Like to a harpstring stricken by the wind, The sound of her lament shall, rising o'er The seraph voices, touch the Almighty Mind. Meantime I, humblest of thy sons, and of Earth's dust by immortality refined To sense and suffering, though the vain may scoff, Is not as once it shone o'er thee, forgive! And for my guerdon grants not to survive; A softer glimpse; some stars shine through thy night, Leans sculptured Beauty, which Death cannot blight; The gay, the learn'd, the generous, and the brave, Conquerors on foreign shores, and the far wave, (7) Discoverers of new worlds, which take their name; (8) For thee alone they have no arm to save, And all thy recompense is in their fame, A noble one to them, but not to thee Shall they be glorious, and thou still the same? Oh! more than these illustrious far shall be The being and even yet he may be bornThe mortal saviour who shall set thee free, And see thy diadem, so changed and worn By fresh barbarians, on thy brow replaced; And the sweet sun replenishing thy morn, Thy moral morn, too long with clouds defaced And noxious vapours from Avernus risen, Such as all they must breathe who are debased By servitude, and have the mind in prison. Yet through this centuried eclipse of woe Some voices shall be heard, and earth shall listen; Poets shall follow in the path I show, And make it broader; the same brilliant sky Tuneful shall be their numbers; they shall sing But few shall soar upon that eagle's wing, And look in the sun's face with eagle's gaze And language, eloquently false, evince The harlotry of genius, which, like beauty, And looks on prostitution as a duty. (9) He who once enters in a tyrant's hall As guest is slave, his thoughts become a booty, His spirit; thus the Bard too near the throne Thus trammell'd, thus condemn'd to Flattery's trebles, He sings, as the Athenian spoke, with pebbles In's mouth, lest truth should stammer through his strain. But out of the long file of sonneteers There shall be some who will not sing in vain, And he, their prince, shall rank among my peers, (11) And love shall be his torment; but his grief Shall make an immortality of tears, And Italy shall hail him as the Chief Of Poet-lovers, and his higher song Of Freedom wreathe him with as green a leaf. But in a farther age shall rise along The banks of Po two greater still than he; The world which smiled on him shall do them wrong Till they are ashes, and repose with me. The first will make an epoch with his lyre, And fill the earth with feats of chivalry: His fancy like a rainbow, and his fire, Like that of heaven, immortal, and his thought Borne onward with a wing that cannot tire: Pleasure shall, like a butterfly new caught, Flutter her lovely pinions o'er his theme, And Art itself seem into Nature wrought By the transparency of his bright dream. The second, of a tenderer, sadder mood, Shall pour his soul out o'er Jerusalem; He, too, shall sing of arms, and christian blood Shed where Christ bled for man; and his high harp Shall, by the willow over Jordan's flood, Revive a song of Sion, and the sharp Conflict, and final triumph of the brave Of years, of favour, freedom, even of fame Harder to bear and less deserved, for I Had stung the factions which I strove to quell ; But this meek man, who with a lover's eye Will look on earth and heaven, and who will deign To embalm with his celestial flattery As poor a thing as e'er was spawn'd to reign, And, dying in despondency, bequeath To the kind world, which scarce will yield a tear, A heritage enriching all who breathe With the wealth of a genuine poet's soul, And to their country a redoubled wreath, Unmatch'd by time; not Hellas can unroll Through her olympiads two such names, though one Of hers be mighty;—and is this the whole Of such men's destiny beneath the sun? Must all the finer thoughts, the thrilling sense, The electric blood with which their arteries run, Their body's self turn'd soul with the intense Feeling of that which is, and fancy of That which should be, to such a recompense Conduct? shall their bright plumage on the rough Storm be still scatter'd? Yes, and it must be, For, form'd of far too penetrable stuff, These birds of Paradise but long to flee Back to their native mansion, soon they find |