SUN-GIRT city! thou hast been | |
| Ocean’s child, and then his queen; | |
| Now is come a darker day, | |
| And thou soon must be his prey, | |
| If the power that raised thee here | 5 |
| Hallow so thy watery bier, | |
| A less drear ruin then than now, | |
| With thy conquest-branded brow | |
| Stooping to the slave of slaves | |
| From thy throne, among the waves | 10 |
| Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew | |
| Flies, as once before it flew, | |
| O’er thine isles depopulate, | |
| And all is in its ancient state, | |
| Save where many a palace-gate | 15 |
| With green sea-flowers overgrown | |
| Like a rock of ocean’s own, | |
| Topples o’er the abandoned sea | |
| As the tides change sullenly. | |
| The fisher on his watery way, | 20 |
| Wandering at the close of day, | |
| Will spread his sail and seize his oar | |
| Till he pass the gloomy shore, | |
| Lest thy dead should, from their sleep | |
| Bursting o’er the starlight deep, | 25 |
| Lead a rapid masque of death | |
| O’er the waters of his path. | |
| |
| Those who alone thy towers behold | |
| Quivering through aerial gold, | |
| As I now behold them here, | 30 |
| Would imagine not they were | |
| Sepulchres, where human forms, | |
| Like pollution-nourished worms, | |
| To the corpse of greatness cling, | |
| Murdered, and now mouldering; | 35 |
| But if Freedom should awake | |
| In her omnipotence, and shake | |
| From the Celtic anarch’s hold | |
| All the keys of dungeons cold, | |
| Where a hundred cities lie | 40 |
| Chained like thee, ingloriously, | |
| Thou and all thy sister band | |
| Might adorn this sunny land, | |
| Twining memories of old time | |
| With new virtues more sublime; | 45 |
| If not, perish thou and they, | |
| Clouds which stain truth’s rising day | |
| By her sun consumed away, | |
| Earth can spare ye: while like flowers, | |
| In the waste of years and hours, | 50 |
| From your dust new nations spring | |
| With more kindly blossoming. | |
| Perish! let there only be | |
| Floating o’er thy hearthless sea, | |
| As the garment of thy sky | 55 |
| Clothes the world immortally, | |
| One remembrance, more sublime | |
| Than the tattered pall of Time, | |
| Which scarce hides thy visage wan, | |
| That a tempest-cleaving swan | 60 |
| Of the songs of Albion, | |
| Driven from his ancestral streams | |
| By the might of evil dreams, | |
| Found a nest in thee; and Ocean | |
| Welcomed him with such emotion | 65 |
| That its joy grew his, and sprung | |
| From his lips like music flung | |
| O’er a mighty thunder-fit, | |
| Chastening terror: what though yet | |
| Poesy’s unfailing river, | 70 |
| Which through Albion winds forever, | |
| Lashing with melodious wave | |
| Many a sacred poet’s grave, | |
| Mourn its latest nursling fled! | |
| What though thou with all thy dead | 75 |
| Scarce can for this fame repay | |
| Aught thine own,—O, rather say, | |
| Though thy sins and slaveries foul | |
| Overcloud a sunlike soul! | |
| As the ghost of Homer clings | 80 |
| Round Scamander’s wasting springs; | |
| As divinest Shakespeare’s might | |
| Fills Avon and the world with light, | |
| Like omniscient power, which he | |
| Imaged mid mortality; | 85 |
| As the love from Petrarch’s urn, | |
| Yet amid yon hills doth burn, | |
| A quenchless lamp, by which the heart | |
| Sees things unearthly: so thou art, | |
| Mighty spirit; so shall be | 90 |
| The city that did refuge thee. | |
| |
