| |
| I DID not dream, and yet untiring thought | |
| Rang such wild changes on the spirit’s harp, | |
| It seem’d that slumber ruled. | |
| A structure rose | |
| Deep founded and gigantic. Strangely blent | 5 |
| Its orders seem’d. The dusky Gothic tower | |
| Ecclesiastical, the turret proud | |
| In castellated pomp, the palace dome, | |
| The grated dungeon, and the peasant’s cot | |
| Were grouped within its walls. | 10 |
| A throne was there, | |
| A king with all his gay and courtly train | |
| In robes of splendor, and a vassal throng | |
| Eager to do his will, and pleased with chains | |
| Of gilded servitude. The back-ground seem’d | 15 |
| Darken’d by Misery’s pencil. Famine cast | |
| A tinge of paleness o’er the brow of toil, | |
| While Poverty, to soothe her naked babes, | |
| Shriek’d forth a broken song. | |
| Then came a groan— | 20 |
| A rush, as if of thunder; and the earth | |
| From yawning clefts breathed forth volcanic flames, | |
| While the huge fabric, rocking to its base, | |
| A ruin seem’d. A miserable mass | |
| Of tortured life roll’d through the burning gates, | 25 |
| And spread terrific o’er the parching soil, | |
| Like blacken’d lava. Then there was a pause. | |
| As if the dire convulsion mourned its wreck. | |
| To the rent walls the sad survivors clung, | |
| And, even ’mid smouldering fires, the artificers | 30 |
| Wrought to uprear the pile. | |
| But all at once | |
| A bugle blast was heard—a courser’s tramp— | |
| While a stern warrior waved his sword, and cried, | |
| “Away! away!” Like dreams the pageant fled, | 35 |
| Monarch, and royal dame, and nobles proud. | |
| So there he stood alone, array’d in power | |
| Supreme and self-derived. | |
| Where the rude Alps | |
| Mock with their battlements the bowing cloud, | 40 |
| His eagle-banner stream’d. Pale Gallia pour’d | |
| Incense as to an idol, mixed with blood | |
| Of her young conscript hearts. Chain’d in wild wrath, | |
| The Austrian lion couch’d; even Cæsar’s realm | |
| Cast down its crown pontifical, and bade | 45 |
| The Eternal city lay her lip in dust. | |
| The Land of Pyramids bent darkly down, | |
| And from the subject nations rose a voice | |
| Of wretchedness that awed the trembling globe. | |
| Earth, slowly rising from her thousand thrones, | 50 |
| Did homage to the Corsican, as he | |
| The favor’d patriarch in his dream beheld | |
| Heaven, with her sceptred blazonry of stars, | |
| Bow to a reaper’s sheaf. But fickle man, | |
| Though like the sea he boast himself awhile, | 55 |
| Hath bounds to his supremacy. I saw | |
| A listed field, where the embattled kings | |
| Drew in deep wrath their armed legions on. | |
| The self-crown’d warrior blench’d not, and his sword | |
| Gleam’d like the flashing lightning, when it cleaves | 60 |
| The vaulted firmament. In vain, in vain! | |
| The hour of fate had come. From a fair isle, | |
| ’Gainst whose bold rocks the foil’d Pacific roars, | |
| I heard above the troubled surge, the moan | |
| Of a chafed spirit warring with its lot; | 65 |
| And there, where every element conspired | |
| To make Ambition’s prison doubly sure, | |
| The mighty warrior gnaw’d his chain, and died. | |
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