From tent to tent the brazen clangour rang:
The hail, the earthquake, the mysterious light
Unnerved their strength, o'erwhelm'd them with affright,
"Warriors! to battle-summon all your powers;
Warriors! to conquest-Paradise is ours;"
Èxclaim'd their monarch;-not an arm was raised,
In vacancy of thought, like men amazed,
And lost amidst confounding dreams, they stood,
With palsied eyes, and horror-frozen blood.
The Giants' rage to instant madness grew ;
The king and chiefs on their own legions flew,
Denouncing vengeance ;—then had all the plain
Been heap'd with myriads by their leaders slain,
But ere a sword could fall, by whirlwinds driven,
In mighty volumes, through the vault of heaven,
From Eden's summit, o'er the camp accurst,
The darting fires with noonday splendour burst;
And fearful grew the scene above, below,
With sights of mystery and sounds of woe.
The embattled Cherubim appear'd on high,
And coursers, wing'd with lightning, swept the sky;
Chariots, whose wheels with living instinct roll'd,
Spirits of unimaginable mould,
Powers, such as dwell in heaven's serenest light,
Too pure, too terrible for mortal sight,
From depth of midnight suddenly reveal'd,
In arms, against the Giants took the field.
On such an host Elisha's servant gazed,
When all the mountain round the prophet blazed:
With such an host, when war in heaven was wrought,
Michael, against the Prince of Darkness fought.
Roused by the trumpet, that shall wake the dead,
The torpid foe in consternation fled;
The Giants headlong in the uproar ran,
The king himself the foremost of the van,
Nor e'er his rushing squadrons led to fight
With swifter onset than he led that flight.
Homeward the panic-stricken legions flew ;
Their arms, their vestments from their limbs they threw;
O'er shields and helms the reinless camel strode,
And gold and purple strew'd the desert road.
LISTENING, as oft he listens in a shell
To the mock tide's alternate fall and swell,
He kneels upon the ice,-inclines his ear,
And hears-or does he only seem to hear?—
A sound, as though the Genius of the Deep
Heaved a long sigh, awaking out of sleep.
He starts ;-'twas but a pulse within his brain!
No-for he feels it beat through every vein;
Groan following groan (as from a giant's breast,
Beneath a burying mountain, ill at rest),
With awe ineffable his spirit thrills,
And rapture fires his blood, while terror chills.
The keen expression of his eye alarms
His mother; she has caught him in her arms,
And learn'd the cause ;-that cause, no sooner known,
From lip to lip, o'er many a league is flown;
Voices to voices, prompt as signals, rise
In shrieks of consternation to the skies;
Those skies, meanwhile, with gathering darkness scowl.
Hollow and winterly the bleak winds howl.
From morn till noon had ether smiled serene,
Save one black-belted cloud, far eastward seen,
Like a snow-mountain ;-there in ambush lay
The undreaded tempest, panting for his prey.
That cloud by stealth hath through the welkin spread,
And hangs in meteor-twilight overhead;
At foot, beneath the adamantine floor,
Loose in their prison-house the surges roar :
To every eye, ear, heart, the alarm is given,
And landward crowds (like flocks of sea-fowl driven,
When storms are on the wing), in wild affright,
On foot, in sledges, urge their panic flight,
In hope the refuge of the shore to gain
Ere the disruption of the struggling main,
Foretold by many a stroke, like lightning sent
In thunder, though the unstable continent.
I LOVE Thee, O my native Isle !
Dear as my mother's earliest smile,
Sweet as my father's voice to me,
He started up to hear,
A mortal arrow pierced his frame :
He fell, but felt no fear.
Tranquil amidst alarms,
It found him in the field,
A veteran slumbering on his arms,
Beneath his red-cross shield:
Nor breathes the spirit of a purer air;
In every clime the magnet of his soul,
Touched by remembrance, trembles to that pole;
Where brighter suns dispense serener light,
And milder moons emparadise the night;
A land of beauty, virtue, valour, truth,
Time-tutored age, and love exalted youth:
The wandering mariner, whose eye explores
The wealthiest isles, the most enchanting shores,
Views not a realm so bountiful and fair,
Nor breathes the spirit of a purer air;
In every clime the magnet of his soul,
Touched by remembrance, trembles to that pole;
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