While throng'd the citizens with terror dumb, Or whispering, with white lips-"The foe! They come! they come!"
And wild and high the 'Cameron's gathering' rose! The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills Have heard, and heard, too, have her saxon foes: How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills, Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills Their mountain pipe, so fill the mountaineers With the fierce native daring which instills The stirring memory of a thousand years,
And Evan's, Donald's fame rings in each clansman's ears!
And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves, Dewy with nature's tear-drops, as they pass, Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves, Over the unreturning brave, -alas!
Ere evening to be trodden like the grass Which now beneath them, but above shall grow In its next verdure, when this fiery mass Of living valor, rolling on the foe
And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low.
Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,
Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay,
The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife, The morn the marshalling in arms, -the day Battle's magnificently-stern array!
The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which when rent The earth is cover'd thick with other clay, Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent, Rider and horse, -friend, foe, -in one red burial blent!
LINES ADDRESSED TO A SKULL.
Look on its broken arch, its ruin'd wall, Its chambers desolate, and portals foul: Yes, this was once Ambition's airy hall, The dome of Thought, the palace of the Soul: Behold through each lack-lustre, eyeless hole, The gay recess of Wisdom and of Wit, And passion's host, that never brook'd control: Can all, saint, sage, or sophist ever writ, People this lonely tower, this tenement refit?
A STORM AT NIGHT AMID THE ALPS.
The sky is chang'd! and such a change! Oh night And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!
And this is in the night:-Most glorious night! Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,A portion of the tempest and of thee! How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! And now again 'tis black, and now the glee Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth, As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.
THE CATARACT OF VELINO.
The roar of waters!-from the headlong height Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice; The fall of waters! rapid as the light The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss; The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,
And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again Returns in an unceasing shower, which round, With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain, Is an eternal April to the ground Making it all one emerald:-how profound The gulf! and how the giant element From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound, Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent
To the broad column which rolls on, and shows More like the fountain of an infant sea
Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes Of a new world, than only thus to be
Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly, With many windings, through the vale: - Look back! Lo! where it comes like an eternity,
As if to sweep down all things in its track,
Charming the eye with dread, -a matchless cataract,
Horribly beautiful! but on the verge, From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge, Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn Its steady dyes, while all around is torn By the distracted waters, bears serene Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn:
Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene, Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.
I STOOD in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand: I saw from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O'er the far times, when many a subject land Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles,
Where Venice sat in state, thron'd on her hundred Isles
She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from Ocean, Rising with her tiara of proud towers At airy distance, with majestic motion, A ruler of the waters and their powers: And such she was;-Her daughters had their dowers From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East Pour'd in her lap all gems in sparkling showers. In purple was she robed, and of her feast Monarchs partook, and deem'd their dignity increased.
In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, And silent rows the songless gondolier; Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, And music meets not always now the ear, Those days are gone-but Beauty still is here. States fall, arts fade-but Nature doth not die: Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity, The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!
But unto us she hath a spell beyond Her name in story, and her long array Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond Above the dogeless city's vanish'd sway; Ours is a trophy which will not decay With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor, And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away- The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er,
For us repeopled were the solitary shore.
The beings of the mind are not of clay; Essentially immortal, they create And multiply in us a brighter ray And more beloved existence: that which Fate Prohibits to dull life, in this our state Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied First exiles, then replaces what we hate; Watering the heart whose early flowers have died,
And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.
Such is the refuge of our youth and age, The first from hope, the last from vacancy; And this worn feeling peoples many a page, And, may be, that which grows beneath mine eye: Yet there are things whose strong reality Outshines our fairy-land; in shape and hues More beautiful than our fantastic sky, And the strange constellations which the Muse O'er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse:
I saw or dreamed of such, -but let them go- They came like truth, and disappeared like dreams; And whatso'er they were-are now but so: I could replace them if I would, still teems My mind with many a form which aptly seems Such as I sought for, and at moments found, Let these too go-for waking Reason deems Such over-weening phartasies unsound,
And other voices speak, and other sights surround.
I've taught me other tongues and in strange eyes Have made me not a stranger; to the mind Which is itself, no changes bring surprise; Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find A country with-ay, or without mankind;
Yet was I born where men are proud to be, Not without cause; and should I leave behind The inviolate island of the sage and free,
And seek me out a home by a remoter sea.
Perhaps I loved it well: and should I lay My ashes in a soil which is not mine, My spirit shall resume it-if we may Unbodied choose a sanctuary. I twine My hopes of being remembered in my line With my land's language: if too fond and far These aspirations in their scope incline,- If my fame should be, as my fortunes are,
Of hasty growth and blight, and dull oblivion bar
My name from out the temple where the dead Are honored by the nations-let it be- And light the laurels on a loftier head! And be the Spartan's epitaph on me- Sparta hath many a worthier son than he.' Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need; The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree I planted, they have torn me,and I bleed:
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.
The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord;
And, annual marriage now no more renewed, The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored, Neglected garment of her widowhood! St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood Stand, but in mockery of his withered power, Over the proud place where an emperor sued, And Monarchs gazed and envied in the hour When Venice was a queen with an unequalled dower.
The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns- An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt; Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt The sunshine for a while, and downward go Like lauwine loosen'd from the mountain's belt, Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo!
Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe.
Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass, Their gilded collars glittering in the sun; But is not Doria's menace come to pass? Are they not bridled?'-Venice, lost and won,
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