Ode To Naples.

EPODE 1a.     I stood within the City disinterred;     And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls     Of spirits passing through the streets; and heard     The Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals     Thrill through those roofless halls;     The oracular thunder penetrating shook     The listening soul in my suspended blood;     I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke -     I felt, but heard not: - through white columns glowed     The isle-sustaining ocean-flood,     A plane of light between two heavens of azure!     Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre     Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure     Were to spare Death, had never made erasure;     But every living lineament was clear     As in the sculptor's thought; and there     The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy, and pine,     Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow,     Seemed only not to move and grow     Because the crystal silence of the air     Weighed on their life; even as the Power divine     Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine.     NOTE:     _1 Pompeii. - [SHELLEY'S NOTE.]     EPODE 2a.     Then gentle winds arose     With many a mingled close     Of wild Aeolian sound, and mountain-odours keen;     And where the Baian ocean     Welters with airlike motion,     Within, above, around its bowers of starry green,     Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves,     Even as the ever stormless atmosphere     Floats o'er the Elysian realm,     It bore me, like an Angel, o'er the waves     Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air     No storm can overwhelm.     I sailed, where ever flows     Under the calm Serene     A spirit of deep emotion     From the unknown graves     Of the dead Kings of Melody.     Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm     The horizontal aether; Heaven stripped bare     Its depth over Elysium, where the prow     Made the invisible water white as snow;     From that Typhaean mount, Inarime,     There streamed a sunbright vapour, like the standard     Of some aethereal host;     Whilst from all the coast,     Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered     Over the oracular woods and divine sea     Prophesyings which grew articulate -     They seize me - I must speak them! - be they fate!     NOTES:     _25 odours B.; odour 1824.     _42 depth B.; depths 1824.     _45 sun-bright B.; sunlit 1824.     _39 Homer and Virgil. - [SHELLEY'S NOTE.]     STROPHE 1.     Naples! thou Heart of men which ever pantest     Naked, beneath the lidless eye of Heaven!     Elysian City, which to calm enchantest     The mutinous air and sea! they round thee, even     As sleep round Love, are driven!     Metropolis of a ruined Paradise     Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained!     Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice     Which armed Victory offers up unstained     To Love, the flower-enchained!     Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be,     Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free,     If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail, -     Hail, hail, all hail!     STROPHE 2.     Thou youngest giant birth     Which from the groaning earth     Leap'st, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale!     Last of the Intercessors!     Who 'gainst the Crowned Transgressors     Pleadest before God's love! Arrayed in Wisdom's mail,     Wave thy lightning lance in mirth     Nor let thy high heart fail,     Though from their hundred gates the leagued Oppressors     With hurried legions move!     Hail, hail, all hail!     ANTISTROPHE 1a.     What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme     Freedom and thee? thy shield is as a mirror     To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce gleam     To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer;     A new Actaeon's error     Shall theirs have been - devoured by their own hounds!     Be thou like the imperial Basilisk     Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds!     Gaze on Oppression, till at that dread risk     Aghast she pass from the Earth's disk:     Fear not, but gaze - for freemen mightier grow,     And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe: -     If Hope, and Truth, and Justice may avail,     Thou shalt be great - All hail!     ANTISTROPHE 2a.     From Freedom's form divine,     From Nature's inmost shrine,     Strip every impious gawd, rend     Error veil by veil;     O'er Ruin desolate,     O'er Falsehood's fallen state,     Sit thou sublime, unawed; be the Destroyer pale!     And equal laws be thine,     And winged words let sail,     Freighted with truth even from the throne of God:     That wealth, surviving fate,     Be thine. - All hail!     NOTE:     _100 wealth-surviving cj. A.C. Bradley.     ANTISTROPHE 1b.     Didst thou not start to hear Spain's thrilling paean     From land to land re-echoed solemnly,     Till silence became music? From the Aeaean     To the cold Alps, eternal Italy     Starts to hear thine! The Sea     Which paves the desert streets of Venice laughs     In light, and music; widowed Genoa wan     By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs,     Murmuring, 'Where is Doria?' fair Milan,     Within whose veins long ran     The viper's palsying venom, lifts her heel     To bruise his head. The signal and the seal     (If Hope and Truth and Justice can avail)     Art thou of all these hopes. - O hail!     NOTES:     _104 Aeaea, the island of Circe. - [SHELLEY'S NOTE.]     _112 The viper was the armorial device of the Visconti,          tyrants of Milan. - [SHELLEY'S NOTE.]     ANTISTROPHE 2b.     Florence! beneath the sun,     Of cities fairest one,     Blushes within her bower for Freedom's expectation:     From eyes of quenchless hope     Rome tears the priestly cope,     As ruling once by power, so now by admiration, -     An athlete stripped to run     From a remoter station     For the high prize lost on Philippi's shore: -     As then Hope, Truth, and Justice did avail,     So now may Fraud and Wrong! O hail!     EPODE 1b.     Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms     Arrayed against the ever-living Gods?     The crash and darkness of a thousand storms     Bursting their inaccessible abodes     Of crags and thunder-clouds?     See ye the banners blazoned to the day,     Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride?     Dissonant threats kill Silence far away,     The serene Heaven which wraps our Eden wide     With iron light is dyed;     The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions     Like Chaos o'er creation, uncreating;     An hundred tribes nourished on strange religions     And lawless slaveries, - down the aereal regions     Of the white Alps, desolating,     Famished wolves that bide no waiting,     Blotting the glowing footsteps of old glory,     Trampling our columned cities into dust,     Their dull and savage lust     On Beauty's corse to sickness satiating -     They come! The fields they tread look black and hoary     With fire - from their red feet the streams run gory!     EPODE 2b.     Great Spirit, deepest Love!     Which rulest and dost move     All things which live and are, within the Italian shore;     Who spreadest Heaven around it,     Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it;     Who sittest in thy star, o'er Ocean's western floor;     Spirit of beauty! at whose soft command     The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison     From the Earth's bosom chill;     Oh, bid those beams be each a blinding brand     Of lightning! bid those showers be dews of poison!     Bid the Earth's plenty kill!     Bid thy bright Heaven above,     Whilst light and darkness bound it,     Be their tomb who planned     To make it ours and thine!     Or, with thine harmonizing ardours fill     And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon     Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire -     Be man's high hope and unextinct desire     The instrument to work thy will divine!     Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards,     And frowns and fears from thee,     Would not more swiftly flee     Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds. -     Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine     Thou yieldest or withholdest, oh, let be     This city of thy worship ever free!     NOTES:     _143 old 1824; lost B.     _147 black 1824; blue B.