I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion; Thou needest not fear mine: ODE TO LIBERTY. Yet freedom, yet, thy banner torn but flying, I. A GLORIOUS people vibrated again BYRON. The lightning of the nations; Liberty, From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain, Scattering contagious fire into the sky, Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dis may, And, in the rapid plumes of song, Clothed itself sublime and strong; As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among, Which paves the void, was from behind it flung, came A voice out of the deep; I will record the same. II. The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth; Was yet a chaos and a curse, For thou wert not; but power from worst producing worse, The spirit of the beasts was kindled there, And of the birds, and of the watery forms, And there was war among them and despair Within them, raging without truce or terms. The bosom of their violated nurse Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms on worms, And men on men; each heart was as a hell of storms. III. Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied Of the Sun's throne: palace and pyramid, Temple and prison, to many a swarming million Were as to mountain wolves their ragged caves. This human living multitude Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude, For thou wert not; but o'er the populous solitude, Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves, Hung tyranny; beneath, sat deified The sister pest, congregator of slaves ; Into the shadow of her pinions wide, Anarchs and priests who feed on gold and blood Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed, Drove the astonished herds of men from every side. IV. The nodding promontories, and blue isles, And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles Of favouring heaven; from their enchanted caves Prophetic echoes flung dim melody On the unapprehensive wild, The vine, the corn, the olive mild, Grew, savage yet, to human use unreconciled; And like unfolded flowers beneath the sea, Like the man's thought dark in the infant's brain, Like aught that is which wraps what is to be, Art's deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein Of Parian stone; and, yet a speechless child, V. Athens arose; a city such as vision Builds from the purple crags and silver towers Of battlemented cloud, as in derision Of kingliest masonry:/the ocean floors Pave it the evening sky pavilions it;/ Its portals are inhabited By thunder-zoned winds, each head Within its cloudy wings with sun-fire garlanded, Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set; For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill Peopled, with forms that mock the eternal dead In marble immortality, that hill Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle. VI. away!/ Within the surface of Time's fleeting river Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder, One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, One sun illumines heaven one spirit vast With life and love makes chaos ever new, renew. was and VII. Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fair est, Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmean Menad,* And in thy smile, and by thy side, And gold profaned thy Capitolian throne, Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness, The senate of the tyrants: they sunk prone Slaves of one tyrant./ Palatinus sighed Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown. VIII. From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill, Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign, *See the Baccha of Euripides. |