Seven miles above-below-around-
This pest of dulness holds its sway;
A ghastly life without a sound;
To Peter's soul the spell is bound-
How should it ever pass away?

LINES,

WRITTEN DURING THE CASTLEREAGH ADMINISTRATION.

CORPSES are cold in the tomb,

Stones on the pavement are dumb,
Abortions are dead in the womb,

And their mothers look pale-like the white shore
Of Albion, free no more.

Her sons are as stones in the way-
They are masses of senseless clay-
They are trodden and move not away,-

The abortion, with which she travaileth,
Is Liberty-smitten to death.

Then trample and dance, thou Oppressor,
For thy Victim is no redressor,

Thou art sole lord and possessor

Of her corpses, and clods, and abortions-they pave Thy path to the grave.

Hearest thou the festival din,

Of death, and destruction, and sin,

And wealth, crying Havoc! within

"Tis the Bacchanal triumph, which makes truth dumb, Thine Epithalamium.

Ay, marry thy ghastly wife!

Let fear, and disquiet, and strife
Spread thy couch in the chamber of life,
Marry Ruin, thou tyrant! and God be thy guide
To the bed of the bride.

SONG

TO THE MEN OF ENGLAND.

MEN of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care,
The rich robes your tyrants wear?

Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save,
From the cradle to the grave,

Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat-nay, drink your blood!

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of
your toil?

Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
Shelter, food, love's gentle balm?
Or what is it ye buy so dear
With your pain and with your fear?

The seed ye sow another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps ;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.

Sow seed, but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth,-let no impostor heap;
Weave robes,-let not the idle wear;
Forge arms,-in your defence to bear.

Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;
In halls ye deck, another dwells.
Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered glance on ye.

With plough and spade, and hoe and loom, Trace your grave, and build your tomb, And weave your winding-sheet, till fair England be your sepulchre.

ENGLAND IN 1819.

AN old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,-
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn-mud from a muddy spring,-
Rulers, who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,-
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,―
An army, which liberticide and prey

Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay,-
Religion Christless, Godless-a book sealed;
A Senate-Time's worst statute unrepealed,-
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

SIMILES.

FOR TWO POLITICAL CHARACTERS OF 1819

As from an ancestral oak

Two empty ravens sound their clarion,

Yell by yell, and croak by croak,
When they scent the noonday smoke
Of fresh human carrion :-
:-

As two gibbering night-birds flit,
From their bowers of deadly hue,
Through the night to frighten it,
When the morn is in a fit,

And the stars are none or few :

As a shark and dog-fish wait
Under an Atlantic isle,

For the negro-ship whose freight

Is the theme of their debate,

Wrinkling their red gills the while

Are ye, two vultures sick for battle,

Two scorpions under one wet stone,

Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle,
Two crows perched on the murrained cattle,
Two vipers tangled into one.

AN ODE.

TO THE ASSERTORS OF LIBERTY.

ARISE, arise, arise!

There is blood on the earth that denies ye bread;
Be your wounds like eyes

To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead.
What other grief were it just to pay?

Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they;
Who said they were slain on the battle day?

Awaken, awaken, awaken!

The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes;
Be the cold chains shaken

To the dust, where your kindred repose, repose:
Their bones in the grave will start and move,
When they hear the voices of those they love,
Most loud in the holy combat above.

Wave, wave high the banner!

When Freedom is riding to conquest by:
Though the slaves that fan her
Be famine and toil, giving sigh for sigh.
And ye who attend her imperial car,

Lift not your hands in the banded war,

But in her defence whose children ye are.

Glory, glory, glory,

To those who have greatly suffered and done!

Never name in story

Was greater than that which ye shall have won.

Conquerors have conquered their foes alone,

Whose revenge, pride, and power, they have overthrown'

Ride ye, more victorious, over your own.

Bind, bind every brow

With crownals of violet, ivy and pine:

Hide the blood-stains now

With hues which sweet nature has made divine,

Green strength, azure hope, and eternity.

But let not the pansy among them be;

Ye were injured, and that means memory.

ODE TO HEAVEN.

CHORUS OF SPIRITS.

FIRST SPIRIT.

PALACE-ROOF of cloudless nights!
Paradise of golden lights!
Deep, immeasurable, vast,
Which art now, and which wert then!
Of the present and the past,
Of the eternal where and when,
Presence-chamber, temple, home,
Ever-canopying dome,

Of acts and ages yet to come!

Glorious shapes have life in thee,
Earth, and all earth's company;

Living globes which ever throng
Thy deep chasms and wildernesses;

And green worlds that glide along; And swift stars with flashing tresses; And icy moons most cold and bright, And mighty suns beyond the night, Atoms of intensest light.

Even thy name is as a god,
Heaven! for thou art the abode

Of that power which is the glass
Wherein man bis nature sees.
Generations as they pass
Worship thee with bended knees.
Their unremaining gods and they
Like a river roll away;

Thou remainest such alway.

SECOND SPIRIT.

Thou art but the mind's first chamber, Round which its young fancies clamber, Like weak insects in a cave,

Lighted up by stalactites;

But the portal of the grave,

Where a world of new delights

Will make thy best glories seem
But a dim and noonday gleam

From the shadow of a dream!