful Day in Spring
In that strange mental wandering when to live,
To breathe, to be, is undivided joy,
When the most woe-worn wretch would cease to grieve,
When satiation’s self would fail to cloy;
5When unpercipient of all other things
Than those that press around, the breathing Earth,
The gleaming sky and the fresh season’s birth,
Sensation all its wondrous rapture brings,
And to itself not once the mind recurs—
10 Is it foretaste of Heaven?
So sweet as this the nerves it stirs,
And mingling in the vital tide
With gentle motion driven,
Cheers the sunk spirits, lifts the languid eye,
15And scattering thro’ the frame its influence wide
Revives the spirits when they droop and die.
The frozen blood with genial beaming warms,
And to a gorgeous fly the sluggish worm transforms.
‘Dark Spirit of the desart rude’
Dark Spirit of the desart rude
That o’er this awful solitude,
Each tangled and untrodden wood,
Each dark and silent glen below
5Where sunlight’s gleamings never glow,
Whilst jetty, musical and still
In darkness speeds the mountain rill;
That o’er yon broken peaks sublime,
Wild shapes that mock the scythe of time,
10And the pure Ellan’s foamy course,
Wavest thy wand of magic force—
Art thou yon sooty and fearful fowl
That flaps its wing o’er the leafless oak
That o’er the dismal scene doth scowl
15 And mocketh music with its croak?
I’ve sought thee where day’s beams decay
On the peak of the lonely hill;
I’ve sought thee where they melt away
By the wave of the pebbly rill;
20I’ve strained to catch thy murky form
&nbs
p; Bestride the rapid and gloomy storm;
Thy red and sullen eyeball’s glare
Has shot, in a dream thro’ the midnight air,
But never did thy shape express
25 Such an emphatic gloominess.
And where art thou, O thing of gloom?…
On Nature’s unreviving tomb
Where sapless, blasted and alone
She mourns her blooming centuries gone!—
30From the fresh sod the Violets peep,
The buds have burst their frozen sleep,
Whilst every green and peopled tree
Is alive with Earth’s sweet melody.
But thou alone art here,
35Thou desolate Oak, whose scathed head
For ages has never trembled,
Whose giant trunk dead lichens bind,
Moaningly sighing in the wind,
With huge loose rocks beneath thee spread—
40 Thou, Thou alone art here!
Remote from every living thing,
Tree, shrub or grass or flower,
Thou seemest of this spot the King,
And with a regal power
45 Suck like that race all sap away
And yet upon the spoil decay.
The Retrospect
Cwm Elan 1812
To trace Duration’s lone career,
To check the chariot of the year
Whose burning wheels forever sweep
The boundaries of oblivion’s deep …
5To snatch from Time the monster’s jaw
The children which she just had borne,
And ere entombed within her maw
To drag them to the light of morn
And mark each feature with an eye
10Of cold and fearless scrutiny …
It asks a soul not formed to feel,
An eye of glass, a hand of steel;
Thoughts that have passed and thoughts that are
With truth and feeling to compare;
15A scene which wildered fancy viewed
In the soul’s coldest solitude,
With that same scene when peaceful love
Flings rapture’s colour o’er the grove,
When mountain, meadow, wood and stream
20With unalloying glory gleam
And to the spirit’s ear and eye
Are unison and harmony.
The moonlight was my dearer day:—
Then would I wander far away
25And lingering on the wild brook’s shore
To hear its unremitting roar
Would lose in the ideal flow
All sense of overwhelming woe;
Or at the noiseless noon of night
30Would climb some heathy mountain’s height
And listen to the mystic sound
That stole in fitful gasps around.
I joyed to see the streaks of day
Above the purple peaks decay
35And watch the latest line of light
Just mingling with the shades of night;
For day with me, was time of woe
When even tears refused to flow;
Then would I stretch my languid frame
40Beneath the wild-wood’s gloomiest shade
And try to quench the ceaseless flame
That on my withered vitals preyed;
Would close mine eyes and dream I were
On some remote and friendless plain
45And long to leave existence there
If with it I might leave the pain
That with a finger cold and lean
Wrote madness on my withering mien.
It was not unrequited love
50That bade my wildered spirit rove;
’Twas not the pride disdaining life,
That with this mortal world at strife
Would yield to the soul’s inward sense,
Then groan in human impotence,
55And weep, because it is not given
To taste on Earth the peace of Heaven.
’Twas not, that in the narrow sphere
Where Nature fixed my wayward fate
There was no friend or kindred dear
60Formed to become that spirit’s mate
Which searching on tired pinion found
Barren and cold repulse around …
Ah no! yet each one sorrow gave
New graces to the narrow grave:
65For broken vows had early quelled
The stainless spirit’s vestal flame.
Yes! whilst the faithful bosom swelled
Then the envenomed arrow came
And apathy’s unaltering eye
70Beamed coldness on the misery;
And early I had learned to scorn
The chains of clay that bound a soul
Panting to seize the wings of morn,
And where its vital fires were born
75To soar, and spurn the cold control
Which the vile slaves of earthly night
Would twine around its struggling flight.
O many were the friends whom fame
Had linked with the unmeaning name
80Whose magic marked among mankind
The casket of my unknown mind,
Which hidden from the vulgar glare
Imbibed no fleeting radiance there.
My darksome spirit sought. It found
85A friendless solitude around.—
For who, that might undaunted stand
The saviour of a sinking land,
Would crawl its ruthless tyrant’s slave
And fatten upon freedom’s grave,
90Tho’ doomed with her to perish, where
The captive clasps abhorred despair?
They could not share the bosom’s feeling
Which passion’s every throb revealing
Dared force on the world’s notice cold
95Thoughts of unprofitable mould,
Who bask in Custom’s fickle ray,
Fit sunshine of such wintry day!
They could not in a twilight walk
Weave an impassioned web of talk
100Till mysteries the spirit press
In wild yet tender awfulness,
Then feel within our narrow sphere
How little yet how great we are!
But they might shine in courtly glare,
105Attract the rabble’s cheapest stare,
And might command where’er they move
A thing that bears the name of love;
They might be learned, witty, gay,
Foremost in fashion’s gilt array,
110On Fame’s emblazoned pages shine,
Be princes’ friends, but never mine!
Ye jagged peaks that frown sublime,
Mocking the blunted scythe of Time,
Whence I would watch its lustre pale
115Steal from the moon o’er yonder vale!
Thou rock, whose bosom black and vast
Bared to the stream’s unceasing flow,
Ever its giant shade doth cast
On the tumultuous surge below!
120Woods to whose depth retires to die
The wounded echo’s melody,
And whither this lone spirit bent
The footstep of a wild intent—
Meadows! whose green and spangled breast
125These fevered limbs have often pressed
Until the watchful fiend Despair
Slept in the soothing coolness there!
Have not your varied beauties seen
The sunken eye, the withering mien,
130Sad traces of the unuttered pain
That froze my heart and burned my brain?
How changed since nature’s summer form
Had last the power my grief to charm,
Since last ye soothed my spirit’s sadness,
135Strange chaos of a mingled madness!
Changed!—not the loathsome worm that fed
In the dark mansi
ons of the dead,
Now soaring thro’ the fields of air
And gathering purest nectar there,
140A butterfly whose million hues
The dazzled eye of wonder views
Long lingering on a work so strange,
Has undergone so bright a change!
How do I feel my happiness?
145I cannot tell, but they may guess
Whose every gloomy feeling gone
Friendship and passion feel alone,
Who see mortality’s dull clouds
Before affection’s murmur fly,
150Whilst the mild glances of her eye
Pierce the thin veil of flesh that shrouds
The spirit’s radiant sanctuary.
O thou! whose virtues latest known
First in this heart yet claim’st a throne,
155Whose downy sceptre still shall share
The gentle sway with virtue there,
Thou fair in form and pure in mind,
Whose ardent friendship rivets fast
The flowery band our fates that bind
160Which incorruptible shall last
When duty’s hard and cold control
Had thawed around the burning soul.
The gloomiest retrospects that bind
With crowns of thorn the bleeding mind,
165The prospects of most doubtful hue
That rise on Fancy’s shuddering view,
Are gilt by the reviving ray
Which thou hast flung upon my day.
QUEEN MAB;
A PHILOSOPHICAL POEM: WITH NOTES
ECRASEZ L’INFAME!
Correspondance de Voltaire.
Avia Pieridum peragro loca, nullius ante
Trita solo; juvat integros accedere fonteis;
Atque haurire: juvatque novos decerpere flores.
* * * * * * *
Unde prius nulli velarint tempora musae.
Primum quod magnis doceo de rebus; et arctis
Religionum animos nodis exsolvere pergo.
Lucret. lib. iv.
Δὸς που στῶ, καὶ κόσμον κινήσω.
Archimedes.
To Harriet *****
Whose is the love that, gleaming through the world,
Wards off the poisonous arrow of its scorn?
Whose is the warm and partial praise,
Selected Poems and Prose Page 5
