Lines Written Among The Euganean Hills.

Many a green isle needs must be     In the deep wide sea of Misery,     Or the mariner, worn and wan,     Never thus could voyage on -     Day and night, and night and day,     Drifting on his dreary way,     With the solid darkness black     Closing round his vessel's track:     Whilst above the sunless sky,     Big with clouds, hangs heavily,     And behind the tempest fleet     Hurries on with lightning feet,     Riving sail, and cord, and plank,     Till the ship has almost drank     Death from the o'er-brimming deep;     And sinks down, down, like that sleep     When the dreamer seems to be     Weltering through eternity;     And the dim low line before     Of a dark and distant shore     Still recedes, as ever still     Longing with divided will,     But no power to seek or shun,     He is ever drifted on     O'er the unreposing wave     To the haven of the grave.     What, if there no friends will greet;     What, if there no heart will meet     His with love's impatient beat;     Wander wheresoe'er he may,     Can he dream before that day     To find refuge from distress     In friendship's smile, in love's caress?     Then 'twill wreak him little woe     Whether such there be or no:     Senseless is the breast, and cold,     Which relenting love would fold;     Bloodless are the veins and chill     Which the pulse of pain did fill;     Every little living nerve     That from bitter words did swerve     Round the tortured lips and brow,     Are like sapless leaflets now     Frozen upon December's bough.     On the beach of a northern sea     Which tempests shake eternally,     As once the wretch there lay to sleep,     Lies a solitary heap,     One white skull and seven dry bones,     On the margin of the stones,     Where a few gray rushes stand,     Boundaries of the sea and land:     Nor is heard one voice of wail     But the sea-mews, as they sail     O'er the billows of the gale;     Or the whirlwind up and down     Howling, like a slaughtered town,     When a king in glory rides     Through the pomp of fratricides:     Those unburied bones around     There is many a mournful sound;     There is no lament for him,     Like a sunless vapour, dim,     Who once clothed with life and thought     What now moves nor murmurs not.     Ay, many flowering islands lie     In the waters of wide Agony:     To such a one this morn was led,     My bark by soft winds piloted:     'Mid the mountains Euganean     I stood listening to the paean     With which the legioned rooks did hail     The sun's uprise majestical;     Gathering round with wings all hoar,     Through the dewy mist they soar     Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven     Bursts, and then, as clouds of even,     Flecked with fire and azure, lie     In the unfathomable sky,     So their plumes of purple grain,     Starred with drops of golden rain,     Gleam above the sunlight woods,     As in silent multitudes     On the morning's fitful gale     Through the broken mist they sail,     And the vapours cloven and gleaming     Follow, down the dark steep streaming,     Till all is bright, and clear, and still,     Round the solitary hill.     Beneath is spread like a green sea     The waveless plain of Lombardy,     Bounded by the vaporous air,     Islanded by cities fair;     Underneath Day's azure eyes     Ocean's nursling, Venice lies,     A peopled labyrinth of walls,     Amphitrite's destined halls,     Which her hoary sire now paves     With his blue and beaming waves.     Lo! the sun upsprings behind,     Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined     On the level quivering line     Of the waters crystalline;     And before that chasm of light,     As within a furnace bright,     Column, tower, and dome, and spire,     Shine like obelisks of fire,     Pointing with inconstant motion     From the altar of dark ocean     To the sapphire-tinted skies;     As the flames of sacrifice     From the marble shrines did rise,     As to pierce the dome of gold     Where Apollo spoke of old.     Sun-girt City, thou hast been     Ocean's child, and then his queen;     Now is come a darker day,     And thou soon must be his prey,     If the power that raised thee here     Hallow so thy watery bier.     A less drear ruin then than now,     With thy conquest-branded brow     Stooping to the slave of slaves     From thy throne, among the waves     Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew     Flies, as once before it flew,     O'er thine isles depopulate,     And all is in its ancient state,     Save where many a palace gate     With green sea-flowers overgrown     Like a rock of Ocean's own,     Topples o'er the abandoned sea     As the tides change sullenly.     The fisher on his watery way,     Wandering at the close of day,     Will spread his sail and seize his oar     Till he pass the gloomy shore,     Lest thy dead should, from their sleep     Bursting o'er the starlight deep,     Lead a rapid masque of death     O'er the waters of his path.     Those who alone thy towers behold     Quivering through aereal gold,     As I now behold them here,     Would imagine not they were     Sepulchres, where human forms,     Like pollution-nourished worms,     To the corpse of greatness cling,     Murdered, and now mouldering:     But if Freedom should awake     In her omnipotence, and shake     From the Celtic Anarch's hold     All the keys of dungeons cold,     Where a hundred cities lie     Chained like thee, ingloriously,     Thou and all thy sister band     Might adorn this sunny land,     Twining memories of old time     With new virtues more sublime;     If not, perish thou and they! -     Clouds which stain truth's rising day     By her sun consumed away -     Earth can spare ye: while like flowers,     In the waste of years and hours,     From your dust new nations spring     With more kindly blossoming.     Perish - let there only be     Floating o'er thy hearthless sea     As the garment of thy sky     Clothes the world immortally,     One remembrance, more sublime     Than the tattered pall of time,     Which scarce hides thy visage wan; -     That a tempest-cleaving Swan     Of the songs of Albion,     Driven from his ancestral streams     By the might of evil dreams,     Found a nest in thee; and Ocean     Welcomed him with such emotion     That its joy grew his, and sprung     From his lips like music flung     O'er a mighty thunder-fit,     Chastening terror: - what though yet     Poesy's unfailing River,     Which through Albion winds forever     Lashing with melodious wave     Many a sacred Poet's grave,     Mourn its latest nursling fled?     What though thou with all thy dead     Scarce can for this fame repay     Aught thine own? oh, rather say     Though thy sins and slaveries foul     Overcloud a sunlike soul?     As the ghost of Homer clings     Round Scamander's wasting springs;     As divinest Shakespeare's might     Fills Avon and the world with light     Like omniscient power which he     Imaged 'mid mortality;     As the love from Petrarch's urn,     Yet amid yon hills doth burn,     A quenchless lamp by which the heart     Sees things unearthly; - so thou art,     Mighty spirit - so shall be     The City that did refuge thee.     Lo, the sun floats up the sky     Like thought-winged Liberty,     Till the universal light     Seems to level plain and height;     From the sea a mist has spread,     And the beams of morn lie dead     On the towers of Venice now,     Like its glory long ago.     By the skirts of that gray cloud     Many-domed Padua proud     Stands, a peopled solitude,     'Mid the harvest-shining plain,     Where the peasant heaps his grain     In the garner of his foe,     And the milk-white oxen slow     With the purple vintage strain,     Heaped upon the creaking wain,     That the brutal Celt may swill     Drunken sleep with savage will;     And the sickle to the sword     Lies unchanged, though many a lord,     Like a weed whose shade is poison,     Overgrows this region's foison,     Sheaves of whom are ripe to come     To destruction's harvest-home:     Men must reap the things they sow,     Force from force must ever flow,     Or worse; but 'tis a bitter woe     That love or reason cannot change     The despot's rage, the slave's revenge.     Padua, thou within whose walls     Those mute guests at festivals,     Son and Mother, Death and Sin,     Played at dice for Ezzelin,     Till Death cried, "I win, I win!"     And Sin cursed to lose the wager,     But Death promised, to assuage her,     That he would petition for     Her to be made Vice-Emperor,     When the destined years were o'er,     Over all between the Po     And the eastern Alpine snow,     Under the mighty Austrian.     Sin smiled so as Sin only can,     And since that time, ay, long before,     Both have ruled from shore to shore, -     That incestuous pair, who follow     Tyrants as the sun the swallow,     As Repentance follows Crime,     And as changes follow Time.     In thine halls the lamp of learning,     Padua, now no more is burning;     Like a meteor, whose wild way     Is lost over the grave of day,     It gleams betrayed and to betray:     Once remotest nations came     To adore that sacred flame,     When it lit not many a hearth     On this cold and gloomy earth:     Now new fires from antique light     Spring beneath the wide world's might;     But their spark lies dead in thee,     Trampled out by Tyranny.     As the Norway woodman quells,     In the depth of piny dells,     One light flame among the brakes,     While the boundless forest shakes,     And its mighty trunks are torn     By the fire thus lowly born:     The spark beneath his feet is dead,     He starts to see the flames it fed     Howling through the darkened sky     With a myriad tongues victoriously,     And sinks down in fear: so thou,     O Tyranny, beholdest now     Light around thee, and thou hearest     The loud flames ascend, and fearest:     Grovel on the earth; ay, hide     In the dust thy purple pride!     Noon descends around me now:     'Tis the noon of autumn's glow,     When a soft and purple mist     Like a vaporous amethyst,     Or an air-dissolved star     Mingling light and fragrance, far     From the curved horizon's bound     To the point of Heaven's profound,     Fills the overflowing sky;     And the plains that silent lie     Underneath, the leaves unsodden     Where the infant Frost has trodden     With his morning-winged feet,     Whose bright print is gleaming yet;     And the red and golden vines,     Piercing with their trellised lines     The rough, dark-skirted wilderness;     The dun and bladed grass no less,     Pointing from this hoary tower     In the windless air; the flower     Glimmering at my feet; the line     Of the olive-sandalled Apennine     In the south dimly islanded;     And the Alps, whose snows are spread     High between the clouds and sun;     And of living things each one;     And my spirit which so long     Darkened this swift stream of song, -     Interpenetrated lie     By the glory of the sky:     Be it love, light, harmony,     Odour, or the soul of all     Which from Heaven like dew doth fall,     Or the mind which feeds this verse     Peopling the lone universe.     Noon descends, and after noon     Autumn's evening meets me soon,     Leading the infantine moon,     And that one star, which to her     Almost seems to minister     Half the crimson light she brings     From the sunset's radiant springs:     And the soft dreams of the morn     (Which like winged winds had borne     To that silent isle, which lies     Mid remembered agonies,     The frail bark of this lone being)     Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,     And its ancient pilot, Pain,     Sits beside the helm again.     Other flowering isles must be     In the sea of Life and Agony:     Other spirits float and flee     O'er that gulf: even now, perhaps,     On some rock the wild wave wraps,     With folded wings they waiting sit     For my bark, to pilot it     To some calm and blooming cove,     Where for me, and those I love,     May a windless bower be built,     Far from passion, pain, and guilt,     In a dell mid lawny hills,     Which the wild sea-murmur fills,     And soft sunshine, and the sound     Of old forests echoing round,     And the light and smell divine     Of all flowers that breathe and shine:     We may live so happy there,     That the Spirits of the Air,     Envying us, may even entice     To our healing Paradise     The polluting multitude;     But their rage would be subdued     By that clime divine and calm,     And the winds whose wings rain balm     On the uplifted soul, and leaves     Under which the bright sea heaves;     While each breathless interval     In their whisperings musical     The inspired soul supplies     With its own deep melodies;     And the love which heals all strife     Circling, like the breath of life,     All things in that sweet abode     With its own mild brotherhood,     They, not it, would change; and soon     Every sprite beneath the moon     Would repent its envy vain,     And the earth grow young again.     NOTES:     _54 seamews 1819; seamew's Rossetti.     _115 Sun-girt]Sea-girt cj. Palgrave.     _165 From your dust new 1819;          From thy dust shall Rowfant manuscript (heading of lines 167-205).     _175 songs 1819; sons cj. Forman.     _278 a 1819; wanting, 1839.