style="font-size:15px;"> By Time’s wild harp, and by the hand Whose indefatigable sweep
Raises its fateful strings from sleep, 25
I bid you haste, a mix’d tumultuous band!
From every private bower,
And each domestic hearth,
Haste for one solemn hour;
And with a loud and yet a louder voice, 30
O’er Nature struggling in portentous birth,
Weep and rejoice!
Still echoes the dread Name that o’er the earth
Let slip the storm, and woke the brood of Hell:
And now advance in saintly Jubilee 35
Justice and Truth! They too have heard thy spell,
They too obey thy name, divinest Liberty!
III
I mark’d Ambition in his war-array!
I heard the mailéd Monarch’s troublous cry —
‘Ah! wherefore does the Northern Conqueress stay! 40
Groans not her chariot on its onward way?’
Fly, mailéd Monarch, fly!
Stunn’d by Death’s twice mortal mace,
No more on Murder’s lurid face
The insatiate Hag shall gloat with drunken eye! 45
Manes of the unnumber’d slain!
Ye that gasp’d on Warsaw’s plain!
Ye that erst at Ismail’s tower,
When human ruin choked the streams,
Fell in Conquest’s glutted hour, 50
Mid women’s shrieks and infants’ screams!
Spirits of the uncoffin’d slain,
Sudden blasts of triumph swelling,
Oft, at night, in misty train,
Rush around her narrow dwelling! 55
The exterminating Fiend is fled —
(Foul her life, and dark her doom)
Mighty armies of the dead
Dance, like death-fires, round her tomb!
Then with prophetic song relate, 60
Each some Tyrant-Murderer’s fate!
IV
Departing Year! ‘twas on no earthly shore
My soul beheld thy Vision! Where alone,
Voiceless and stern, before the cloudy throne,
Aye Memory sits: thy robe inscrib’d with gore, 65
With many an unimaginable groan
Thou storied’st thy sad hours! Silence ensued,
Deep silence o’er the ethereal multitude,
Whose locks with wreaths, whose wreaths with glories shone.
Then, his eye wild ardours glancing, 70
From the choiréd gods advancing,
The Spirit of the Earth made reverence meet,
And stood up, beautiful, before the cloudy seat.
V
Throughout the blissful throng,
Hush’d were harp and song: 75
Till wheeling round the throne the Lampads seven,
(The mystic Words of Heaven)
Permissive signal make:
The fervent Spirit bow’d, then spread his wings and spake!
‘Thou in stormy blackness throning 80
Love and uncreated Light,
By the Earth’s unsolaced groaning,
Seize thy terrors, Arm of might!
By Peace with proffer’d insult scared,
Masked Hate and envying Scorn! 85
By years of Havoc yet unborn!
And Hunger’s bosom to the frost-winds bared!
But chief by Afric’s wrongs,
Strange, horrible, and foul!
By what deep guilt belongs 90
To the deaf Synod, ‘full of gifts and lies!’
By Wealth’s insensate laugh! by Torture’s howl!
Avenger, rise!
For ever shall the thankless Island scowl,
Her quiver full, and with unbroken bow? 95
Speak! from thy storm-black Heaven O speak aloud!
And on the darkling foe
Open thine eye of fire from some uncertain cloud!
O dart the flash! O rise and deal the blow!
The Past to thee, to thee the Future cries! 100
Hark! how wide Nature joins her groans below!
Rise, God of Nature! rise.’
VI
The voice had ceas’d, the Vision fled;
Yet still I gasp’d and reel’d with dread.
And ever, when the dream of night 105
Renews the phantom to my sight,
Cold sweat-drops gather on my limbs;
My ears throb hot; my eyeballs start;
My brain with horrid tumult swims;
Wild is the tempest of my heart; 110
And my thick and struggling breath
Imitates the toil of death!
No
