SELECTION FROM CARMEN TRIUMPHALE.
(For the Commencement of the Year 1814.)
IN happy hour doth he receive
The Laurel, weed of famous bards of yore,
Which Dryden and diviner Spenser wore,
In happy hour, and well may he rejoice,
Whose earliest task must be
To raise the exultant hymn for victory,
And join a nation's joy with harps and voice,
Pouring the strain of triumph on the wind,
Glory to God, his song, Deliverance for mankind!
Wake, lute and harp! my soul, take up the strain!
Glory to God! Deliverance for mankind!
Joy-for all nations, joy! But most for thee,
Who hast so nobly filled thy part assigned,
O England! O my glorious native land!
For thou in evil days didst stand
Against leagued Europe all in arms arrayed,
Single and undismayed,
Thy hope in Heaven and in thine own right hand.
Now are thy virtuous efforts overpaid;
Thy generous counsels now their guerdon find;
Glory to God! Deliverance for mankind!
SELECTIONS FROM ODE, WRITTEN DURING THE
NEGOCIATIONS WITH BUONAPARTE, IN JANU-
ARY, 1814.
WHO Counsels peace at this momentous hour,
Where God hath given deliverance to the oppress'd,
And to the injured power?
Who counsels peace, when vengeance like a flood
Rolls on, no longer now to be repress'd;
From the four corners of the world cries out
For justice upon one accursed head ;
When Freedom hath her holy banner spread
Over all nations, now in one just cause
United; when with one sublime accord
Europe throws off the yoke abhorr'd,
And Loyalty and Faith and Ancient Laws
Follow the avenging sword.
Woe, woe to England! woe and endless shame,
If this heroic land,
False to her feelings and unspotted fame,
Hold out the olive to the Tyrant's hand!
Woe to the world, if Buonaparte's throne
Be suffer'd still to stand!
For by what names shall right and wrong be known,
What new and courtly phrases must we feign
For falsehood, murder, and all monstrous crimes,
If that perfidious Corsican maintain
Still his detested reign,
And France, who yearns even now to break her chain. Beneath his iron rule be left to groan?
No! by the innumerable dead
Whose blood hath for his lust and power been shed, Death only can for his foul deeds atone;
That peace which Death and Judgment can bestow, That peace be Buonaparte's, that alone!
O France! beneath this fierce Barbarian's sway
Disgraced thou art to all succeeding times;
Rapine, and blood, and fire have mark'd thy way,
All loathsome, all unutterable crimes.
A curse is on thee, France! from far and wide
It hath gone up to Heaven; all lands have cried
For vengeance upon thy detested head;
All nations curse thee, France! wheresoe'er
In peace or war thy banner hath been spread,
All forms of human woe have follow'd there:
The living and the dead
Cry out alike against thee! They who bear,
Crouching beneath its weight, thine iron yoke,
Join in the bitterness of secret prayer
The voice of that innumerable throng
Whose slaughtered spirits day and night invoke
The everlasting Judge of right and wrong,
How long. O Lord! Holy and just, how long!
One man hath been for ten long wretched years
The cause of all this blood and all these tears;
One man in this most aweful point of time
Draws on thy danger, as he caused thy crime.
Wait not too long the event,
For now whole Europe comes against thee bent;
His wiles and their own strength the nations know;
Wise from past wrongs, on future peace intent,
The people and the princes, with one mind,
From all parts move against the general foe:
One act of justice, one atoning blow,
One execrable head laid low,
Even yet, O France! averts thy punishment:
Open thine eyes! too long hast thou been blind;
Take vengeance for thyself, and for mankind!
By those horrors which the night
Witness'd, when the torches' light
To the assembled murderers show'd
Where the blood of Condé flow'd;
By thy murder'd Pichegru's fame ;
By murder'd Wright, an English name;
By murder'd Palm's atrocious doom;
By murder'd Hofer's martyrdom;
Oh! by the virtuous blood thus vilely spilt,
The villain's own peculiar private guilt,
Open thine eyes! too long hast thou been blind!
Take vengeance for thyself and for mankind!
SELECTIONS FROM FUNERAL SONG.
FOR THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE OF WALES.
IN its summer pride arrayed
Low our Tree of Hope is laid,
Low it lies; in evil hour,
Visiting the bridal bower,
Death hath levell'd root and flower.
Windsor, in thy sacred shade,
(That the end of pomp and power!)
Have the rites of death been paid:
Windsor, in thy sacred shade
Is the flower of Brunswick laid!
Henry, thou of sainted worth,
Thou, to whom thy Windsor gave
Nativity and name, and grave;
Thou art in this hallowed earth
Cradled for the immortal birth!
Heavily upon his head
Ancestral crimes were visited:
He, in spirit like a child,
Meek of heart and undefiled,
Patiently his crown resign'd,
And fixed on Heaven his heavenly mind,
Blessing while he kiss'd the rod
His Redeemer and his God.
Now may he in realms of bliss
Greet a soul as pure as his.
Thou, Elizabeth, art here;
Thou to whom all griefs were known;
Who wert placed upon the bier
In happier hour than on the throne.
Fatal daughter, fatal mother,
Rais'd to that ill-omen'd station,
Father, uncle, sons, and brother,
Mourn'd in blood her elevation!
Woodville in the realms of bliss,
To thine offspring thou may'st say,
Early death is happiness;
And favour'd in their lot are they
Who are not left to learn below
That length of life is length of woe.
Lightly let this ground be prest;
A broken heart is here at rest.
Henry, too, hath here his part ;
At the gentle Seymour's side,
With his best beloved bride,
Cold and quiet here are laid
The ashes of that fiery heart.
Not with his tyrannic spirit
Shall our Charlotte's soul inherit;
No, by Fisher's hoary head,
By More, the learned and the good,
By Katherine's wrongs and Boleyn's blood,—
By the life so basely shed
Of the pride of Norfolk's line,
By the axe so often red,
By the fire with martyrs fed
Hateful Henry, not with thee
May her happy spirit be!
And here lies one whose tragic name
A reverential thought may claim ;
That murder'd monarch, whom the grave,
Revealing its long secret, gave
Again to sight, that we might spy
His comely face and waking eye!
There, thrice fifty years, it lay,
Exempt from natural decay,
Enclosed and bright, as if to say,
A plague, of bloodier, baser birth,
Than that beneath whose rage he bled,
Was loose upon our guilty earth;
Such awful warning from the dead,
Was given from that portentous eye;
Then it closed eternally.
Ye whose relics rest around,
Tenants of this funeral ground;
Even in your immortal spheres,
What fresh yearnings will ye feel,
When this earthly guest appears!
As she leaves in grief and tears;
But to you will she reveal
Tidings of old England's weal;
Of a righteous war pursued,
Long, through evil and through good,
With unshaken fortitude;
Of peace in battle twice achieved;
Of her fiercest foe subdued,
And Europe from the yoke reliev'd,
Upon that Brabantine plain!
Such the proud, the virtuous story,
Such the great, the endless glory
Of her father's splendid reign!
He who wore the sable mail,
Might at this heroic tale,
Wish himself on earth again.
One who reverently for thee,
Rais'd the strain of bridal verse,
Flower of Brunswick! mournfully
Lays a garland on thy herse.
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