XXI

Patriot, sage, poet, orator, each part
Was subtly played, the greatest unattained
In life and death unfelt, the hero's heart.
Dazzled wert thou, thy giddy summit gained,
While flattery whispered that the Tribune reigned;
Foes mocked thee, patriots saw their liberty
By crime, and vanity, and folly stained;
Failure, flight, cowardice, apostacy,
Proved what thou wert too late, vain martyr of the free!

XXII

But in thy fall a memory sublime
Was left, the moral what to seek or shun,
For patriots through all ages and all time;
Freedom by valour must be held as won,
No sheltered flower to blossom in the sun,
But a tossed vessel warring with the blast;
Though the waves, white-edged, whelming o'er her run,
Though lightnings rend the deck and lower the mast.
The helmsman's eye must watch the pole-star to the last.

XXIII

Glorious and living incarnation! Light
Embodied in the human form, the god
Confronted visibly, from his calm height
Descended, clouds revealing where he trod;
We stand and gaze upon the presence awed:
His parted lips a smile of triumph wear,
A glory from his brow is flashed abroad;
It is the morning sun-rays glittering there,
Then when he shook the day from his ambrosial hair.

XXIV

Python, the earth-born, gasps beneath him slain;
But he, the embodied beautiful and good,
Unruffled stands, as nether strife were vain
Matched with divinity; his foe subdued
He gazes on no more: his haughtier mood
Hath passed away, and his all-radiant eyes
Are looking through eternity; the brood
Of evil crushed, his spirit heavenward flies,
For his reward must come from the attesting skies.

XXV

Such Nature never stamped, nor form, nor face,
Hero nor god of old heroic time;
Beauty, and might, and majesty, and grace,
Are gathered centering in his form sublime;
Lord of the Muse and the immortal rhyme,
Thought on that forehead sits as on a throne,
And prescience breathing of his heavenly clime;
A light within those full-orbed eyes is shown,
The vision of the god, the past and future known.

XXVI

The living test of human agony,
What man relying on himself may bear,
The writhing group of the Laocoon see;
Passion, will, hope, power, all contending there;
Pangs by fear unconceived his vitals tear,
But in its tortured citadel the mind
Sublimely sits contending with despair!
The crushing snakes his limbs enfettered bind,
The coiling bonds of fate indissolubly twined.

XXVII

His head leans back in languor; his raised brow
Is ploughed by pain in furrows; his strained eyes
Sightless, rolled back in their white orbs, avow
Life's incommunicable agomes;
The human will that doth unconquered rise,
The foe confronting vainly in a strife,
Where victory foredoomed is destiny's;
His arms thrown upward show each sinew rife
With swoln convulsion strung, the grasp of death with life.

XXVIII

Scarce hath the poet of the marble hidden
Truth in this symbol of immortal skill,
The inspiring moral swells the heart unbidden;
The image of the indomitable will
Contending with a fate immutable;
Of virtue rising over agony,
So life's sublimer purpose it fulfil;
Self strengthened and resigned to live or die,
With a mind unsubdued and an unshaken eye.

XXIX

Fling back the Orient-gates! behold awaking
Aurora beautiful from trancing sleep,
While with crystalline fingers she is shaking
Morn from her dewy hair; the young Hours keep
Watch o'er her car, and round its pathway sweep
Roses, far scattering onward as they flee,
Like rays flashed foam-like forth from the blue deep;
Downward they wheel in dance and revelry,
Waking on earth's grey hills the choirs of melody.

Her eyes are flashing glories; round her head
Iris her diadem ethereal flings;
The fiery steeds are reined whose nostrils shed
Far darting rays; the Sun his chaplet brings
For his immortal daughter; forth she springs,
Her car is loosed, her banner is unfurled;
Life wakesfrom death-like sleep, time plumes his wings;
Night's shadows backward to their caves are hurled,
For, lo — great Day is born and walks above the world!