Then as my gaze their waving eagles met,
And through the night each sparkling bayonet,
Still memory told how Austria's evil hour
Had felt on Praga's field a Frederic's power,
And Gallia's vaunting train,(4) and Mosco's
horde,
Had fleshed the maiden steel of Brunswic's sword.
Oh! yet, I deemed, that Fate, by justice led,
Might wreathe once more the veteran's silver head;
That Europe's ancient pride would yet disdain
The cumbrous sceptre of a single reign;
That conscious right would tenfold strength afford,
And Heaven assist the patriot's holy sword,
And look in mercy through the auspicious sky,
To bless the saviour host of Germany.
And are they dreams, these bodings, such as shed
Their lonely comfort o'er the hermit's bed?
And are they dreams? or can the Eternal Mind
Care for a sparrow, yet neglect mankind?
Why, if the dubious battle own his power,
And the red sabre, where he bids, devour,
Why then can one the curse of worlds deride,
And millions weep a tyrant's single pride?
Thus sadly musing, far my footsteps strayed,
Rapt in the visions of the Aonian maid.
It was not she, whose lonely voice I hear
Fall in soft whispers on my love-lorn ear;
My daily guest, who wont my steps to guide
Through the green walks of scented even-tide,
Or stretched with me in noonday ease along,
To list the reaper's chaunt, or throstle's song:
But she of loftier port; whose grave control
Rules the fierce workings of the patriot's soul;
She, whose high presence, o'er the midnight oil,
With fame's bright promise cheers the student's
toil;
That same was she, whose ancient lore refined
The sober hardihood of Sydney's mind.
Borne on her wing, no more I seemed to rove
By Dresden's glittering spires, and linden grove;
No more the giant Elbe, all silver bright,
Spread his broad bosom to the fair moonlight,
While the still margent of his ample flood
Bore the dark image of the Saxon wood-
(Woods happy once, that heard the carols free
Of rustic love, and cheerful industry;
Now dull and joyless lie their alleys green,
It may not be. Destruction's gory wing Soars o'er the banners of the younger king, Too rashly brave, who seeks with single sway To stem the lava on its destined way. Poor, glittering warriors, only wont to know The bloodless pageant of a martial show; Nurselings of peace; for fiercer fights prepare, And dread the step-dame sway of unaccustomed war!
They fight, they bleed!-Oh! had that blood been shed
When Charles and Valour Austria's armies led;
Had these stood forth the righteous cause to shield,
When victory wavered on Moravia's field;
Then France had mourned her conquests made in
vain,
Her backward beaten ranks, and countless slain;
Then had the strength of Europe's freedom stood,
And still the Rhine had rolled a German flood!
"Oh! nursed in many a wile, and practised long, To spoil the poor, and cringe before the strong; To swell the victor's state, and hovering near, Like some base vulture in the battle's rear, To watch the carnage of the field, and share Each loathsome alms the prouder eagles spare: A curse is on thee Brandenburgh! the sound Of Poland's wailings drags thee to the ground; And, drunk with guilt, thy harlot lips shall know The bitter dregs of Austria's cup of wo.
"Enough of vengeance! O'er the ensanguined plain
I gaze and seek their numerous host in vain;
Gone like the locust band when whirlwinds bear
Their flimsy regions through the waste of air.
Enough of vengeance!-By the glorious dead,
Who bravely fell where youthful Lewis led;(5)
By Blucher's sword in fiercest danger tried,
And the true heart that burst when Brunswic died;
By her whose charms the coldest zeal might
warm,(6)
The manliest firmness in the fairest form-
Save, Europe, save the remnant !-Yet remains
One glorious path to free the world from chains.
Why, when your northern band in Eylau's wood
Retreating struck, and tracked their course with
While one firm rock the floods of ruin stayed,
Why, generous Austria, were thy wheels delayed?
And silence marks the track where France has And Albion!"-Darker sorrow veiled his browbeen.)
Far other scenes than these my fancy viewed:
Rocks robed in ice, a mountain solitude;
Where on Helvetian hills, in godlike state,
Alone and awful, Europe's Angel sate:
Silent and stern he sate; then, bending low,
Listened the ascending plaints of human wo.
And waving as in grief his towery head,
"Not yet, not yet the day of rest," he said;
"Friend of the friendless-Albion! where art thou?
Child of the Sea, whose wing-like sails are spread,
The covering cherub of the ocean's bed!(7)
The storm and tempest render peace to thee,
And the wild-roaring waves a stern security.
But hope not thou in Heaven's own strength to ride,
Freedom's loved ark, o'er broad oppression's tide;
If virtue leave thee, if thy careless eye
Glance in contempt on Europe's agony.
Alas! where now the bands who wont to pour
Their strong deliverance on th' Egyptian shore?
Wing, wing your course, a prostrate world to save,
Triumphant squadrons of Trafalgar's wave.
“And thou, blest star of Europe's darkest hour,
Whose words were wisdom, and whose counsels
power,
Whom earth applauded through her peopled shores!
(Alas! whom earth too early lost deplores ;-)
Young without follies, without rashness bold,
And greatly poor amidst a nation's gold!
In every veering gale of faction true,
Untarnished Chatham's genuine child, adieu!
Unlike our common suns, whose gradual ray
Expands from twilight to intenser day,
Thy blaze broke forth at once in full meridian sway,
O, proved in danger! not the fiercest flame
Of Discord's rage thy constant soul could tame;
Not when, far-striding o'er thy palsied land,
Gigantic Treason took his bolder stand;
Not when wild Zeal, by murderous Faction led,
On Wicklow's hills, her grass-green banner spread;
Or those stern conquerors of the restless wave
Defied the native soil they wont to save.—
Undaunted patriot! in that dreadful hour,
When pride and genius own a sterner power;
When the dimmed eyeball, and the struggling
breath,
And pain, and terror, mark advancing death;-
Still in that breast thy country held her throne,
Thy toil, thy fear, thy prayer were hers alone,
Thy last faint effort hers, and hers thy parting
"Yes, from those lips while fainting nations drew Hope ever strong, and courage ever new ;Yet, yet, I deemed, by that supporting hand Propped in her fall might Freedom's ruin stand; And purged by fire, and stronger from the storm, Degraded Justice rear her reverend form. Now, hope, adieu!-adieu the generous careTo shield the weak, and tame the proud in war! The golden chain of realms, when equal awe Poised the strong balance of impartial law; When rival states as federate sisters shone, Alike, yet various, and though many, one; And, bright and numerous as the spangled sky, Beamed each fair star of Europe's galaxyAll, all are gone, and after-time shall trace One boundless rule, one undistinguished race; Twilight of worth, where nought remains to move The patriot's ardour, or the subject's love.
Behold, e'en now, while every manly lore And ev'ry muse forsakes my yielding shore; Faint, vapid fruits of slavery's sickly clime, Each tinsel art succeeds, and harlot rhyme! To gild the vase, to bid the purple spread In sightly foldings o'er the Grecian bed, Their mimic guard where sculptured gryphons keep, And Memphian idols watch o'er beauty's sleep;
To rouse the slumbering sparks of faint desire
With the base tinkling of the Teian lyre;
While youth's enervate glance and gloating age
Hang o'er the mazy waltz, or pageant stage;
Each wayward wish of sickly taste to please,
The nightly revel and the noontide ease—
These, Europe, are thy toils, thy trophies these!
"So, when wide-wasting hail, or whelming rain,
Have strewed the bearded hope of golden grain,
From the wet furrow, struggling to the skies,
The tall, rank weeds in barren splendour rise;
And strong, and towering o'er the mildewed ear,
Uncomely flowers and baneful herbs appear;
The swain's rich toils to useless poppies yield,
And Famine stalks along the purple field.
"And thou, the poet's theme, the patriot's
Where, France, thy hopes, thy gilded promise where;
When o'er Montpelier's vines, and Jura's snows,
All goodly bright, young Freedom's planet rose?
What boots it now, (to our destruction brave,)
How strong thine arm in war? a valiant slave
What boots it now that wide thine eagles sail,
Fanned by the flattering breath of conquest's gale?
What, that, high-piled within yon ample dome,
The blood-bought treasures rest of Greece and
Rome?
Scourge of the highest, bolt in vengeance hurled
By Heaven's dread justice on a shrinking world!
Go, vanquished victor, bend thy proud helm down
Before thy sullen tyrant's steely crown.
For him in Afric's sands, and Poland's snows,
Reared by thy toil the shadowy laurel grows;
And rank in German fields the harvest springs
Of pageant councils and obsequious kings.
Such purple slaves, of glittering fetters vain,
Linked the wide circuit of the Latian chain;
And slaves like these shall every tyrant find,
To gild oppression, and debase mankind.
"Oh! live there yet whose hardy souls and high Peace bought with shame, and tranquil bonds defy? Who, driven from every shore, and lords in vain Of the wide prison of the lonely main, Cling to their country's rights with freeborn zeal, More strong from every stroke, and patient of the steel?
Guiltless of chains, to them has Heaven consigned
Th' entrusted cause of Europe and mankind!
Or hope we yet in Sweden's martial snows
That Freedom's weary foot may find repose?
No;-from yon hermit shade, yon cypress dell,
Where faintly peals the distant matin-bell;
Where bigot kings and tyrant priests had shed
Their sleepy venom o'er his dreadful head;
He wakes, th' avenger-hark! the hills around,
Untamed Austria bids her clarion sound;
And many an ancient rock, and fleecy plain,
And many a valiant heart returns the strain:
Heard by that shore, where Calpe's armed steep | And weeping France her captive king(17) de-
Flings its long shadow o'er th' Herculean deep,
And Lucian glades, whose hoary poplars wave
In soft, sad murmurs over Inez' grave.(8)
And cursed the deathful point of Ebro's sword.
Now, nerved with hope, their night of slavery past,
Lo! Conquest calls, and beck'ning from afar,
Uplifts his laurel wreath, and waves them on to
They bless the call who dared the first withstand (9) Each heart beats high in freedom's buxom blast;
The Moslem wasters of their bleeding land,
When firm in faith, and red with slaughtered foes,
Thy spear-encircled crown, Asturia(10) rose,
Nor these alone; as loud the war-notes swell,
La Mancha's shepherd quits his cork-built cell;
Alhama's strength is there, and those who till
(A hardy race!) Morena's scorched hill;
And in rude arms through wide Gallicia's reign,
The swarthy vintage pours her vigorous train.
"Saw ye those tribes? not theirs the plumed
boast,
The sightly trappings of a marshalled host;
No weeping nations curse their deadly skill,
Expert in danger, and inured to kill:
-Wo to th' usurper then, who dares defy
The sturdy wrath of rustic loyalty!
Wo to the hireling bands, foredoomed to feel
How strong in labour's horny hand the steel!(18)
Behold e'en now, beneath yon Boetic skies
Another Pavia bids her trophies rise ;-
E'en now in base disguise and friendly night
Their robber-monarch speeds his secret flight;
And with new zeal the fiery Lusians rear,
(Roused by their neighbour's worth,) the long-ne-
glected spear.
But theirs the kindling eye, the strenuous arm;
Theirs the dark cheek, with patriot ardour warm,
Unblanched by sluggard ease, or slavish fear,
And proud and pure the blood that mantles there.
Theirs from the birth is toil;-o'er granite steep,
And heathy wild, to guard the wandering sheep;
To urge the labouring mule, or bend the spear
'Gainst the night-prowling wolf, or felon bear;
The bull's hoarse rage in dreadful sport to mock,
And meet with single sword his bellowing shock.
Each martial chant they know, each manly rhyme," Spirit,” I cried, “dread teacher, yet declare,
Rude, ancient lays of Spain's heroic time.(11)
Of him in Xere's carnage fearless found,(12)
(His glittering brows with hostile spear-heads
bound ;)
"So when stern winter chills the April showers,
And iron frost forbids the timely flowers;
Oh! deem not thou the vigorous herb below
Is crushed and dead beneath the incumbent snow;
Such tardy suns shall wealthier harvests bring
Than all the early smiles of flattering spring."
Sweet as the martial trumpet's silver swell,
On my charmed sense th' unearthly accents fell;
Me wonder held, and joy chastised by fear,
As one who wished, yet hardly hoped to hear.
In that good fight, shall Albion's arm be there?
Can Albion, brave, and wise, and proud, refrain
To hail a kindred soul, and link her fate with
Spain?
Of that chaste king whose hardy mountain Too long her sons, estranged from war and toil,
O'erthrew the knightly race of Charlemagne ;
And chiefest him who reared his banner tall(14)
(Illustrious exile!) o'er Valencia's wall;
Ungraced by kings, whose Moorish title rose
The toil-earned homage of his wondering foes.
"Yes; every mould'ring tower and haunted
flood,
And the wild murmurs of the waving wood;
Each sandy waste, and orange-scented dell,
And red Buraba's field, and Lugo,(15) tell,
Have loathed the safety of the sea-girt isle;
And chid the waves which pent their fire within,
As the stalled war-horse woos the battle's din.
Oh, by this throbbing heart, this patriot glow,
Which, well I feel, each English breast shall
know;
Say, shall my country, roused from deadly sleep,
Crowd with her hardy sons yon western steep;
And shall once more the star of France grow
pale,
And dim its beams in Roncesvalles' vale?(19)
How their brave fathers fought, how thick the in- Or shall foul sloth and timid doubt conspire
Oh! virtue long forgot, or vainly tried,
To glut a bigot's zeal, or tyrant's pride;
Condemned in distant climes to bleed and die
'Mid the dank poisons of Tlascala's(16) sky;
Or when stern Austria stretched her lawless
And spent in northern fights the flower of Spain;
Or war's hoarse furies yelled on Ysell's shore,
And Alva's ruffian sword was drunk with gore.
Yet dared not then Tlascala's chiefs withstand
The lofty daring of Castilia's band;
To mar our zeal, and waste our manly fire?"
Still as I gazed, his lowering features spread,
High rose his form, and darkness veiled his head;
Fast from his eyes the ruddy lightning broke,
To heaven he reared his arm, and thus he spoke :
"Wo, trebly wo to their slow zeal who bore
Delusive comfort to Iberia's shore!
Who in mid conquest, vaunting, yet dismayed,
Now gave and now withdrew their laggard aid;
Who, when each bosom glowed, each heart beat
high,
Chilled the pure stream of England's energy,
And lost in courtly forms and blind delay
The loitered hours of glory's short-lived day.
"O peerless island, generous, bold, and free,
Lost, ruined Albion, Europe mourns for thee!
Hadst thou but known the hour in mercy given
To stay thy doom, and ward the ire of Heaven;
Bared in the cause of man thy warrior breast,
And crushed on yonder hills th' approaching pest,
Then had not murder sacked thy smiling plain,
And wealth, and worth, and wisdom, all been vain.
"Yet, yet awake! while fear and wonder wait,
On the poised balance, trembling still with fate!(20)
If aught their worth can plead, in battle tried,
Who tinged with slaughter Tajo's curdling tide;
(What time base truce the wheels of war could
stay,
And the weak victor flung his wreath away;)—
Or theirs, who, doled in scanty bands afar,
Waged without hope the disproportioned war,
And cheerly still, and patient of distress,
Led their forwasted files on numbers number-
less!(21)
"Yes, through the march of many a weary day,
As yon dark column toils its seaward way;
As bare, and shrinking from th' inclement sky,
The languid soldier bends him down to die;
As o'er those helpless limbs, by murder gored,
The base pursuer waves his weaker sword,
And, trod to earth, by trampling thousands pressed,
The horse-hoof glances from that mangled breast;
E'en in that hour his hope to England flies,
And fame and vengeance fire his closing eyes.
"Oh! if such hope can plead, or his, whose
Drew from his conquering host their latest tear;
Whose skill, whose matchless valour, gilded flight;
Entombed in foreign dust, a hasty soldier's rite;—
Oh! rouse thee yet to conquer and to save,
And Wisdom guide the sword which Justice gave!
"And yet the end is not! from yonder towers
While one Saguntum(22) mocks the victor's
While one brave heart defies a servile chain,
And one true soldier wields a lance for Spain;
Trust not, vain tyrant, though thy spoiler band
In tenfold myriads darken half the land;
(Vast as that power, against whose impious lord
Bethulia's matron(23) shook the nightly sword;)
Though ruth and fear thy woundless soul defy,
And fatal genius fire thy martial eye;
Yet trust not here o'er yielding realms to roam,
Or cheaply bear a bloodless laurel home!
"No! by His viewless arm whose righteous
Defends the orphan's tear, the poor man's prayer; Who, Lord of nature, o'er this changeful ball Decrees the rise of empires, and the fall; Wondrous in all his ways, unseen, unknown,(24) Who treads the wine-press of the world alone;
And robed in darkness, and surrounding fears,
Speeds on their destined road the march of years!
No!-shall yon eagle, from the snare set free,
Stoop to thy wrist, or cower his wing for thee?
And shall it tame despair, thy strong control,
Or quench a nation's still reviving soul?-
Go, bid the force of countless bands conspire
To curb the wandering wind, or grasp the fire!
Cast thy vain fetters on the troublous sea!-
But Spain, the brave, the virtuous, shall be free."
cording to the Spanish romances, and the graver authority of Mariana, the whole force of Charlevalles. Bertrand del Carpio, the son of Alonzo's magne and the twelve peers of France at Roncessister, Ximena, was his general; and according to Don Quixote (no incompetent authority on such a subject) put the celebrated Ordando to the same death as Hercules inflicted on Antæus. His reason was, that the nephew of Charlemagne was enchanted, and like Achilles only vulnerable in the heel, to guard which he wore always iron shoes. See Mariana, l. vii. c. xi.; Don Quixote,
Inez de Castro, the beloved mistress of the Infant book i. c. I.; and the notes on Mr. Southey's Don Pedro, son of Alphonso IV. King of Portugal, Chronicle of the Cid; a work replete with powerand stabbed by the orders, and, according to Ca-ful description, and knowledge of ancient history moens, in the presence of that monarch. A foun- and manners, and which adds a new wreath to tain near Coimbra, the scene of their loves and one, who "nullum fere scribendi genus intactum misfortunes, is still pointed out by tradition, and reliquit, nullum quod tetigit non ornavit." called Amores.-De la Clede, Hist. de Portugalle, 4to. tom. i. page 282-7:-and Camoens' Lusiad, canto 3, stanza cxxxv.
Note 14, page 11, col. 1.
Chiefest him who reared his banner tall, &c.
Rodrigo Diaz, of Bivar, surnamed the Cid by the Moors.-See Mr. Southey's Chronicle
Note 15, page 11, col. 1.
Red Buraba's field, and Lugo
Buraba and Lugo were renowned scenes of Spanish victories over the Moors, in the reigns of Bermudo, or, as his name is Latinized, Veremundus, and Alonso the Chaste. Of Lugo the British have since obtained a melancholy knowledge.
Note 16, page 11, col. 1.
Tlascala.
An extensive district of Mexico; its inhabitants were the first Indians who submitted to the Spaniards under Cortez.
Note 17, page 11, col. 2.
Her captive king.
Francis I. taken prisoner at the battle of Pavia.
Note 18, page 11, col. 2.
Yon Baotic skies.
Andalusia forms a part of the ancient Hispania Boetica.
Note 18, page 11, col. 2.
Roncesvalles' vale.
See the former note on Alonso the Chaste.
Note 20, page 12, col. 1.
The poised balance trembling still with fate.
This line is imitated from one of Mr. Roscoe's
Alonso, surnamed the Chaste, with ample rea-spirited verses on the commencement of the French son, if we believe his historians; who defeated, ac-revolution.
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