A long, deep, shivering sigh, as from blue lips

Stiffening in death, close to mine ear I thought

Some doom was close upon me, and I looked

And saw the red moon through the heavy mist,

Just setting, and it seemed as it wer. falling,

Or reeling to its fall, so dim and dead And palsy-struck it looked. Then all sounds merged

Into the rising surges of the pines, Which, leagues below me, clothing the gaunt loins

Of ancient Caucasus with hairy strength, Sent up a murmur in the morning wind,

Sad as the wail that from the populous earth

All day and night to high Olympus

From off my lips, for I will tell thy doom.

And are these tears? Nay, do not triumph, Jove!

They are wrung from me but by the agonies

Of prophecy, like those sparse drops which fall

From clouds in travail of the lightning, when

The great wave of the storm highcurled and black

Rolls steadily onward to its thunderous break.

Why art thou made a god of, thou poor type

Of anger, and revenge, and cunning force?

True Power was never born of brutish Strength,

Nor sweet Truth suckled at the shaggy dugs

Of that old she-wolf. Are thy thunderbolts,

That quell the darkness for a space, so strong

ness,

Or Fear with its own bosom ill at ease, Would laugh away in scorn the sandwove chain

Which their own blindness feigned for adamant.

Wrong ever builds on quicksands, but the Right

To the firm centre lays its moveless base.

The tyrant trembles, if the air but stirs The innocent ringlets of a child's free hair,

And crouches, when the thought of some great spirit,

With world-wide murmur, like a rising gale,

Over men's hearts, as over standing corn,

Rushes, and bends them to its own strong will.

Thou and all strength shall crumble, except Love,

By whom, and for whose glory, ye shall

cease:

And, when thou art but a dim moaning heard

From out the pitiless glooms of Chaos, I Shall be a power and a memory,

A name to fright all tyrants with, a light Unsetting as the pole-star, a great voice Heard in the breathless pauses ofthe fight By truth and freedom ever waged with wrong,

Clear as a silver trumpet, to awake Huge echoes that from age to age live on In kindred spirits, giving them a sense Of boundless power from boundless suffering wrung:

And many a glazing eye shall smile to see The memory of my triumph (for to meet Wrong with endurance, and to overcome The present with a heart that looks beyond,

Are triumph), like a prophet eagle, perch Upon the sacred banner of the Right. Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears

Part of that awful Presence which doth haunt

The palaces of tyrants, to hunt off, With its grim eyes and fearful whisperings

And hideous sense of utter loneliness, All hope of safety, all desire of peace, All but the loathed forefeeling of blank death,

Part of that spirit which doth ever brood In patient calm on the unpilfered nest Of man's deep heart, till mighty thoughts grow fledged

To sail with darkening shadow o'er the world,

Filling with dread such souls as dare not trust

In the unfailing energy of Good,
Until they swoop, and their pale quarry

make

Of some o'erbloated wrong, that spirit which

Scatters great hopes in the seed-field of man,

Like acorns among grain, to grow and be

A roof for freedom in all coming time!

But no, this cannot be; for ages yet, In solitude unbroken, shall I hear The angry Caspian to the Euxine shout, And Euxine answer with a muffled roar, On either side storming the giant walls Of Caucasus with leagues of climbing foam

(Less, from my height, than flakes of downy snow),

That draw back baffled but to hurl again, Snatched up in wrath and horrible tur moil,

Mountain on mountain, as the Titans