Even in this low world of care
Freedom ne'er shall want an heir;
Millions breathe but to inherit
Her for ever bounding spirit—
When once more her hosts assemble,
Tyrants shall believe and tremble—
Smile they at this idle threat?
Crimson tears will follow yet.[1]
[First published, Morning Chronicle, March 15, 1816.]
STANZAS FOR MUSIC.
1.
There be none of Beauty's daughters
With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed Ocean's pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lulled winds seem dreaming:
- ↑ ["Talking of politics, as Caleb Quotem says, pray look at the conclusion of my 'Ode on Waterloo,' written in the year 1815, and comparing it with the Duke de Berri's catastrophe in 1820, tell me if I have not as good a right to the character of 'Vates,' in both senses of the word, as Fitzgerald and Coleridge?—
'Crimson tears will follow yet;'
and have not they?"—Letter to Murray, April 24, 1820.
In the Preface to The Tyrant's Downfall, etc., 1814, W. L. Fitzgerald (see English Bards, etc., line l, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 297, note 3) "begs leave to refer his reader to the dates of his Napoleonics... to prove his legitimate title to the prophetical meaning of Vates" (Cent. Mag., July, 1814, vol. lxxxiv, p. 58). Coleridge claimed to have foretold the restoration of the Bourbons (see Biographia Literaria, cap. x.).]
