LXXV.

But I forget!-a man, I have but proved

A human lot, which coldly unconfessed,

I should have borne within and bled unmoved;
Thou wilt not frown who holdest in thy breast
Ghosts of departed joys! there, let them rest:
Oasis in the Desert! oracle,

Whose heavenly revelations truth attest,

While they thy origin immortal tell,

Shrine of departed Youth-yet once again-farewell!

LXXVI.

On-on-still upward toils the steep ascent:
The rugged Apennines the road surround;
How coldly on their nameless wastes are bent
The eyes of him who goes a pilgrim bound,
Dark Vallombrosa! to thy hallowed ground,
Hallowed by Poesy's immortal line;

So can Mind stamp its impresses profound
On Nature; while it gathers from her shrine
Its inspirations, strength, and energies divine.

LXXVII.

For this is the mind's appetite that grows

With what it feeds on; all else pass away

In dull satiety, of heaviest woes

The least which we can bear; but here decay
Itself is beautiful, and wears a ray

Of deeper glory, changing but the form

Of Life which glows for ever as to-day;

Thou, whose cold worn-out bosom nought can warm,

Pause, and while gazing here, even thee it shall trans

form.

LXXVIII.

For oh! what after joys can rival those,
When the Soul, raised above its mortal thrall,
Pours forth its gratitude which then o'erflows;
The love uniting with the eternal All?

And when those hours are past, we can recal
Departed feelings which to heaven allied,
For memory then is virtue; if we fall

From our resolves, she still is by our side;

And teaches self-control, and softens human pride.

LXXIX.

As, while I gazing stand, yon Mountain's form,
With its cragged brow, is folded from my eye
Behind the mists of the approaching Storm,
Which, in its shroud-like veils, rolls sweeping by,
Though hidden, yet unseen it still is nigh,

Fixed as the heaven to which it points the guide,
So, in primeval naked majesty,

Stands Virtue: sensual mists her form may hide,
But she, unchanged the same, for ever doth abide!

LXXX.

And Freedom!-thou, the boast of man, the word
That thrills his heart; in triumph, hope, or pride,

His vows to thee eternally preferred,

In whose great cause is life and death defied,

Vision by his own passion deified!

On whose red shrine, with human victims fraught,

Millions, hewn down, exultingly have died!

From whence thy deathless inspirations caught,

Thou, who so much of good, of ill, to man hast taught?

LXXXI.

From thee, eternal Nature! from the hill

Hurling the Tempest from its sides-the woods,
Crushed by the avalanche, yet rooted still;
From the wild Cataract's all chainless floods;
From the free Desert's boundless solitudes;

From warring Waves, amid whose strife thou art;
From Thunder-Clouds, beneath whose mantle broods
The dagger-flashing Lightning!—these impart
Thy shows of mighty truths, recorded by the heart.

LXXXII.

Till the hour comes when man's long pent-up wrath

Bursts wildly forth remorselessly as they,

Death in his hands, and ruin in his path!
Ah! blame him not if ruthlessly he slay;
Yea, wade in blood: for, in that penal day,

Is wreaked the hoarded hate of dateless time:

He doth but Nature's mighty voice obey;

His hands are red with slaughter-not with crime, The Priest of Freedom he, in sacrifice sublime!

LXXXIII.

So learn we truths; one here o'er all attest;

Art narrows, labour weakens, laws control,
Life's dull, cold, saws weigh, lead-like, on the breast,

'Tis mighty Nature swells the human soul

To feel, to soar, to mingle with the Whole,
Infinite as herself: the eye, what bound
Hath its all limitless faculty? what goal,

Save in the sense's weakness? yon profound

Azure, what depth or height the spirit had not found?

LXXXIV.

And for its forms of majesty, and power,

Lo, how these archetypes of grandeur rose!
These rock-ribbed Mountains, in Creation's hour,

Cast from Earth's womb, by the convulsive throes

Of fire, air, water, that knew no repose;

Still warring on, as when the solid world

Heaved like the Ocean when the tempest grows;

When life was anarchy in chaos hurled,

Ere yet the rain-bowed Peace her banner had unfurled.