74. "Let a vast assembly be, 75. And with great solemnity Declare with ne'er-said words that ye "Be your strong and simple words 76. "Let the tyrants pour around 77. "Let the charged artillery drive, With the clash of clanging wheels, 78. "Let the fixed bayonet Gleam with sharp desire to wet 79. "Let the horsemen's scimitars 80. "Stand ye calm and resolute, With folded arms, and looks which are 81. "And let Panic, who outspeeds Through your phalanx undismayed. 82. "Let the laws of your own land, Good or ill, between ye stand, 83. 84. Hand to hand, and foot to foot, "The old laws of England-they Whose reverend heads with age are grey, And whose solemn voice must be Thine own echo-Liberty ! "On those who first should violate 'Such sacred heralds in their state Rest the blood that must ensue ; And it will not rest on you. 85. 66 And, if then the tyrants dare, 87. "Then they will return with shame, 88. "Every woman in the land 89. 90. 91. 92. Will point at them as they stand- "And that slaughter to the nation A volcano heard afar : "And these words shall then become Ringing through each heart and brain, "Rise, like lions after slumber, Shake your chains to earth, like dew Ye are many they are few!" LINES WRITTEN DURING THE CASTLEREAGH ADMINISTRATION. I. CORPSES are cold in the tomb; Stones on the pavement are dumb; Abortions are dead in the womb, And their mothers look pale-like the white shore 2. Her sons are as stones in the way- 3. Then trample and dance, thou oppressor, Of her corpses and clods and abortions—they pave 4. Hear'st thou the festival din Of Death and Destruction and Sin And Wealth crying "Havoc!" within? 'Tis the bacchanal triumph which makes Truth dumb, Thine epithalamium. 5. Ay, marry thy ghastly Wife! Let Fear and Disquiet and Strife Spread thy couch in the chamber of Life! Marry Ruin, thou tyrant! and God be thy guide To the bed of the bride! SONG TO THE MEN OF ENGLAND. 1. MEN of England, wherefore plough Those ungrateful drones who would. 7. Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells; Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see 8. With plough and spade and hoe and loom, ENGLAND IN 1819. AN old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,— Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn, mud from a muddy spring,— Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling, Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,— An army which liberticide and prey Make as a two-edged sword to all who wield,— SIMILES FOR TWO POLITICAL CHARACTERS OF 1819. 1. As from an ancestral oak Two empty ravens sound their clarion, 2. As two gibbering night-birds flit And the stars are none or few : 3. As a shark and dogfish wait For the negro-ship whose freight Wrinkling their red gills the while 4. Are ye, two vultures sick for battle, Two scorpions under one wet stone, 4. 'Wilder her enemies In their own dark disguise! God save our Queen! All earthly things that dare Her sacred name to bear, Strip them, as kings are, bare; 5. Be her eternal throne Built in our hearts alone God save the Queen! Let the oppressor hold Canopied seats of gold; O'er our hearts Queen. 6. Lips touched by seraphim Breathe out the choral hymn "God save the Queen!" |