O wretched

ye if ever any were,—

Sadder than orphans, yet not fatherless!

X.

By thy false cant which on their innocent lips Must hang like poison on an opening bloom, By the dark creeds which cover with eclipse Their pathway from the cradle to the tomb

XI.

By the most impious Hell, and all its terror; By all the grief, the madness, and the guilt Of thine impostures, which must be their

error

That sand on which thy crumbling power is built

XII.

By thy complicity with lust and hate

Thy thirst for tears- thy hunger after gold

The ready frauds which ever on thee wait

The servile arts in which thou hast

grown

old

XIII.

By thy most killing sneer, and by thy smile

By all the arts and snares of thy black den, And for thou canst outweep the croco

dile

By thy false tears— those millstones brain

ing men

XIV.

By all the hate which checks a father's love-
By all the scorn which kills a father's care
By those most impious hands which dared

remove

Nature's high bounds- by thee—and by despair

XV.

Yes, the despair which bids a father groan, And cry, "My children are no longer mine

The blood within those veins may be mine

XVI.

I curse thee though I hate thee not-O slave!

If thou couldst quench the earth-consuming Hell

Of which thou art a dæmon, on thy grave This curse should be a blessing. Fare thee well!

To William Shelley

I.

HE billows on the beach are leap

ing around it,

The bark is weak and frail,

The sea looks black, and the

clouds that bound it

Darkly strew the gale.

Come with me, thou delightful child,
Come with me, though the wave is wild,
And the winds are loose, we must not stay,
Or the slaves of the law may rend thee away.

II.

They have taken thy brother and sister dear,

They have made them unfit for thee; They have withered the smile and dried the

tear

Which should have been sacred to me.

To a blighting faith and a cause of crime
They have bound them slaves in youthly

prime,

And they will curse my name and thee

Because we are fearless and free.

III.

Come thou, beloved as thou art;
Another sleepeth still

Near thy sweet mother's anxious heart,
Which thou with joy shalt fill,

With fairest smiles of wonder thrown
On that which is indeed our own,

And which in distant lands will be

The dearest playmate unto thee.

IV.

Fear not the tyrants will rule for ever,
Or the priests of the evil faith;
They stand on the brink of that raging river,
Whose waves they have tainted with death.
It is fed from the depth of a thousand dells,
Around them it foams and rages and swells;