Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wash'd them power while they were free,

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' play, Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow: Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

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.

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.

FROM "THE GIAOUR."

HE who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled,
The first dark day of nothingness,

The last of danger and distress,
(Before Decay's effacing fingers

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,)
And mark'd the mild angelic air,

The rapture of repose that's there,

The fix'd yet tender traits that streak
The languor of the placid cheek,
And-but for that sad shrouded eye,

That fires not, wins not, weeps not, now,
And but for that chill, changeless brow,
Where cold Obstruction's apathy

Appals the gazing mourner's heart,
As if to him it could impart

The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon;
Yes, but for these and these alone,

Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the tyrant's power;
So fair, so calm, so softly seal'd,
The first, last look by death reveal'd!

SONNET ON CHILLON.

ETERNAL Spirit of the chainless Mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
For there thy habitation is the heart—
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd-

To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, Their country conquers with their martyrdom, And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,

And thy sad floor an altar-for 'twas trod, Until his very steps have left a trace

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, By Bonnivard! May none those marks efface! For they appeal from tyranny to God.

My hair is grey, but not with years,

Nor grew it white

In a single night,

As men's have grown from sudden fears:
My limbs are bow'd, though not with toil,
But rusted with a vile repose,

For they have been a dungeon's spoil,
And mine has been the fate of those
To whom the goodly earth and air
Are bann'd, and barr'd-forbidden fare;
But this was for my father's faith
I suffer'd chains and courted death;
That father perish'd at the stake
For tenets he would not forsake ;
And for the same his lineal race
In darkness found a dwelling-place ;

We were seven-who now are one,
Six in youth, and one in age,
Finish'd as they had begun,

Proud of Persecution's rage;
One in fire, and two in field,
Their belief with blood have seal'd,
Dying as their father died,

For the God their foes denied ;
Three were in a dungeon cast,

Of whom this wreck is left the last.

grey,

There are seven pillars of Gothic mould,
In Chillon's dungeons deep and old,
There are seven columns, massy and
Dim with a dull imprison'd ray,
A sunbeam which hath lost its way,
And through the crevice and the cleft
Of the thick wall is fallen and left;
Creeping o'er the floor so damp,
Like a marsh's meteor lamp :
And in each pillar there is a ring,

And in each ring there is a chain
That iron is a cankering thing,

For in these limbs its teeth remain, With marks that will not wear away, Till I have done with this new day,