2.
Sixscore full years have past,
Since to these friendly shores
Thy famous ancestor,
Illustrious PETER came.
Wise traveller he, who over Europe went,
Marking the ways of men;
That so to his dear country, which then rose
Among the nations in uncultured strength,
He might bear back the stores
Of elder polity,
Its sciences and arts.
Little did then the industrious German think,..
The soft Italian, lapt in luxury,..
Helvetia’s mountain sons, of freedom proud,..
The patient Hollander,
Prosperous and warlike then,..
Little thought they that in that farthest North,
From PETER’S race should the Deliverer spring,
Destined by Heaven to save
Art, Learning, Industry,
Beneath the bestial hoof of godless Might
All trampled in the dust.
As little did the French,
Vaunting the power of their Great Monarch then,
(His schemes of wide ambition yet uncheck’d,)
As little did they think,
That from rude Moscovy the stone should come,
To smite their huge Colossus, which bestrode
The subject Continent;
And from its feet of clay,
Breaking the iron limbs and front of brass,
Strew the rejoicing Nations with the wreck.
3.
Roused as thou wert with insult and with wrong,
Who should have blamed thee if, in high-wrought mood
Of vengeance and the sense of injured power,
Thou from the flames which laid
The City of thy Fathers in the dust,
Had’st bid a spark be brought,
And borne it in thy tent,
Religiously by night and day preserved,
Till on Montmartre’s height,
When open to thine arms,
Her last defence o’erthrown,
The guilty city lay,
Thou hadst call’d every Russian of thine host
To light his flambeau at the sacred flame,
And sent them through her streets,
And wrapt her roofs and towers,
Temples and palaces,
Her wealth and boasted spoils,
In one wide flood of fire,
Making the hated Nation feel herself
The miseries she had spread.
4.
Who should have blamed the Conqueror for that deed?
Yea, rather would not one exulting cry
Have risen from Elbe to Nile,
How is the Oppressor fallen!
Moscow’s re-rising walls
Had rung with glad acclaim;
Thanksgiving hymns had fill’d
Tyrol’s rejoicing vales:
How is the Oppressor fallen!
The Germans in their grass-grown marts had met.
To celebrate the deed;
Holland’s still waters had been starr’d
With festive lights, reflected there
From every house and hut,
From every town and tower;
The Iberian and the Lusian’s injured realms,
From all their mountain-holds,
From all their ravaged fields,
From cities sack’d, from violated fanes,
And from the sanctuary of every heart,
Had pour’d that pious strain,
How is the Oppressor fallen Î
Righteous art thou, O Lord!
Thou Zaragoza, from thy sepulchres
Hadst join’d the hymn; and from thine ashes thou,
Manresa, faithful still!
The blood that calls for vengeance in thy streets,
Madrid, and Porto thine,
And that which from the beach
Of Tarragona sent its cry to Heaven,
Had rested then appeased.
Orphans had clapt their hands,
And widows would have wept exulting tears,
And childless parents with a bitter joy
Have blest the avenging deed.
5.
But thou hadst seen enough
Of horrors,.. amply hadst avenged mankind.
Witness that dread retreat,
When God and nature smote
The Tyrant in his pride!
No wider ruin overtook
Sennacherib’s impious host;
Nor when the frantic Persian led
His veterans to the Lybian sands;
Nor when united Greece
O’er the barbaric power that victory won
Which Europe yet may bless.
A fouler Tyrant cursed the groaning earth,..
A fearfuller destruction was dispensed.
Victorious armies followed on his flight;
On every side he met
The Cossacks’ dreadful spear;
On every side he saw
The injured nation rise,
Invincible in arms.
What myriads, victims of one wicked will,
Spent their last breath in curses on his head.
There where the soldiers’ blood
Froze in the festering wound;
And nightly the cold moon
Saw sinking thousands in the snow lie down,
Whom there the morning found
Stiff, as their icy bed.
6.
Hear high the monument!
In Moscow and in proud Petropolis,
The brazen trophy build;
Cannon on cannon piled,
Till the huge column overtop your towers!
From France the Tyrant brought
These instruments of death
To work your overthrow;
He left them in his flight
To form the eternal record of his own.
Raise, Russia, with thy spoils,
A nobler monument
Than e’er imperial Rome
Built in her plenitude of pride and power!
Still, Alexander! on the banks of Seine,
Thy noblest monument
For future ages stands —
PARIS SUBDUED AND SPARED.
7.
Conqueror, Deliverer, Friend of human-kind,
The free, the happy Island welcomes thee!
Thee, Alexander! thee, the Great, the Good,
The Glorious, the Beneficent, the Just!
Thee to her honour’d shores
The mighty Island welcomes in her joy.
ODE TO HIS MAJESTY, FREDERICK WILLIAM THE FOURTH, KING OF PRUSSIA.
1.
WELCOME to England, to the happy Isle,
Brave Prince of gallant people! Welcome Thou,
In adverse as in prosperous fortunes tried,
Frederick, the well-beloved!
Greatest and best of that illustrious name,
Welcome to these free shores!
In glory art thou come.
Thy victory perfect, thy revenge complete.
2.
Enough of sorrow hast thou known.
Enough of evil hath thy realm endured.
Oppress’d but not debased,
When thine indignant soul.
Long suffering, bore its weight of heaviest woe.
But still, through that dark day
Unsullied honour was thy counseller;
And Hope, that had its trust in Heaven.
And in the heart of man
Its strength, forsook thee not.
Thou had’st thy faithful people’s love,
The sympathy of noble minds;
And wistfully, as one
Who through the weary night has long’d for day,
Looks eastward for the dawn,
So Germany to thee
Turn’d in her bondage her imploring eyes.
3.
Oh, grief of griefs, that Germany,
The wise, the virtuous land,
The land of mighty minds,
Should bend beneath the frothy Frenchman’s yoke!
Oh, grief of griefs, to think
That she should groan in bonds,
She who had blest all nations with her gifts!
There had the light of Reformation risen,
The light of Knowledge there was burning clear.
Oh, grief, that her unhappy sons
Should toil and bleed and die,
To quench that sacred light,
The wretched agents of a tyrant’s will!
How often hath their blood
In his accursed cause
Reek’d on the Spaniard’s blade!
Their mangled bodies fed
The wolves and eagles of the Pyrenees;
Or stiffening in the snows of Moscovy,
Amid the ashes of the watch-fire lay,
Where dragging painfully their frozen limbs,
With life’s last effort, in the flames they fell.
4.
Long, Frederick, did’st thou bear
Her sorrows and thine own;
Seven miserable years
In patience did’st thou food thy heart with hope;
Till, when the arm of God
Smote the blaspheming Tyrant in his pride.
And Alexander with the voice of power
Raised the glad cry, Deliverance for Mankind,
First of the Germans, Prussia broke her chains.
5.
Joy, joy for Germany,
For Europe, for the World,
When Prussia rose in arms!
Oh, what a spectacle
For present and for future times was there.
When for the public need
Wives gave their marriage rings.
And mothers, when their sons
The Band of Vengeance join’d,
Bade them return victorious from the Held,
Or with their country fall.
6.
Twice o’er the Held of death
The trembling scales of Fate hung equipoised:
For France, obsequious to her Tyrant still,
Mighty for evil, put forth all her power;
And still beneath his hateful banners driven.
Against their father-land
Unwilling Germans bore unnatural arms.
What though the Boaster made his temples ring
With vain thanksgivings for each doubtful day,..
What though with false pretence of peace
His old insidious arts he tried,..
The spell was broken! Austria threw her sword
Into the inclining scale,
And Leipsic saw the wrongs
Of Germany avenged.
7.
Ne’er till that aweful time had Europe seen
Such multitudes in arms;
Nor ever had the rising Sun beheld
Such mighty interests of mankind at stake:
Nor o’er so wide a scene
Of slaughter e’er had Night her curtain closed.
There, on the battle-field,
With one accord the grateful monarchs knelt.
And raised their voice to Heaven;
“The cause was thine, O Lord!
“O Lord! thy hand was here!”
What Conquerors e’er deserved
So proud, so pure a joy!
It was a moment when the exalted soul
Might almost wish to burst its mortal bounds,
Lest all of life to come
Vapid and void should seem
After that high-wrought hour.
8.
But thou hadst yet more toils,
More duties and more triumphs yet in store.
Eibe must not bound thine arms,
Nor on the banks of Rhine
Thine eagles check their flight;
When o’er that barrier stream,
Awakened Germany
Drove her invaders with such rout and wreck
As overtook the impious Gaul of old,
Laden with plunder, and from Delphi driven.
9.
Long had insulting France
Boasted her arms invincible,
Her soil inviolate;
At length the hour of retribution comes I
Avenging nations on all sides move on;
In Gascony the flag of England flies,
Triumphant, as of yore,
When sable Edward led his peerless host.
Behold the Spaniard and the Portugal,
For cities burnt, for violated fanes,
For murders, massacres,
All monstrous, all unutterable crimes,
Demanding vengeance with victorious cries,
Pour from the Pyrenees.
The Russian comes, his eye on Paris fix’d,
The flames of Moscow present to his heart;
The Austrian to efface
Ulm, Austerlitz, and Wagram’s later shame;
Rejoicing Germany
With all her nations swells the avenging train
And in the field and in the triumph first,
Thy banner, Frederick, floats.
10.
Six weeks in daily strife
The veteran Blucher bore the brunt of war.
Glorious old man,
The last and greatest of his master’s school,
Long may he live to hear
The people bless his name!
Late be it ere the wreath
That crowns his silver hair
Adorn his monument!
Glorious old man,
How oft hath he discomfited
The boasted chiefs of France,
And foil’d her vaunting Tyrant’s desperate rage!
Glorious old man,
Who from Silesia’s fields,
O’er Elbe, and Rhine, and Seine,
From victory to victory marching on,
Made his heroic way; till at the gates
Of Paris, open’d by his arms, he saw
His King triumphant stand.
11.
Bear back the sword of Frederick now!
The sword which France amid her spoils display’d,
Proud trophy of a day ignobly won.
With laurels wreathe the sword;
Bear it in triumph back,
Thus gloriously regain’d;
And when thou lay’st it in its honour’d place,
O Frederick, well-beloved,
Greatest and best of that illustrious name,
Lay by its side thine own,
A holier relic there!
12.
Frederick, the well beloved!
Welcome to these free shores,
To England welcome, to the happy Isle!
In glory art thou come,
Thy victory perfect, thy revenge complete.
ODE. THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS.
1.
ONE day of dreadful occupation more.
Ere England’s gallant ships
Shall, of their beauty, pomp, and power disrobed,
Like sea-birds on the sunny main,
Rock idly in the port.
2.
One day of dreadful occupation more!
A work of righteousness.
Yea, of sublimest mercy, must be done;
England will break the oppressor’s chain.
And set the captives free.
3.
Red cross of England, which all shores have seen
Triumphantly displayed,
Thou sacred banner of the glorious Isle,
Known wheresoever keel hath eut
The navigable deep;
4.
Ne’er didst thou float more proudly o’er the storm
Of havoc and of death.
Than when, resisting fiercely, but in vain,
Algiers, her moony standard lowered,
And sign’d the conqueror’s law.
5.
Oh, if the grave were sentient, as these Moors
In erring credence hold;
And if the victims of captivity
Could in the silent tomb have heard
The thunder of the fight;
6.
Sure their rejoicing dust upon that day
Had heaved the oppressive soil,
And earth been shaken like the mosques and towers,
When England on those guilty walls
Her fiery vengeance sent.
7.
Seldom hath victory given a joy like this, —
When the delivered slave
Revisits once again his own dear home,
And tells of all his sufferings past,
And blesses Exmouth’s name.
8.
Far, far and wide along the Italian shores,
That holy joy extends;
Sardinian mothers pay their vows fulfill’d;
And hymns are heard beside thy banks,
O Fountain Arethuse!
9.
Churches shall blaze with lights, and ring with praise,
And deeper strains shall rise
From many an overflowing heart to Heaven;
Nor will they in their prayers forget
The hand that set them free.
Keswick.
ODE ON THE DEATH OF QUEEN CHARLOTTE.
1.
DEATH has gone up into our Palaces!
The light of day once more
Hath visited the last abode
Of mortal royalty,
The dark and silent vault.
2.
But not as when the silence of that vault
Was interrupted last
Doth England raise her loud lament,
Like one by sudden grief
Surprised and overcome.
3.
Then with a passionate sorrow we bewail’d
Youth on the untimely bier;
And hopes which seem’d like flower-buds lull,
Just opening to the sun,
For ever swept away.
4.
Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey Page 52