Murmuring, Where is Doria? Fair Milan, The viper's palsying venom, lifts her heel ANTISTROPHE BY Florence! beneath the sun, Of cities fairest one, Blushes within her bower for Freedom's expectation; From eyes of quenchless hope Rome tears the priestly cope, As ruling once by power, so now by admiration, — An athlete stripped to run From a remoter station For the high prize lost on Philippi's shore :- EPODE I B Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms Of crags and thunder-clouds? See ye the banners blazoned to the day, Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride? Dissonant threats kill Silence far away, The serene Heaven which wraps our Eden wide With iron light is dyed, The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions Like Chaos o'er creation, uncreating; An hundred tribes nourished on strange religions And lawless slaveries, down the aërial regions Of the white Alps, desolating, Famished wolves that bide no waiting, Blotting the glowing footsteps of old glory, Trampling our columned cities into dust, Their dull and savage lust On Beauty's corse to sickness satiating They come! The fields they tread look black and Great Spirit, deepest Love! All things which live and are, within the Italian shore ; Who spreadest heaven around it, Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it; Who sittest in thy star, o'er Ocean's western floor; Spirit of beauty! at whose soft command The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison From the Earth's bosom chill; Oh, bid those beams be each a blinding brand Of lightning! bid those showers be dews of poison! Bid the Earth's plenty kill! Bid thy bright Heaven above, Whilst light and darkness bound it, To make it ours and thine! Or with thine harmonizing ardors fill And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards, And frowns and fears from Thee, Would not more swiftly flee, Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shep Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine AUTUMN; A DIRGE THE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying, And the year On the earth, her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying. Come, Months, come away, From November to May, In your saddest array; Follow the bier Of the dead cold year, And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. Autumn. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824. The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawl ing, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone To his dwelling; Come, Months, come away; Put on white, black, and gray; Let your light sisters play Ye, follow the bier Of the dead cold year, And make her grave green with tear on tear. DEATH I DEATH is here, and death is there, Death is busy everywhere, All around, within, beneath, Above, is death- and we are death. II Death has set his mark and seal On all we are and all we feel, III First our pleasures die—and then Death. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824. These are dead, the debt is due, IV All things that we love and cherish, Love itself would, did they not. LIBERTY I THE fiery mountains answer each other, II From a single cloud the lightning flashes, III But keener thy gaze than the lightning's glare, And swifter thy step than the earthquake's tramp; Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare Makes blind the volcanoes; the sun's bright lamp To thine is a fen-fire damp. Liberty. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824. |