To do her will, and show their subtle slights, I will declare another time; for it is A tale more fit for the weird winter nights Than for these garish summer days, when we Scarcely believe much more than we can see. TO THE MOON. ART thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, Among the stars that have a different birth, And ever-changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy? ODE TO NAPLES.* EPODE I. a. I STOOD within the city disinterred, † And heard the autumnal leaves like light foot falls Of spirits passing through the streets, and heard The listening soul in my suspended blood; The isle-sustaining Ocean flood, A plane of light between two heavens of azure: Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure Were to spare Death, bad never made erasure; *The Author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii and Baix with the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples. This has given a tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory epodes, which depicture the scenes and some of the majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene of this animating event.-Author's Note. † Pompeii. But every living lineament was clear As in the sculptor's thought; and there The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy and pine, Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow, Seemed only not to move and grow Because the crystal silence of the air Weighed on their life; even as the power divine, Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine. EPODE II. a. Then gentle winds arose, With many a mingled close Of wild Æolian sound and mountain odour keen; And where the Baian ocean Welters with air-like motion, Within, above, around its bowers of starry green, It bore me; like an angel, o'er the waves I sailed where ever flows A spirit of deep emotion, Of the dead kings of melody.* * Homer and Virgil. The horizontal æther; heaven stript bare There streamed a sunlit vapour, like the standard Of some ethereal host; Whilst from all the coast, Louder and louder, gathering round, there Over the oracular woods and divine sea -I must speak them;-be they They seize me fate! STROPHE a. 1. NAPLES, thou Heart of men, which ever pantest The mutinous air and sea! they round thee, even Metropolis of a ruined Paradise Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained! Which armed Victory offers up unstained Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be, STROPHE B. 2. Thou youngest giant birth, Which from the groaning earth Leapst, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale! Who 'gainst the Crowned Transgressors Pleadest before God's love! Arrayed in wisdom's mail, Wave thy lightning lance in mirth; Nor let thy high heart fail, Though from their hundred gates the leagued oppressors, With hurried legions move! Hail, hail, all hail ! ANTISTROPHE α. 1. What though Cimmerian anarchs dare blaspheme To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer; Shall theirs have been-devoured by their own hounds! Be thou like the imperial basilisk, |