And with their bitter dew two Destinies Filled each their irrevocable urns. The third, Fiercest and mightiest, mingled both, and added Chaos and death, and slow oblivion's lymph, And hate and terror, and the poisoned rain
The Aurora of the nations. By this brow Whose pores wept tears of blood; by these wide wounds; By this imperial crown of agony;
By infamy and solitude and death,
(For this I underwent); and by the pain Of pity for those who would .. for me The unremembered joy of a revenge, (For this I felt); by Plato's sacred light, Of which my spirit was a burning morrow; By Greece, and all she cannot cease to be, Her quenchless words, sparks of immortal truth, Stars of all night-her harmonies and forms, Echoes and shadows of what Love adores In thee; I do compel thee, send forth Fate, Thy irrevocable child! Let her descend, A seraph-winged victory [arrayed]
In tempest of the omnipotence of God Which sweeps through all things.
From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms Adverse miscreeds and emulous anarchies
To stamp, as on a winged serpent's seed,
Upon the name of Freedom; from the storm
Of faction, which like earthquake shakes and sickens The solid heart of enterprise; from all
By which the holiest dreams of highest spirits Are stars beneath the dawn..
Victorious as the world arose from chaos! And, as the heavens and the earth arrayed Their presence in the beauty and the light Of thy first smile, O Father; as they gather The spirit of thy love, which paves for them Their path o'er the abyss, till every sphere Shall be one living spirit; so shall Greece—
Be as all things beneath the empyrean, Mine! Art thou eyeless like old Destiny,
Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns
Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed
Which pierces thee, whose throne a chair of scorn?
For seest thou not beneath this crystal floor
The innumerable worlds of golden light
Which are my empire, and the least of them
which thou wouldst redeem from me? Know'st thou not them my portion? Or wouldst rekindle the . . strife Which our great Father then did arbitrate When he assigned to his competing sons Each his apportioned realm?
Thou who art mailed in the omnipotence Of Him who sends thee forth, whate'er thy task, Speed, spare not to accomplish! and be mine Thy trophies, whether Greece again become The fountain in the desert whence the earth Shall drink of freedom, which shall give it strength To suffer, or a gulf of hollow death
To swallow all delight, all life, all hope. Go, thou vicegerent of my will, no less
Than of the Father's. But, lest thou shouldst faint, The winged hounds famine and pestilence Shall wait on thee; the hundred-forkèd snake Insatiate superstition still shall . . .
The earth behind thy steps; and war shall hover Above, and fraud shall gape below, and change Shall flit before thee on her dragon wings, Convulsing and consuming. And I add Three phials of the tears which demons weep When virtuous spirits through the gate of death Pass triumphing over the thorns of life,-
Sceptres and crowns, mitres and swords and snares, Trampling in scorn, like him and Socrates.
The first is anarchy; when power and pleasure, Glory and science and security,
On freedom hang like fruit on the green tree, Then pour it forth, and men shall gather ashes. The second, tyranny—
Thou seest but the past in the to-come. Pride is thy error and thy punishment.
Boast not thine empire, dream not that thy worlds Are more than furnace-sparks or rainbow-drops Before the Power that wields and kindles them. True greatness asks not space; true excellence Lives in the Spirit of all things that live, Which lends it to the worlds thou callest thine.
Haste thou, and fill the waning crescent
With beams as keen as those which pierced the shadow
Of Christian night rolled back upon the West When the orient.moon of Islam rode in triumph From Tmolus to the Acroceraunian snow.
Of God, and from the throne of Destiny Even to the utmost limit of thy way May triumph
Be thou a curse on them whose creed Divides and multiplies the most high God!
I WOULD not be a king-Enough Of woe it is to love:
The path to power is steep and rough, And tempests reign above.
I would not climb the imperial throne; 'Tis built on ice which fortune's sun Thaws in the height of noon. Then farewell, king! Yet, were I one,
Care would not come so soon. Would he and I were far away Keeping flocks on Himalay!
Whose throne is in the depth of human thought, I do adjure thy power and thee
By all that man may be, by all that he is not, By all that he has been and yet must be !
HE wanders, like a day-appearing dream, Through the dim wildernesses of the mind ;
Through desert woods and tracts, which seem Like ocean, homeless, boundless, unconfined.
WILD, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one Who staggers forth into the air and sun From the dark chamber of a mortal fever,- Bewildered, and incapable, and ever
Fancying strange comments, in her dizzy brain, Of usual shapes, till the familiar train
Of objects and of persons passed like things Strange as a dreamer's mad imaginings,- Ginevra from the nuptial altar went;
The vows to which her lips had sworn assent Rung in her brain still with a jarring din, Deafening the lost intelligence within.
And so she moved under the bridal veil,
Which made the paleness of her cheek more pale, And deepened the faint crimson of her mouth, And darkened her dark locks, as moonlight doth; And of the gold and jewels glittering there She scarce felt conscious, but the weary glare Lay like a chaos of unwelcome light, Vexing the sense with gorgeous undelight, A moonbeam in the shadow of a cloud Were less heavenly fair. Her face was bowed; And, as she passed, the diamonds in her hair Were mirrored in the polished marble stair Which led from the cathedral to the street; And ever as she went her light fair feet Erased these images.
The bridemaidens who round her thronging came :Some with a sense of self-rebuke and shame,
Envying the unenviable; and others
Making the joy which should have been another's
Their own by gentle sympathy; and some Sighing to think of an unhappy home;
Some few admiring what can ever lure Maidens to leave the heaven serene and pure Of parents' smiles for life's great cheat-a thing Bitter to taste, sweet in imagining
But they are all dispersed-and lo! she stands Looking in idle grief on her white hands, Alone within the garden now her own, (And through the sunny air, with jangling tone, The music of the merry marriage-bells, Killing the azure silence, sinks and swells)- Absorbed like one within a dream who dreams That he is dreaming, until slumber seems A mockery of itself when suddenly Antonio stood before her, pale as she.
With agony, with sorrow, and with pride, He lifted his wan eyes upon the bride, And said "Is this thy faith?" And then, as Whose sleeping face is stricken by the sun
With light like a harsh voice, which bids him rise And look upon his day of life with eyes
Which weep in vain that they can dream no more, Ginevra saw her lover; and forbore
To shriek or faint, and checked the stifling blood Rushing upon her heart, and unsubdued Said: Friend, if earthly violence or ill, Suspicion, doubt, or the tyrannic will
Of parents, chance or custom, time or change, Or circumstance or terror or revenge,
Or wildered looks or words, or evil speech, With all their stings and venom, can impeach
Our love, we love not. If the grave, which hides The victim from the tyrant, and divides
The cheek that whitens from the eyes that dart Imperious inquisition to the heart
That is another's, could dissever ours,
We love not."- "What! do not the silent hours Beckon thee to Gherardi's bridal bed?
Is not that ring". a pledge, he would have said, Of broken vows. But she with patient look The golden circle from her finger took, And said: "Accept this token of my faith, The pledge of vows to be absolved by death. And I am dead, or shall be soon-my knell Will mix its music with that merry bell; Does it not sound as if they sweetly said 'We toll a corpse out of the marriage bed?' The flowers upon my bridal chamber strewn Will serve unfaded for my bier-so soon That even the dying violet will not die Before Ginevra." The strong fantasy
Had made her accents weaker and more weak, And quenched the crimson life upon her cheek, And glazed her eyes, and spread an atmosphere Round her which chilled the burning noon with fear, Making her but an image of the thought Which, like a prophet or a shadow, brought News of the terrors of the coming time.
Like an accuser branded with the crime He would have cast on a beloved friend, Whose dying eyes reproach not to the end The pale betrayer-he then with vain repentance Would share, he cannot now avert, the sentence- Antonio stood, and would have spoken; when The compound voice of women and of men Was heard approaching. He retired; while she Was led amid the admiring company Back to the palace,-and her maidens soon Changed her attire for the afternoon,
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