EPODE I. a.

I STOOD within the city disinterred:+

And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls
Of spirits passing through the streets; and heard
The Mountain's slumberous voice an intervals
Thrill through those roofless halls;
The oracular thunder penetrating shook

The listening soul in my suspended blood;
I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke-

I felt, but heard not :-through white columns glowed
The isle-sustaining Ocean-flood,

A plane of light between two Heavens of azure :
Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre
Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure
Were to spare Death, had never made erasure ;
But every living lineament was clear

As in the sculptor's thought; and there
The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy, and pine,
Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow,
Seemed only not to move and grow

Because the crystal silence of the air

Weighed on their life; even as the Power divine

Which theu lulled all things, brooded upon mine.

The Author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii and Baie with the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples. This has gi ven a tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes which depicture these scenes, and some of the majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene of this animating event.Author's Note.

+ Pompeii.

EPODE II. a.

Then gentle winds arose

With many a mingled close

Of wild Eolian sound and mountain odour keen;
And where the Baian ocean

Welters with airlike motion

Within, above, around its bowers of starry green,
Moving the sea flowers in those purple caves
Even as the ever stormless atmosphere
Floats o'er the Elysian realm,

It bore ine like an Angel o'er the waves
Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air
No storm can overwhelin ;

I sailed, where ever flows
Under the caim Serene

A spirit of deep emotion
From the unknown graves

Of the dead kings of Melody.*

Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm
The horizontal æther; heaven stript bare
Its depths over Elysium, where the prow
Made the invisible water white as snow;
From that Typhæan mount, Inarime

There streamed a sunlike vapour, like the standard
Of some ethereal host;

Whilst from all the coast,

Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered Over the oracular woods and divine sea

Prophesyings which grew articulate

They seize me- I must speak them-be they fate!

Homer and Virgil,

STROPHEC a. I.

Naples! thou Heart of men which ever pantest
Naked, beneath the lidless eye of heaven!
Elysian City, which to calm enchantest

The mutinous air and sea: they round thee, even
As sleep round Love, are driven !
Metropolis of a ruined Paradise

Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained!
Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice,

Which armed Victory offers up unstained

To Love, the flower-enchained!

Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be,
Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free,
If Hope and Truth and Justice can avail,
Hail, hail, all hail!

STROPHE B. 2.

Thou youngest giant birth

Which from the groaning earth

Leap'st, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale!

Last, of the Intercessors!

Who 'gainst the Crowned Trausgressors

Pleadest before God's love! Arrayed in Wisdom's mail, Wave thy lightning lance in mirth,

Nor let thy high heart fail,

Though from their hundred gates the leagued Oppressors With hurried legions move!

Hail, hail, all hail! ̧

ANTISTROPHE α.

What! though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme
Freedom and thee, thy shield is as a mirror
To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce gleam
To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer,

A new Acteon's error

Shall their's have been-devoured by their own hounds!
Be thou like the imperial Basilisk
Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds!
Gaze on oppression, till at that dread risk
Aghast she pass from the Earth's disk,

Fear not, but gaze-for freemen mightier grow,
And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe;
If Hope and Truth and Justice may avail,
Thou shalt be great-All hail !

ANTISTROPHE 6. 2.

From Freedom's form divine,
From Nature's inmost shrine,

Strip every impious gawd, rend Error veil by veil :
O'er Ruin desolate,

O'er Falsehood's fallen state,

Sit thou sublime, unawed; be the Destroyer pale!
And equal laws be thine,

And winged words let sail,

Freighted with truth even from the throue of God :
That wealth, surviving fate,

Be thine. All hail!

ANTISTROPHE α. y.

Didst thou not start to hear Spain's thrilling pæan
From land to land re-echoed solemnly,
Till silence became music? From the Eean*
To the cold Alps, eternal Italy

Starts to hear thine! The Sea

Which paves the desert streets of Venice laughs
In light and music; widowed Genoa wan

Eæna, the island of Circe.

By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs,
Murmuring, where is Doria? fair Milan,
Within those veins long ran

The viper's palsying venom, lifts her heel
To bruise his head. The signal and the seal
(If Hope and Truth and Justice can avail)
Art Thou of all these hopes.-O hail!

ANTISTROPHE B. 7.

Florence! beneath the sun,

Of cities fairest one,

Blushes within her bower for Freedom's expectation: From eyes of quenchless hope

Rome tears the priestly cope,

As ruling once by power, so now by admiration,
An athlete stript to run

From a remoter station

For the high prize lost on Philippi's shore:--
As then Hope, Truth, and Justice, did avail,
So now may Fraud and Wrong!

EPODE I. S.

O hail!

Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms
Arrayed against the everliving Gods?
The crash and darkness of a thousand storms
Bursting their inaccessible abodes

Of crags and thunder-clouds?

See ye the banners blazoned to the day,

Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride?

Dissonant threats kill Silence far away,

The serene Heaven which wraps our Eden wide

The viper was the armorial device of the Visconti, tyrants of Milan.