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peasants crowd

      Beneath the Chieftains’ standard!’ Thus the Maid.

      To her the tutelary Spirit said: 395

      ‘When Luxury and Lust’s exhausted stores

      No more can rouse the appetites of kings;

      When the low flattery of their reptile lords

      Falls flat and heavy on the accustomed ear;

      When eunuchs sing, and fools buffoonery make, 400

      And dancers writhe their harlot-limbs in vain;

      Then War and all its dread vicissitudes

      Pleasingly agitate their stagnant hearts;

      Its hopes, its fears, its victories, its defeats,

      Insipid Royalty’s keen condiment! 405

      Therefore, uninjured and unprofited

      (Victims at once and executioners),

      The congregated Husbandmen lay waste

      The vineyard and the harvest. As along

      The Bothnic coast, or southward of the Line, 410

      Though hushed the winds and cloudless the high noon,

      Yet if Leviathan, weary of ease,

      In sports unwieldy toss his island-bulk,

      Ocean behind him billows, and before

      A storm of waves breaks foamy on the strand. 415

      And hence, for times and seasons bloody and dark,

      Short Peace shall skin the wounds of causeless War,

      And War, his strainéd sinews knit anew,

      Still violate the unfinished works of Peace.

      But yonder look! for more demands thy view!’ 420

      He said: and straightway from the opposite Isle

      A vapour sailed, as when a cloud, exhaled

      From Egypt’s fields that steam hot pestilence,

      Travels the sky for many a trackless league,

      Till o’er some death-doomed land, distant in vain, 425

      It broods incumbent. Forthwith from the plain,

      Facing the Isle, a brighter cloud arose,

      And steered its course which way the vapour went.

      The Maiden paused, musing what this might mean.

      But long time passed not, ere that brighter cloud 430

      Returned more bright; along the plain it swept;

      And soon from forth its bursting sides emerged

      A dazzling form, broad-bosomed, bold of eye,

      And wild her hair, save where with laurels bound.

      Not more majestic stood the healing God, 435

      When from his bow the arrow sped that slew

      Huge Python. Shriek’d Ambition’s giant throng,

      And with them hissed the locust-fiends that crawled

      And glittered in Corruption’s slimy track.

      Great was their wrath, for short they knew their reign; 440

      And such commotion made they, and uproar,

      As when the mad Tornado bellows through

      The guilty islands of the western main,

      What time departing from their native shores,

      Eboe, or Koromantyn’s plain of palms, 445

      The infuriate spirits of the murdered make

      Fierce merriment, and vengeance ask of Heaven.

      Warmed with new influence, the unwholesome plain

      Sent up its foulest fogs to meet the morn:

      The Sun that rose on Freedom, rose in Blood! 450

      ‘Maiden beloved, and Delegate of Heaven!

      (To her the tutelary Spirit said)

      Soon shall the Morning struggle into Day,

      The stormy Morning into cloudless Noon.

      Much hast thou seen, nor all canst understand — 455

      But this be thy best omen — Save thy Country!’

      Thus saying, from the answering Maid he passed,

      And with him disappeared the heavenly Vision.

      ‘Glory to Thee, Father of Earth and Heaven!

      All-conscious Presence of the Universe! 460

      Nature’s vast ever-acting Energy!

      In will, in deed, Impulse of All to All!

      Whether thy Love with unrefracted ray

      Beam on the Prophet’s purgéd eye, or if

      Diseasing realms the Enthusiast, wild of thought, 465

      Scatter new frenzies on the infected throng,

      Thou both inspiring and predooming both,

      Fit instruments and best, of perfect end:

      Glory to Thee, Father of Earth and Heaven!’

      And first a landscape rose 470

      More wild and waste and desolate than where

      The white bear, drifting on a field of ice,

      Howls to her sundered cubs with piteous rage

      And savage agony.

      LITERAL TRANSLATION.

      Leaving the gates of Darkness, O Death! hasten thou to a Race yoked to

      Misery! Thou wilt not be received with lacerations of Cheeks, nor with

      funereal ululation, but with circling Dances and the joy of Songs. Thou

      art terrible indeed, yet thou dwellest with LIBERTY, stern GENIUS! Borne

      on thy dark pinions over the swelling of Ocean they return to their

      native country. There by the side of fountains beneath Citron groves,

      the Lovers tell to their Beloved, what horrors, being Men, they had

      endured from Men.

      Tho' these Lines may bear a sane sense, yet they are easily, and

      more naturally interpreted with a very false and dangerous one. But I

      was at that time one of the Mongrels, the Josephidites [Josephides =

      the Son of Joseph], a proper name of distinction from those who believe

      in, as well as believe Christ the only begotten Son of the Living God

      before all Time. MS. Note by S. T. C.

      To rear some realm with patient discipline,

      Aye bidding PAIN, dark ERROR’S uncouth child,

      Blameless Parenticide! his snakey scourge 125

      Lift fierce against his Mother! Thus they make

      Of transient Evil ever-during Good

      Themselves probationary, and denied

      Confess’d to view by preternatural deed

      To o’erwhelm the will, save on some fated day 130

      Headstrong, or with petition’d might from God.

      And such perhaps the guardian Power whose ken

      Still dwelt on France. He from the invisible World

      Burst on the MAIDEN’S eye, impregning Air

      With Voices and strange Shapes, illusions apt 135

      Shadowy of

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