Oh! who in such a night will dare

To tempt the wilderness?

And who 'mid thunder-peals can hear

Our signal of distress?

And who that heard our shouts would rise To try the dubious road?

Nor rather deem from nightly cries

That outlaws were abroad.

Clouds burst, skies flash, oh, dreadful hour!
More fiercely pours the storm!

Yet here one thought has still the power
To keep my bosom warm.

While wandering through each broken path,

O'er brake and craggy brow:

While elements exhaust their wrath,

Sweet Florence, where art thou?

Not on the sea, not on the sea,

Thy bark hath long been gone:
Oh, may the storm that pours on me,
Bow down my head alone!

Full swiftly blew the swift Siroc,

When last I press'd thy lip;

And long ere now, with foaming shock,
Impell'd thy gallant ship.

Now thou art safe; nay, long ere now
Hast trod the shore of Spain:

T were hard if ought so fair as thou
Should linger on the main.

And since I now remember thee
In darkness and in dread,
As in those hours of revelry

Which mirth and music sped;

Do thou amidst the fair white walls,
If Cadiz yet be free,

At times from out her latticed halls
Look o'er the dark blue sea;

Then think upon Calypso's isles,
Endear'd by days gone by;
To others give a thousand smiles,
To me a single sigh.

And when the admiring circle mark

The paleness of thy face,

A half form'd tear, a transient spark
Of melancholy grace,

Again thou 'It smile, and blushing shun

Some coxcomb's raillery;

Nor own for once thou thought'st of one,
Who ever thinks on thee.

Though smile and sigh alike are vain,
When sever'd hearts repine,

My spirit flies o'er mount and main,
And mourns in search of thine.

ΤΟ

On Lady! when I left the shore,
The distant shore which gave me birth,
I hardly thought to grieve once more,
To quit another spot on earth:

Yet here, amidst this barren isle,

Where panting nature droops the head,
Where only thou art seen to smile,

I view my parting hour with dread.
Though far from Albin's craggy shore,
Divided by the dark blue main;
A few, brief, rolling seasons o'er,
Perchance I view her cliffs again :
But wheresoe'er I now may roam,
Through scorching clime and varied sea,
Though time restore me to my home,

I ne'er shall bend mine eyes on thee:
On thee, in whom at once conspire

All charms which heedless hearts can move, Whom but to see is to admire,

And, oh! forgive the word-to love. Forgive the word, in one who ne'er

With such a word can more offend; And since thy heart I cannot share, Believe me, what I am, thy friend. And who so cold as look on thee,

Thou lovely wanderer, and be less? Nor be, what man should ever be,

The friend of Beauty in distress! Ah! who would think that form had past Through Danger's most destructive path, Had braved the death-wing'd tempest's blast, And 'scaped a tyrant's fiercer wrath? Lady! when I shall view the walls

Where free Byzantium once arose;
And Stamboul's Oriental halls

The Turkish tyrants now enclose;
Though mightiest in the lists of fame,
That glorious city still shall be;
On me 't will hold a dearer claim,

As spot of thy nativity:

And though I bid thee now farewell,
When I behold that wondrous scene,
Since where thou art I may not dwell,
'T will soothe to be where thou hast been.
September, 1809.

WRITTEN AT ATHENS,
JANUARY 16, 1810.

THE spell is broke, the charm is flown!
Thus is it with life's fitful fever:
We madly smile when we should groan;
Delirium is our best deceiver.

Each lucid interval of thought

Recals the woes of Nature's charter, And he that acts as wise men ought, But lives, as saints have died, a martyr.

WRITTEN BENEATH A PICTURE.
DEAR object of defeated care!
Though now of love and thee bereft,
To reconcile me with despair
Thine image and my tears are left.

'Tis said with sorrow time can cope;
But this I feel can ne'er be true:
For by the death-blow of my hope
My memory immortal grew.

O'er glories gone the invaders march,
Weeps triumph o'er cach levell'd arch--
But let Freedom rejoice,

With her heart in her voice;
Put her hand on her sword,
Doubly shall she be adored;

France hath twice too well been taught
The « moral lesson» dearly bought--
Her safety sits not on a throne,
With CAPET or NAPOLEON!

But in equal rights and laws,

Hearts and hands in one great cause—
Freedom, such as God hath given
Unto all beneath his heaven,

With their breath, and from their birth,
Though Guilt would sweep it from the earth;
With a fierce and lavish hand
Scattering nations' wealth like sand;
Pouring nations' blood like water,
In imperial seas of slaughter!

But the heart and the mind,
And the voice of mankind,
Shall arise in communion-

And who shall resist that proud union?
The time is past when swords subdued-
Man may die--the soul 's renew'd:
Even in this low world of care
Freedom ne'er shall want an heir;
Millions breathe but to inherit
Her for ever bounding spirit-
When once more her hosts assemble,
Tyrants shall believe and tremble-
Smile they at this idle threat?
Crimsou tears will follow yet.

[FROM THE FRENCH.]

All wept, but particularly Savary, and a Polish officer who had been exalted from the rauks by Buonaparte. He clung to his master's knees wrote a letter to Lork Keith, entreating permission to accompany him, even in the most menial capacity, which could not be admitted..

MUST thou go, my glorious chief,
Sever'd from thy faithful few?
Who can tell thy warriors' grief,
Maddening o'er that long adieu?
Woman's love, and friendship's zeal-
Dear as both have been to me—
What are they to all I feel,

With a soldier's faith, for thee?

Idol of the soldier's soul!

First in fight, but mightiest now: Many could a world control;

Thee alone no doom can bow. By thy side for years I dared

Death, and envied those who fell, When their dying shout was heard

Blessing him they served so well.'

At Waterloo, one man was seen, whose left arm was shattered by a cannon ball, to wrench it off with the other, and throwing it up in the air, exclaimed to his comrades, Vive l'Empereur jusqu'à la mort.' There were many other instances of the like; this you may, however, depend on as true.

A private Letter from Brussels.

Would that I were cold with those,
Since this hour I live to see;
When the doubts of coward foes

Scarce dare trust a man with thee,
Dreading each should set thee free.

Oh! although in dungeons peut,
All their chains were light to me,
Gazing on thy soul unbent.

Would the sycophants of him
Now so deaf to duty's prayer,
Were his borrow'd glories dim,

In his native darkness share!
Were that world this hour his own,

All thou calmly dost resign, Could he purchase with that throne

Hearts like those which still are thine!

My chief, my king, my friend, adieu!
Never did I droop before;
Never to my sovereign sue,

As his foes I now implore.
All I ask is to divide

Every peril he must brave, Sharing by the hero's side

His fall, his exile, and his grave.

ON THE STAR OF THE LEGION OF HONOUR..

[FROM THE FRENCH.]

STAR of the brave!-whose beam hath shed

Such glory o'er the quick and dead

Thou radiant and adored deceit!

Which millions rush'd in arms to greet,—

Wild meteor of immortal birth!

Why rise in heaven to set on earth?

Souls of slain heroes form'd thy rays;
Eternity flash'd through thy blaze;
The music of thy martial sphere
Was fame on high and honour here;
And thy light broke on human eyes
Like a volcano of the skies.

Like lava roll'd thy stream of blood,
And swept down empires with its flood;
Earth rock'd beneath thee to her base,
As thou didst lighten through all space;
And the shorn sun grew dim in air,
And set while thou wert dwelling there.

Before thee rose, and with thee grew,
A rainbow of the loveliest hue

Of three bright colours, each divine,
And fit for that celestial sign;
For freedom's haud had blended them
Like tints in an immortal gem.

One tint was of the sunbeam's dyes;
One, the blue depth of seraph's eyes;
One, the pure spirit's veil of white
Had robed in radiance of its light;
The three so mingled did beseem
The texture of a heavenly dream.
The tri-colour.

ROUSSEAU-Voltaire-our Gibbon-and de Staël-
Leman!' these names are worthy of thy shore,
Thy shore of names like these'; wert thou no more,
Their memory thy remembrance would recal:
To them thy banks were lovely as to all;

But they have made them lovelier, for the lore
Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core
Of human hearts the ruin of a wall

Where dwelt the wise and wondrous; but by thee How much more, Lake of Beauty! do we feel,

In sweetly gliding o'er thy crystal sea, The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal, Which of the heirs of immortality

Is proud, and makes the breath of glory real!

Geneva, Ferney, Coppet, Lausanne.

STANZAS TO'
THOUGH the day of my destiny's over,
And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover

The faults which so inany could find;
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,
It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the love which my spirit hath painted
It never hath found but in thee.

Then when nature around me is siniling
The last smile which answers to mine,
I do not believe it beguiling,

Because it reminds me of thine;

And when winds are at war with the ocean,
As the breasts I believed in with me,

If their billows excite an emotion,

It is that they bear me from thee.

Though the rock of my last hope is shiver'd,
And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is deliver'd

To pain-it shall not be its slave.

There is many a pang to pursue me:

They may crush, but they shall not contemnThey may torture, but shall not subdue me— 'Tis of thee that I think-not of them.

Though human, thou didst not deceive me,

Though woman, thou didst not forsake, Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,

Though slander'd, thou never couldst shake,—
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, 't was not to defame me,
Nor, mute, that the world might belie.
Yet I blame not the world, nor depsise it,
Nor the war of the many with one-
If my soul' was not fitted to prize it,
T was folly not sooner to shun.
And if dearly that error hath cost me,
And more than I once could foresee,

I have found that, whatever it lost me,
It could not deprive me of thee.

From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd,
Thus much I at least may recal,

It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd
Deserved to be dearest of all:

In the desert a fountain is springing,

In the wide waste there still is a tree, And a bird in the solitude singing, Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

DARKNESS.

I HAD a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came, and went—and came, and brought no day.
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:

And they did live by watchfires-and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings-the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the
eye
Of the volcanos and their mountain-torch :
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire-but hour by hour
They fell and faded-and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash-and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed

Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up

With mad disquietude on the dull sky,

The pall of a past world; and then again

With curses cast them down upon the dust,

Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things

For an unholy usage; they raked up,

And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath

Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects-saw, and shriek'd and died-
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manles, lifeless-
A lump of death-a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropp'd,
They slept on the abyss without a surge—

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon their mistress had expired before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; darkness had no need
Of aid from them-she was the universe.

CHURCHILL'S GRAVE,

A FACT LITERALLY RENDERED.

I STOOD beside the grave of him who blazed
The comet of a season, and I saw
The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed
With not the less of sorrow and of awe
On that neglected turf and quiet stone,
With name no clearer than the names unknown,
Which lay unread around it; and I ask'd
The gardener of that ground, why it might be
That for this plant strangers his memory task'd

shriek'd,

And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,

And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless-they were slain for food:
And war, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again-a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart,
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails-men

Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse and kept

The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress-he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies; they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place

And thus he answer'd-« Well, I do not know
Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so;
He died before my day of sextonship,
And I had not the digging of this
And is this all? I thought,-and do we rip
The veil of immortality? and crave

grave.»

Because my homely phrase the truth would tell.
You are the fools, not I-for I did dwell
With a deep thought, and with a soften'd eye,
On that old sexton's natural homily,
In which there was obscurity and fame,
The glory and the nothing of a name.

And a firm will, and a deep sense, Which even in torture can descry. Its own concentred recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making death a victory.

PROMETHEUS.

TITAN! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,

Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;

The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,

Which speaks but in its loneliness, And then is jealous lest the sky Should have a listener, nor will sigh Until its voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of fate,

The ruling principle of hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift eternity

Was thine-and thou hast borne it well
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back,
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresce,

But would not to appease him tell: And in thy silence was his sentence, And in his soul a vain repentance, And evil dread so ill dissembled

That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

Thy godlike crime was to be kind,

To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,

Still in thy patient energy,

In the endurance, and repulse

Of thine impenetrable spirit,

Which earth and heaven could not convulse,

A mighty lesson we inherit:

Thou art a symbol and a sign

To mortals of their fate and force;

Like thee, man is in part divine,

A troubled stream from a pure source;
And man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;

His wretchedness, and his resistance,

And his sad unallied existence:

To which his spirit may oppose

Itself an equal to all woes,

ODE.

On shame to thee, land of the Gaul! Oh shame to thy children and thee! Unwise in thy glory, and base in thy fall, How wretched thy portion shall be! Derision shall strike thee forlorn,

A mockery that never shall die; The curses of hate, and the hisses of scorn, Shall burden the winds of thy sky; And proud o'er thy ruin for ever be hurl'd The laughter of triumph, the jeers of the world!

Oh, where is thy spirit of yore,

The spirit that breathed in thy dead, When gallantry's star was the beacon before, And honour the passion that led? Thy storms have awaken'd their sleep, They groan from the place of their rest, And wrathfully murmur, and sullenly weep, To see the foul stain on thy breast; For where is the glory they left thee in trust? 'Tis scatter'd in darkness, 'tis trampled in dust!

Go look to the kingdoms of earth,

From Indus all round to the pole,

And something of goodness, of honour, and worth, Shall brighten the sins of the soul.

But thou art alone in thy shame,

The world cannot liken thee there; Abhorrence and vice have disfigured thy name Beyond the low reach of compare;

Stupendous in guilt, thou shalt lend us through time A proverb, a by-word, for treachery and orime!

While conquest illumined his sword,
While yet in his prowess he stood,
Thy praises still follow'd the steps of thy lord,
And welcomed the torrent of blood:
Though tyranny sat on his crown,
And wither'd the nations afar,

Yet bright in thy view was that despot's renown,
Till fortune deserted his car;

Then back from the chieftain thou slunkest away, The foremost t'insult, the first to betray!.

Forgot were the feats he had done,

The toils he had borne in thy cause;

Thou turned'st to worship a new rising sun,
And waft other songs of applause.
But the storm was beginning to lower,
Adversity clouded his beam;

And honour and faith were the brag of an hour,
And loyalty's self but a dream :-

To him thou hadst banish'd thy vows were restored,
And the first that had scoffd were the first that adored.

What tumult thus burthens the air?

What throng thus encircles his throne?