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.

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!

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!

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!

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!