Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

SHAKSPEARE ODE.

Despair, that haunts the gurgling stream,
Kissed by the virgin moon's cold beam,

Where some lost maid wild chaplets wreathes,
And swan-like, there her own dirge breathes,
Then, broken-hearted, sinks to rest,

155

Beneath the bubbling wave, that shrouds her maniac breast.

Young Love, with eye of tender gloom,
Now drooping o'er the hallowed tomb,
Where his plighted victims lie,

Where they met, but met to die:

And now, when crimson buds are sleeping,
Through the dewy arbor peeping,

Where beauty's child, the frowning world forgot,
To youth's devoted tale is listening,

Rapture on her dark lash glistening,

While fairies leave their cowslip cells and guard the happy spot.

Thus rise the phantom throng,

Obedient to their Master's song,

And lead in willing chain the wondering soul along.
For other worlds war's Great One sighed in vain,
O'er other worlds see Shakspeare rove and reign!
The rapt magician of his own wild lay,
Earth and her tribes his mystic wand obey.
Old ocean trembles, thunder cracks the skies,

Air teems with shapes, and tell-tale spectres rise:

156

SHAKSPEARE ODE.

Night's paltering hags their fearful orgies keep,
And faithless guilt unseals the lip of sleep:
Time yields his trophies up, and death restores
The mouldered victims of his voiceless shores.
The fire-side legend and the faded page,

The crime that cursed, the deed that blessed an age,
All, all come forth-the good to charm and cheer,
To scourge bold Vice, and start the generous tear;
With pictured Folly gazing fools to shame,
And guide young Glory's foot along the path of fame.

Lo! hand in hand,

Hell's juggling sisters stand,

To greet their victim from the fight;
Grouped on the blasted heath,

They tempt him to the work of death,

Then melt in air and mock his wondering sight.

In midnight's hallowed hour,

He seeks the fatal tower,

Where the lone raven, perched on high,

Pours to the sullen gale

Her hoarse prophetic wail,

And croaks the dreadful moment nigh.

See, by the phantom dagger led,

Pale, guilty thing,

Slowly he steals with silent tread,

And grasps his coward steel to smite his sleeping king.

Hark! 'tis the signal bell,

SHAKSPEARE ODE.

Struck by that bold and unsexed one,

Whose milk is gall, whose heart is stone;
His ear hath caught the knell—

'Tis done! 'tis done!

Behold him from the chamber rushing,

Where his dead monarch's blood is gushing,
Look where he trembling stands,

Sad gazing there,

Life's smoking crimson on his hands,
And in his felon heart the worm of wild despair.

Mark the sceptred traitor slumbering!
There flit the slaves of conscience round,
With boding tongue foul murders numbering;
Sleep's leaden portals catch the sound.
In his dream of blood for mercy quaking,
At his own dull scream behold him waking!
Soon that dream to fate shall turn,

For him the living furies burn;

For him the vulture sits on yonder misty peak,

157

And chides the lagging night, and whets her hungry beak.
Hark! the trumpet's warning breath

Echoes round the vale of death.
Unhorsed, unhelmed, disdaining shield,
The panting tyrant scours the field.

Vengeance! he meets thy dooming blade!
The scourge of earth, the scorn of heaven,
He falls! unwept and unforgiven,

158

SHAKSPEARE ODE.

And all his guilty glories fade.

Like a crushed reptile in the dust he lies,
And Hate's last lightning quivers from his eyes!

Behold yon crownless king—

Yon white-locked, weeping sire:

Where heaven's unpillared chambers ring,
And burst their streams of flood and fire!

He gave them all-the daughters of his love ;-
That recreant pair!—they drive him forth to rove;
In such a night of wo,

The cubless regent of the wood

Forgets to bathe her fangs in blood,

And caverns with her foe!

Yet one was ever kind,

Why lingers she behind?

O pity! —view him by her dead form kneeling,
Even in wild phrensy holy nature feeling.
His aching eyeballs strain

To see those curtained orbs unfold,

That beauteous bosom heave again,

But all is dark and cold.

In agony the father shakes;

Grief's choking note

Swells in his throat,

Each withered heart-string tugs and breaks! Round her pale neck his dying arms he wreathes,

And on her marble lips his last, his death-kiss breathes.

[ocr errors][merged small]

Down! trembling wing-shall insect weakness keep

The sun-defying eagle's sweep?

A mortal strike celestial strings,

And feebly echo what a seraph sings?

Who now shall grace the glowing throne,

Where, all unrivalled, all alone,

Bold Shakspeare sat, and looked creation through,
The minstrel monarch of the worlds he drew?

That throne is cold-that lyre in death unstrung,

On whose proud note delighted Wonder hung.

Yet Old Oblivion, as in wrath he sweeps,

159

One spot shall spare-the grave where Shakspeare sleeps. Rulers and ruled in common gloom may lie,

But Nature's laureate bards shall never die.

Art's chiselled boast, and Glory's trophied shore,

Must live in numbers, or can live no more.

While sculptured Jove some nameless waste may claim,
Still rolls the Olympic car in Pindar's fame :
Troy's doubtful walls, in ashes passed away,
Yet frown on Greece in Homer's deathless lay:
Rome, slowly sinking in her crumbling fanes,
Stands all immortal in her Maro's strains :
So, too, yon giant empress of the isles,
On whose broad sway the sun for ever smiles,
To Time's unsparing rage one day must bend,
And all her triumphs in her Shakspeare end!

« AnteriorContinuar »