Ode to Liberty

Yet, Freedom, yet, thy banner, torn but flying,Streams like a thunder-storm against the wind.--BYRON.

A glorious people vibrated againThe lightning of the nations: LibertyFrom heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain,5Scattering contagious fire into the sky,Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay,And in the rapid plumes of songClothed itself, sublime and strong;As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among,10Hovering inverse o'er its accustomed prey;Till from its station in the Heaven of fameThe Spirit's whirlwind rapped it, and the rayOf the remotest sphere of living flameWhich paves the void was from behind it flung,15As foam from a ship's swiftness, when there cameA voice out of the deep: I will record the same.

The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth:The burning stars of the abyss were hurledInto the depths of Heaven. The daedal earth,20That island in the ocean of the world,Hung in its cloud of all-sustaining air:But this divinest universeWas yet a chaos and a curse,For thou wert not: but, power from worst producing worse,25The spirit of the beasts was kindled there,And of the birds, and of the watery forms,And there was war among them, and despairWithin them, raging without truce or terms:The bosom of their violated nurse30Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms on worms,And men on men; each heart was as a hell of storms.

Man, the imperial shape, then multipliedHis generations under the pavilionOf the Sun's throne: palace and pyramid,35Temple and prison, to many a swarming millionWere, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves.This human living multitudeWas savage, cunning, blind, and rude,For thou wert not; but o'er the populous solitude,40Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves,Hung Tyranny; beneath, sate deifiedThe sister-pest, congregator of slaves;Into the shadow of her pinions wideAnarchs and priests, who feed on gold and blood45Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed,Drove the astonished herds of men from every side.

The nodding promontories, and blue isles,And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous wavesOf Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles50Of favouring Heaven: from their enchanted cavesProphetic echoes flung dim melody.On the unapprehensive wildThe vine, the corn, the olive mild,Grew savage yet, to human use unreconciled;55And, 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 veinOf Parian stone; and, yet a speechless child,60Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strainHer lidless eyes for thee; when o'er the Aegean main

Athens arose: a city such as visionBuilds from the purple crags and silver towersOf battlemented cloud, as in derision65Of kingliest masonry: the ocean-floorsPave it; the evening sky pavilions it;Its portals are inhabitedBy thunder-zoned winds, each headWithin its cloudy wings with sun-fire garlanded,--70A divine work! Athens, diviner yet,Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the willOf man, as on a mount of diamond, set;For thou wert, and thine all-creative skillPeopled, with forms that mock the eternal dead75In marble immortality, that hillWhich was thine earliest throne and latest oracle.

Within the surface of Time's fleeting riverIts wrinkled image lies, as then it layImmovably unquiet, and for ever80It trembles, but it cannot pass away!The voices of thy bards and sages thunderWith an earth-awakening blastThrough the caverns of the past:(Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast:)85A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder,Which soars where Expectation never flew,Rending the veil of space and time asunder!One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew;One Sun illumines Heaven; one Spirit vast90With life and love makes chaos ever new,As Athens doth the world with thy delight renew.

Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest,Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmaean Maenad,She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest95From that Elysian food was yet unweaned;And many a deed of terrible uprightnessBy thy sweet love was sanctified;And in thy smile, and by thy side,Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died.100But when tears stained thy robe of vestal-whiteness,And gold profaned thy Capitolian throne,Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness,The senate of the tyrants: they sunk proneSlaves of one tyrant: Palatinus sighed105Faint echoes of Ionian song; that toneThou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown

From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill,Or piny promontory of the Arctic main,Or utmost islet inaccessible,110Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign,Teaching the woods and waves, and desert rocks,And every Naiad's ice-cold urn,To talk in echoes sad and sternOf that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn?115For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocksOf the Scald's dreams, nor haunt the Druid's sleep.What if the tears rained through thy shattered locksWere quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not weep,When from its sea of death, to kill and burn,120The Galilean serpent forth did creep,And made thy world an undistinguishable heap.

A thousand years the Earth cried, 'Where art thou?'And then the shadow of thy coming fellOn Saxon Alfred's olive-cinctured brow:125And many a warrior-peopled citadel.Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep,Arose in sacred Italy,Frowning o'er the tempestuous seaOf kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty;130That multitudinous anarchy did sweepAnd burst around their walls, like idle foam,Whilst from the human spirit's deepest deepStrange melody with love and awe struck dumbDissonant arms; and Art, which cannot die,135With divine wand traced on our earthly homeFit imagery to pave Heaven's everlasting dome.

Thou huntress swifter than the Moon! thou terrorOf the world's wolves! thou bearer of the quiver,Whose sunlike shafts pierce tempest-winged Error,140As light may pierce the clouds when they disseverIn the calm regions of the orient day!Luther caught thy wakening glance;Like lightning, from his leaden lanceReflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance145In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay;And England's prophets hailed thee as their queen,In songs whose music cannot pass away,Though it must flow forever: not unseenBefore the spirit-sighted countenance150Of Milton didst thou pass, from the sad sceneBeyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien.

The eager hours and unreluctant yearsAs on a dawn-illumined mountain stood.Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears,155Darkening each other with their multitude,And cried aloud, 'Liberty!' IndignationAnswered Pity from her cave;Death grew pale within the grave,And Desolation howled to the destroyer, Save!160When like Heaven's Sun girt by the exhalationOf its own glorious light, thou didst arise.Chasing thy foes from nation unto nationLike shadows: as if day had cloven the skiesAt dreaming midnight o'er the western wave,165Men started, staggering with a glad surprise,Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes.

Thou Heaven of earth! what spells could pall thee thenIn ominous eclipse? a thousand yearsBred from the slime of deep Oppression's den.170Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears.Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away;How like Bacchanals of bloodRound France, the ghastly vintage, stoodDestruction's sceptred slaves, and Folly's mitred brood!175When one, like them, but mightier far than they,The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers,Rose: armies mingled in obscure array,Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred bowersOf serene Heaven. He, by the past pursued,180Rests with those dead, but unforgotten hours,Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers.

England yet sleeps: was she not called of old?Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunderVesuvius wakens Aetna, and the cold185Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder:O'er the lit waves every Aeolian isleFrom Pithecusa to PelorusHowls, and leaps, and glares in chorus:They cry, 'Be dim; ye lamps of Heaven suspended o'er us!'190Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smileAnd they dissolve; but Spain's were links of steel,Till bit to dust by virtue's keenest file.Twins of a single destiny! appealTo the eternal years enthroned before us195In the dim West; impress us from a seal,All ye have thought and done! Time cannot dare conceal.

Tomb of Arminius! render up thy deadTill, like a standard from a watch-tower's staff,His soul may stream over the tyrant's head;200Thy victory shall be his epitaph,Wild Bacchanal of truth's mysterious wine,King-deluded Germany,His dead spirit lives in thee.Why do we fear or hope? thou art already free!205And thou, lost Paradise of this divineAnd glorious world! thou flowery wilderness!Thou island of eternity! thou shrineWhere Desolation, clothed with loveliness,Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy,210Gather thy blood into thy heart; repressThe beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces.

Oh, that the free would stamp the impious nameOf KING into the dust! or write it there,So that this blot upon the page of fame215Were as a serpent's path, which the light airErases, and the flat sands close behind!Ye the oracle have heard:Lift the victory-flashing sword.And cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word,220Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bindInto a mass, irrefragably firm,The axes and the rods which awe mankind;The sound has poison in it, 'tis the spermOf what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred;225Disdain not thou, at thine appointed term,To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm.

Oh, that the wise from their bright minds would kindleSuch lamps within the dome of this dim world,That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle230Into the hell from which it first was hurled,A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure;Till human thoughts might kneel alone,Each before the judgement-throneOf its own aweless soul, or of the Power unknown!235Oh, that the words which make the thoughts obscureFrom which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dewFrom a white lake blot Heaven's blue portraiture,Were stripped of their thin masks and various hueAnd frowns and smiles and splendours not their own,240Till in the nakedness of false and trueThey stand before their Lord, each to receive its due!

He who taught man to vanquish whatsoeverCan be between the cradle and the graveCrowned him the King of Life. Oh, vain endeavour!245If on his own high will, a willing slave,He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressorWhat if earth can clothe and feedAmplest millions at their need,And power in thought be as the tree within the seed?250Or what if Art, an ardent intercessor,Driving on fiery wings to Nature's throne,Checks the great mother stooping to caress her,And cries: 'Give me, thy child, dominionOver all height and depth'? if Life can breed255New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan,Rend of thy gifts and hers a thousandfold for one!

Come thou, but lead out of the inmost caveOf man's deep spirit, as the morning-starBeckons the Sun from the Eoan wave,260Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her carSelf-moving, like cloud charioted by flame;Comes she not, and come ye not,Rulers of eternal thought,To judge, with solemn truth, life's ill-apportioned lot?265Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the FameOf what has been, the Hope of what will be?O Liberty! if such could be thy nameWert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee:If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought270By blood or tears, have not the wise and freeWept tears, and blood like tears?--The solemn harmony

Paused, and the Spirit of that mighty singingTo its abyss was suddenly withdrawn;Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging275Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn,Sinks headlong through the aereal golden lightOn the heavy-sounding plain,When the bolt has pierced its brain;As summer clouds dissolve, unburthened of their rain;280As a far taper fades with fading night,As a brief insect dies with dying day,--My song, its pinions disarrayed of might,Drooped; o'er it closed the echoes far awayOf the great voice which did its flight sustain,285As waves which lately paved his watery wayHiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous play.