Who lap the blood of sorrow, wait:
Who, Fear, this ghastly train can see,
And look not madly wild, like thee!

EPODE.

In earliest Greece, to thee, with partial choice, The grief-full Muse addrest her infant tongue; The maids and matrons, on her awful voice, Silent and pale, in wild amazement hung.

Yet he, the bard who first invoked thy name,
Disdained in Marathon its power to feel:
For not alone he nursed the poet's flame,
But reached from Virtue's hand the patriot's
steel.

But who is he whom later garlands grace,

Who left awhile o'er Hybla's dews to rove, With trembling eyes thy dreary steps to trace, Where thou and furies shared the baleful grove?

Wrapt in thy cloudy veil, the incestuous queen Sighed the sad call her son and husband heard,

When once alone it broke the silent scene, And he the wretch of Thebes no more appeared.

O Fear, I know thee by my throbbing heart: Thy withering power inspired each mournful line:

Though gentle Pity claim her mingled part, Yet all the thunders of the scene are thine!

ANTISTROPHE.

Thou who such weary lengths hast past,
Where wilt thou rest, mad Nymph, at last?
Say, wilt thou shroud in haunted cell,
Where gloomy Rape and Murder dwell?
Or, in some hollowed seat,

'Gainst which the big waves beat,

Hear drowning seamen's cries, in tempests brought?

Dark power, with shuddering meek submitted thought,

Be mine to read the visions old

Which thy awakening bards have told :
And, lest thou meet my blasted view,
Hold each strange tale devoutly true;

Ne'er be I found, by thee o'erawed,
In that thrice-hallowed eve, abroad,
When ghosts, as cottage maids believe,
Their pebbled beds permitted leave;
And goblins haunt, from fire, or fen,
Or mine, or flood, the walks of men!

O thou, whose spirit most possest
The sacred seat of Shakespeare's breast!
By all that from thy prophet broke,
In thy divine emotions spoke;
Hither again thy fury deal,

Teach me but once like him to feel:
His cypress wreath my meed decree,
And I, O Fear, will dwell with thee

ODE TO LIBERTY.

STROPHE.

HO shall awake the Spartan fife,
And call in solemn sounds to life,

The youths, whose locks divinely

spreading,

Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue,

At once the breath of fear and virtue shedding,

Applauding Freedom loved of old to view? What new Alcæus, fancy-blest,

Shall sing the sword, in myrtles drest,

At Wisdom's shrine awhile its flame concealing,

(What place so fit to seal a deed renowned ?) Till she her brightest lightnings round re

vealing,

It leaped in glory forth, and dealt her prompted wound!

O goddess, in that feeling hour,
When most its sounds would court thy ears,
Let not my shell's misguided power

E'er draw thy sad, thy mindful tears.

No, Freedom, no, I will not tell

How Rome, before thy weeping face,
With heaviest sound, a giant-statue, fell,
Pushed by a wild and artless race
From off its wide ambitious base,

When Time his northern sons of spoil awoke,
And all the blended work of strength and

grace,

With many a rude repeated stroke,

And many a barbarous yell, to thousand fragments broke.

EPODE.

Yet, even where'er the least appeared,
The admiring world thy hand revered;
Still, midst the scattered states around,
Some remnants of her strength were found;
They saw, by what escaped the storm,
How wondrous rose her perfect form;
How in the great, the labored whole,
Each mighty master poured his soul!
For sunny Florence, seat of art,
Beneath her vines preserved a part,
Till they, whom Science loved to name,
(O who could fear it ?) quenched her flame.
And lo, an humbler relic laid

In jealous Pisa's olive shade!

See small Marino joins the theme,
Though least, not last in thy esteem:
Strike, louder strike the ennobling strings.
To those, whose merchant sons were kings;
To him, who, decked with pearly pride,
In Adria weds his green-haired bride;
Hail, port of glory, wealth, and pleasure,
Ne'er let me change this Lydian measure:
Nor e'er her former pride relate,