THE Spirit of the fervent days of Old,

When words were things that came to pass, and

thought

Flash'd o'er the future, bidding men behold Their children's children's doom already brought Forth from the abyss of time which is to be, The chaos of events, where lie half-wrought Shapes that must undergo mortality;

What the great Seers of Israel wore within, That spirit was on them, and is on me, And if, Cassandra-like, amidst the din

Of conflict none will hear, or hearing heed This voice from out the Wilderness, the sin Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed, The only guerdon I have ever known.

Hast thou not bled? and hast thou still to bleed,

Italia? Ah! to me such things, foreshown
With dim sepulchral light, bid me forget
In thine irreparable wrongs my own;
We can have but one country, and even yet

Thou'rt mine-my bones shall be within thy breast,
My soul within thy language, which once set
With our old Roman sway in the wide West;
But I will make another tongue arise

As lofty and more sweet, in which express'd The hero's ardour, or the lover's sighs,

Shall find alike such sounds for every theme That every word, as brilliant as thy skies, Shall realise a poet's proudest dream,

And make thee Europe's nightingale of song; So that all present speech to thine shall seem The note of meaner birds, and every tongue

Confess its barbarism when compared with thine. This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so wrong, Thy Tuscan bard, the banish'd Ghibelline.

Woe! woe! the veil of coming centuries
Is rent,—a thousand years which yet supine
Lie like the ocean waves ere winds arise,
Heaving in dark and sullen undulation,
Float from eternity into these eyes;

The storms yet sleep, the clouds still keep their station,

The unborn earthquake yet is in the womb,
The bloody chaos yet expects creation,
But all things are disposing for thy doom;

The elements await but for the word,

"Let there be darkness!" and thou grow'st a tomb! Yes! thou, so beautiful, shalt feel the sword,

Thou, Italy! so fair that Paradise,

Revived in thee, blooms forth to man restored: Ah! must the sons of Adam lose it twice?

Thou, Italy! whose ever golden fields,

Plough'd by the sunbeams solely, would suffice
For the world's granary; thou, whose sky heaven gilds
With brighter stars, and robes with deeper blue;
Thou, in whose pleasant places Summer builds
Her palace, in whose cradle Empire grew,

And form'd the Eternal City's ornaments
From spoils of kings whom freemen overthrew ;
Birthplace of heroes, sanctuary of saints,

Where earthly first, then heavenly glory made Her home; thou, all which fondest fancy paints, And finds her prior vision but portray'd

In feeble colours, when the eye-from the Alp
Of horrid snow, and rock, and shaggy shade
Of desert-loving pine, whose emerald scalp
Nods to the storm-dilates and dotes o'er thee,
And wistfully implores, as 'twere for help

To see thy sunny fields, my Italy,

Nearer and nearer yet, and dearer still

The more approach'd, and dearest were they free,
Thou-thou must wither to each tyrant's will:
The Goth hath been,-the German, Frank, and Hun
Are yet to come,-and on the imperial hill
Ruin, already proud of the deeds done

By the old barbarians, there awaits the new,
Throned on the Palatine, while lost and won
Rome at her feet lies bleeding; and the hue
Of human sacrifice and Roman slaughter
Troubles the clotted air, of late so blue,
And deepens into red the saffron water

Of Tiber, thick with dead; the helpless priest,
And still more helpless nor less holy daughter,
Vow'd to their God, have shrieking fled, and ceased
Their ministry the nations take their prey,
Iberian, Almain, Lombard, and the beast
And bird, wolf, vulture, more humane than they
Are; these but gorge the flesh and lap the gore
Of the departed, and then go their way;
But those, the human savages, explore
All paths of torture, and insatiate yet,
With Ugolino hunger prowl for more.

Nine moons shall rise o'er scenes like this and set ;
The chiefless army of the dead, which late

Beneath the traitor Prince's banner met, Hath left its leader's ashes at the gate;

Had but the royal Rebel lived, perchance

Thou hadst been spared, but his involved thy fate. Oh! Rome, the spoiler or the spoil of France, From Brennus to the Bourbon, never, never Shall foreign standard to thy walls advance, But Tiber shall become a mournful river.

Oh! when the strangers pass the Alps and Po, Crush them, ye rocks! floods whelm them, and for

ever!

Why sleep the idle avalanches so,

To topple on the lonely pilgrim's head?

Why doth Eridanus but overflow

The peasant's harvest from his turbid bed?

Were not each barbarous horde a nobler prey?
Over Cambyses' host the desert spread

Her sandy ocean, and the sea-waves' sway

Roll'd over Pharaoh and his thousands,-why,
Mountains and waters, do ye not as they?
And you, ye men! Romans who dare not die,
Sons of the conquerors who overthrew

Those who o'erthrew proud Xerxes, where yet lie
The dead whose tomb Oblivion never knew,
Are the Alps weaker than Thermopyla ?
Their passes more alluring to the view