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    01 *! agony—that centuries should reap No mellower harvest ! Thirteen hundred years Of wealth and glory turiTd to dust and tears :

    And every monument the stranger meets , Church , palace , pillar , as a mourner greets ; And even the Lion all suhdued appears , And the harsh sound of the barharian

    drum , With dull and daily dissonance , repeats The echo of thy tyrants voice along The soft waves , once all musical to song " , That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng " Of gondolas— -and to the busy hum Of cheerful creatures , whose most sinful deeds

    Were but the overheating of the heart , And flow of too much happiness , which needs The aid of age to turn its course apart From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood Of sweet sensations , battling with the hlood .

    But these are better than the gloomy errors , The weeds of nations in their last decay , When Vice walks forth with her unsoften'd terrors , And Mirth is madness and but smiles to slay ; And Hope is nothing but a false delay , The sick man ' s lightning half an hour ere death

    . When Faintness , the last mortal birth of Pain , And apathy of Limb , the dull beginning Of the cold staggering race which Death is winning , Steals vein by vein and pulse hy pulse

    away ; Yet so relieving the o ' er-tortured clay , To him appears renewal of his breath , And freedom the mere numbness of his chain ;—And then he talks of life , and how again He feels his spirits soaring *—albeit weak , And of the fresher air , which he would seek ; And as he whispers knows not that he

    gasps , That his thin fi tiger feels not what it clasps , And so the film comes o ' er hirn ^—and the dizzy Chamber swims round and round—and shadows busy , At which he vainly catches , flit and gleam , Till the Jast rattle chokes the strangled

    ^ creuin . And all is ice and blackness , —and the earth That which it was the moment ere our birth .

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    Poetry . —Venice , an Ode by Lord Byron . 448

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    II . There is no hope for nations !—Search the page Of many thousand years—the daily scene ,, The flow and ebb of each recurring are ,

    The everlasting to be which hath been , Hath , taught us nought or little : still we lean On things that rot beneath our weight * and wear Our strength away in wrestling with the

    air 5 For ' tis our nature strikes us down : the beasts Slaughter ed in hourly hecatombs for feasts Are . of as high an order—they must go Even where their driver goads them , though to slaughter .

    Ye men , who pour your blood for kings as water , What have they given your children in return ? A heritage of servitude and woes , A blindfold bondage , where your hire is blows . What 1 do not yet the red-hot ploughshares burn

    . UU 1 IJ 1 O ' er which you stumble in a false ordeal , And deem this proof of loyalty the real ; Kissing the hand that guides you to your scars , And glorying as you tread the glowing bars 1 Ail that your sires have left you , all that Time

    Bequeaths of free , and History of sublime , Spring from a different theme !—Ye see and read , Admire and sigh , and then suecuml ) and bleed !

    Save the few spirits , who , despite of all , And worse than all , the sudden crimes engender ed By the down thundering of the prisonwall , And thirst to swallow the sweet waters

    tender , Gushing from Freedom ' s fountains- —when the crowd , MaddenM with centuries of drought , are loud , And trample on each other to obtain The cup which brijigs oblivion of a chain

    Heavy and sore , —hi which long yoked they plough'd The sand , —or if there sprung * the yellow grain , 'Twas not for them , their necks , were too much bowM , And their dead palates chew'd the cud of

    p : •—Yes ! the few spirits—who , despite of deeds

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1819, page 443, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1774/page/43/