The sword, the banner, and the field,
Glory and Greece around me see!
The Spartan, borne upon his shield,
Was not more free.

Awake, (not Greece - she is awake!)
Awake, my spirit! Think through whom
Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake,
And then strike home!

Tread those reviving passions down,
Unworthy manhood! - unto thee
Indifferent should the smile or frown
Of beauty be.

If thou regret'st thy youth, why live:
The land of honorable death

Is here:

:- up to the field, and give Away thy breath!

Seek out - less often sought than found
A soldier's grave, for thee the best;
Then look around, and choose thy ground,
And take thy rest.

ODE ON VENICE.

On Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls
Are level with the waters, there shall be
A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls,

A loud lament along the sweeping sea!
If I, a northern wanderer, weep for thee,
What should thy sons do?-anything but weep:
And yet they only murmur in their sleep.
In contrast with their fathers as the slime,
The dull green ooze of the receding deep,
Is with the dashing of the springtide foam
That drives the sailor shipless to his home,
Are they to those that were; and thus they creep,
Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping streets.
that centuries should reap

Oh! agony
No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years
Of wealth and glory turned to dust and tears;
And every monument the stranger meets,
Church, palace, pillar, as a mourner greets;
And even the Lion all subdued appears,
And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum,
With dull and daily dissonance, repeats
The echo of thy tyrant's voice along
The soft waves, once all musical to song,

That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng

Of gondolas - and to the busy hum

Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds
Were but the overbeating of the heart,

And flow of too much happiness, which needs
The aid of age to turn its course apart
From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood
Of sweet sensations, battling with the blood.
But these are better than the gloomy errors,
The weeds of nations in their last decay,

When Vice walks forth with her unsoftened terrors,
And Mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay;
And Hope is nothing but a false delay,

The sick man's lightning half an hour ere death,
When Faintness, the last mortal birth of Pain,
And apathy of limb, the dull beginning

Of the cold staggering race which Death is winning,
Steals vein by vein and pulse by pulse away,
Yet so relieving the o'er-tortured clay,
To him appears renewal of his breath,

And freedom the mere numbness of his chain;
And then he talks of life, and how again
He feels his spirits soaring — albeit weak,
And of the fresher air, which he would seek;
And as he whispers knows not that he gasps,

That his thin finger feels not what it clasps,
And so the film comes o'er him- and the dizzy

Chamber swims round and round — and shadows busy,

At which he vainly catches, flit and gleam,

Till the last rattle chokes the strangled stream,

And all is ice and blackness,

and the earth

That which it was the moment ere our birth.

There is no hope for nations!

Search the page

-the daily scene,

Of many thousand years
The flow and ebb of each recurring age,

The everlasting to be which hath been,

Hath taught us naught or little: still we lean
On things that rot beneath our weight, and wear
Our strength away in wrestling with the air;
For 'tis our nature strikes us down: the beasts
Slaughtered in hourly hecatombs for feasts
Are of as high an order - they must go

Even where their driver goads them, though to slaughter.
Ye men, who pour your blood for kings as water,
What have they given your children in return?
A heritage of servitude and woes,

A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows.
What! do not yet the red-hot ploughshares burn,
O'er which you stumble in a false ordeal,
And deem this proof of royalty the real;
Kissing the hand that guides you to your scars,
And glorying as you tread the glowing bars?
All that your sires have left you, all that Time
Bequeaths of free, and History of sublime,
Spring from a different theme Ye see and read,
Admire and sigh, and then succumb and bleed!
Save the few spirits, who, despite of all,

And worse than all, the sudden crimes engendered
By the down-thundering of the prison-wall,

And thirst to swallow the sweet waters tendered,
Gushing from Freedom's fountains when the crowd,
Maddened with centuries of drought, are loud,
And trample on each other to obtain

The cup which brings oblivion of a chain

Heavy and sore, — in which long yoked they ploughed The sand, or if there sprung the yellow grain,

'T was not for them, their necks were too much bowed, And their dead palates chewed the cud of pain:— who, despite of deeds

Yes! the few spirits

Which they abhor, confound not with the cause
Those momentary starts from Nature's laws,
Which, like the pestilence and earthquake, smite
But for a term, then pass, and leave the earth
With all her seasons to repair the blight
With a few summers, and again put forth
Cities and generations - fair, when free
For, Tyranny, there blooms no bud for thee!

Glory and Empire! once upon these towers
With Freedom- godlike Triad! how ye sate!
The league of mightiest nations, in those hours
When Venice was an envy, might abate,
But did not quench, her spirit—in her fate
All were enwrapped: the feasted monarchs knew
And loved their hostess, nor could learn to hate,
Although they humbled — with the kingly few
The many felt, for from all days and climes
She was the voyager's worship;

even her crimes Were of the softer order-born of Love,

She drank no blood, nor fattened on the dead,
But gladdened where her harmless conquests spread;
For these restored the Cross, that from above
Hallowed her sheltering banners, which incessant
Flew between earth and the unholy Crescent,
Which if it waned and dwindled, Earth may thank
The city it has clothed in chains, which clank
Now, creaking in the ears of those who owe
The name of Freedom to her glorious struggles;
Yet she but shares with them a common woe,
And called the "kingdom" of a conquering foe, —
But knows what all - and, most of all, we know—
With what set gilded terms a tyrant juggles!