Oh, happier thought! can we be made the same:
It is enough in sooth that once we bore

These fardels of the heart-the heart whose sweat was gore.

CLXVII.

Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds,

A long low distant murmur of dread sound,
Such as arises when a nation bleeds

With some deep and immedicable wound;

Through storm and darkness yawns the reading ground
The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief

Seems royal still, though with her head discrown'd
And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief

She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief.

CLXVIII.

Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou?
Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead?
Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low
Some less majestic, less beloved head?

In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled,
The mother of a moment, o'er thy boy,

Death hush'd that pang for ever: with thee fled

The present happiness and promised joy

Which fill'd the imperial isles so full it seem'd to cloy.

CLXIX.

Peasants bring forth in safety.-Can it be,

Oh thou that wert so happy, so adored!

Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee,
And Freedom's heart, grown heavy, cease to hoard
Her many griefs for ONE; for she had pour'd
Her orisons for thee, and o'er thy head
Beheld her Iris.-Thou, too, lonely lord,
And desolate consort-vainly wert thou wed!
The husband of a year! the father of the dead!

CLXX.

Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made;
Thy bridal's fruit is ashes: in the dust
The fair-hair'd Daughter of the Isles is laid,
The love of millions! How we did entrust

Futurity to her and, though it must

Darken above our bones, yet fondly deem'd

Our children should obey her child, and bless'd

Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seem'd

Like stars to shepherds' eyes :-'twas but a meteor beam d.

CLXXI.

Woe unto us, not her; for she sleeps well:
The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue,
Of hollow counsel, the false oracle,

Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung
Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstrung
Nations have arm'd in madness, the strange fate
Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath fung

Against their blind omnipotence a weight

Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late,

CLXXII.

These might have been her destiny; but no, Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair, Good without effort, great without a foe; But now a bride and mother-and now there' How many ties did that stern moment tear! From thy Sire's to his humblest subject's breast Is link'd the electric chain of that despair, Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and opprest The land which loved thee so that none could love thee best

CLXXIII.

Lo, Nemi! navell'd in the woody hills

So far, that the uprooting wind which tears
The oak from his foundation, and which spills
The ocean o'er its boundary, and bears
Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares
The oval mirror of thy glassy lake;

And, calm as cherish'd hate, its surface wears
A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake,
All coil'd into itself and round, as sleeps the snake.

CLXXIV.

And near Albano's scarce divided waves
Shine from a sister valley;-and afar
The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves
The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war,
"Arms and the Man," whose re-ascending star
Rose o'er an empire;-but beneath thy right
Tully reposed from Rome;-and where yon
Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight
The Sabine farm was till'd, the weary bard's delight.

CLXXV.

bar

But I forget.-My pilgrim's shrine is won,
And he and I must part,-so let it be,-
His task and mine alike are nearly done;
Yet once more let us look upon the sea;
The midland ocean breaks on him and me,
And from the Alban Mount we now behold
Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we
Beheld it last by Calpe's rock unfold

Those waves, we follow'd on till the dark Euxine roll'd

CLXXVI.

Upon the blue Symplegades: long years

Long, though not very many, since have done

Their work on both; some suffering and some tears
Have left us nearly where we had begun:
Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run,
We have had our reward-and it is here;
That we can yet feel gladden'd by the sun,
And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear
As if there were no man to trouble what is clear.

CLXXXII.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wasted them while they were frec And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts:--not so thou, Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' playTime writes no wrinkle on thine azure browSuch as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

CLXXXIII.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime-
The image of Eternity-the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

CLXXXIV.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward from a boy
I wanton'd with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,

And trusted to thy billows, far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here.

CLXXXV.

My task is done--my song hath ceased-my theme Has died into an echo; it is fit

The spell should break of this protracted dream, The torch shall be extinguish'd which hath lit My midnight lamp-and what is writ, is writ,Would it were worthier! but I am not now That which I have been-and my visions flit Less palpably before me-and the glow Which in my spirit dwelt, is fluttering, faint, and low

CLXXXVI.

Farewell a word that must be, and hath been-
A sound which makes us linger;-yet-farewell!
Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell
A thought which once was his, if on ye swell
A single recollection, not in vain

He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell;
Farewell! with him, alone may rest the pain,
If such there were-with you, the noral of his strain

ODE TO NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

"Expende Annibalem :-quot libras in duce summo
JUVENAL, Sat. x.

Invenies ?"

"The Emperor Nepos was acknowledged by the Senate, by the Italians and by the provincials of Gaul; his moral virtues, and military talents, were loudly celebrated; and those who derived any private benefit from his government announced in prophetic strains the restoration of public felicity.

*

By this shameful abdication, he protracted his life a few years, in a very ambiguous state, between an Emperor and an Exile, till- "-GIBBON'S Decline and Fall, vol. vi. p., 220.

"TIs done-but yesterday a King!
And arm'd with Kings to strive-
And now thou art a nameless thing:
So abject-yet alive!

Is this the man of thousand thrones,
Who strewed our earth with hostile bones,
And can he thus survive?

Since he, miscalled the Morning Star,
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far.

Ill-minded man! why scourge thy kind
Who bow'd so low the knee?
By gazing on thyself grown blind,
Thou taught'st the rest to see.

With might unquestion'd,-power to save,
Thine only gift hath been the grave
To those that worshipp'd thee;
Nor till thy fall could mortals guess
Ambition's less than littleness!

Thanks for that lesson-it will teach
To after warriors more

Than high philosophy can preach,
And vainly preach'd before.
That spell upon the minds of men
Breaks never to unite again,

That led them to adore

Those Pagod things of sabre sway,
With fronts of brass, and feet of clay.