Shalt never be my dungeon or my grave! As pawn for that inheritance of freedom Which thou hast sold for thy despoiler's smile :- Does the wind hold? VANE. The vanes sit steady Upon the Abbey towers. The silver lightnings Of the evening star, spite of the city's smoke, Sailing athwart St. Margaret's. HAMPDEN. Hail, fleet herald Of tempest! that wild pilot who shall guide With purest blood of noblest hearts; whose dew Is yet unstained with tears of those who wake Wrest man's free worship from the God who loves Receive thou young [ ] of Paradise, These exiles from the old and sinful world! This glorious clime, this firmament, whose lights Of pale blue atmosphere; whose tears keep green Too narrow for the soul that owns no master. Of this wide prison, England, is a nest Of cradled peace built on the mountain tops, To which the eagle-spirits of the free, Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn the storm Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth, Return to brood over the [ ] thoughts That cannot die, and may not be repelled. PRINCE ATHANASE. PART II. FRAGMENT I. PRINCE Athanase had one beloved friend, An old, old man, with hair of silver white, With his wise words; and eyes whose arrowy light Shone like the reflex of a thousand minds. He was the last whom superstition's blight Had spared in Greece-the blight that cramps and blinds, And in his olive bower at Enoe Had sate from earliest youth. Like one who finds A fertile island in the barren sea, One mariner who has survived his mates With soul-sustaining songs, and sweet debates And thus Zonoras, by forever seeing Their bright creations, grew like wisest men; A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins then, Was grass-grown-and the unremembered tears And as the lady looked with faithful grief And blighting hope, who with the news of death Struck body and soul as with a mortal blight, She saw beneath the chesnuts, far beneath, An old man toiling up, a weary wight; She saw his white hairs glittering in the light Of the wood fire, and round his shoulders fall; And his wan visage and his withered mien And Athanase, her child, who must have been Then three years old, sate opposite and gazed. FRAGMENT II. Such was Zonoras; and as daylight finds Thus had his age, dark, cold, and tempest-tost, The spirit of Prince Athanase, a child, And sweet and subtle talk they evermore, The youth, as shadows on a grassy hill Strange truths and new to that experienced man; Still they were friends, as few have ever been Who mark the extremes of life's discordant span. And in the caverns of the forest green, |