The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions
Like Chaos o'er creation, uncreating;
An hundred tribes nourished on strange religions
And lawless slaveries,—down the aëreal regions140
Of the white Alps, desolating,
Famished wolves that bide no waiting,
Blotting the glowing footsteps of old[1] glory,
Trampling our columned cities into dust,
Their dull and savage lust 145
On Beauty's corse to sickness satiating—
They come! The fields they tread look black[2] and hoary
With fire—from their red feet the streams run gory!
epode ii β
Which rulest and dost move 150
All things which live and are, within the Italian shore;
Who spreadest Heaven around it,
Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it;
Who sittest in thy star, o'er Ocean's western floor;
Spirit of beauty! at whose soft command 155
The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison
From the Earth's bosom chill;
Oh, bid those beams be each a blinding brand
Of lightning! bid those showers be dews of poison!
Bid the Earth's plenty kill! 160
Bid thy bright Heaven above,
Whilst light and darkness bound it,
Be their tomb who planned
To make it ours and thine!
Or, with thine harmonizing ardours fill 165
And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon
Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire—
Be man's high hope and unextinct desire
The instrument to work thy will divine!
Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards, 170
And frowns and fears from thee,
Would not more swiftly flee
Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds.—
Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine
Thou yieldest or withholdest, oh, let be 175
This city of thy worship ever free!
AUTUMN: A DIRGE
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824.]
The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,
