One tricolor floating above them;
Struck down mid triumphant acclaims Of an Italy rescued to love them
And brazen the brass with their names.
But he, without witness or honor,
Mixed, shamed in his country's regard,
With the tyrants who march in upon her,
Died faithful and passive: 't was hard.
'T was sublime. In a cruel restriction
Cut off from the guerdon of sons,
With most filial obedience, conviction,
His soul kissed the lips of her guns.
That moves you? Nay, grudge not to show it,
While digging a grave for him here:
The others who died, says your poet,
He giveth His beloved sleep.-Psalm cxxvii. 2.
Of all the thoughts of God that are
Borne inward into souls afar
Along the Psalmist's music deep,
Now tell me if that any is,
For gift or grace, surpassing this,—
'He giveth His beloved sleep'?
What would we give to our beloved?
The hero's heart, to be unmoved,
The poet's star-tuned harp to sweep,
The patriot's voice to teach and rouse,
The monarch's crown to light the brows? —
He giveth His belovèd sleep.
What do we give to our beloved?
A little faith all undisproved,
A little dust to overweep,
And bitter memories to make
The whole earth blasted for our sake:
He giveth His beloved sleep.
'Sleep soft, beloved!' we sometimes say, Who have no tune to charm away
Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep;
But never doleful dream again
Shall break the happy slumber when
He giveth His beloved sleep.
O earth, so full of dreary noises!
O men with wailing in your voices!
O delvèd gold the wailers heap!
O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall!
God strikes a silence through you all,
And giveth His beloved sleep.
His dews drop mutely on the hill,
His cloud above it saileth still,
Though on its slope men sow and reap:
More softly than the dew is shed,
Or cloud is floated overhead,
He giveth His beloved sleep.
Ay, men may wonder while they scan
A living, thinking, feeling man
Confirmed in such a rest to keep;
But angels say, and through the wold
I think their happy smile is heard,
'He giveth His beloved sleep.'
For me, my heart that erst did go
Most like a tired child at a show,
That sees through tears the mummers leap,
Would now its wearied vision close,
Would childlike on His love repose
Who giveth His beloved sleep.
And friends, dear friends, when it shall be
That this low breath is gone from me,
And round my bier ye come to weep,
Let one most loving of you all,
Say, 'Not a tear must o'er her fall!
He giveth His beloved sleep.'
FROM BOOK I., CANTO I.
YE rocky heights of Chios, where the snow,
Lit by the far-off and receding moon,
Now feels the soft dawn's purpling twilight creep
Over your ridges, while the mystic dews
Swarm down, and wait to be instinct with gold
And solar fire! — ye mountains waving brown
With thick-winged woods, and blotted with deep caves
In secret places; and ye paths that stray
E'en as ye list; what odors and what sighs
Tend your sweet silence through the star-showered night,
Like memories breathing of the Goddess forms
That left your haunts, yet with the day return!
And still more distant through the gray sky floats
The faint blue fragment of the dead moon's shell;
Not dead indeed, but vacant, since 't is now
Left by its bright Divinity. The snows
On steepest heights grave tints of dawn receive,
And mountains from the misty woodland rise
More clear of outline, while thick vapors curl
From off the valley streams, and spread away,
Till one by one the brooks and pools unveil
Their cold blue mirrors. From the great repose
What echoes now float on the listening air
Now die away
- and now again ascend,
Soft ringing from the valleys, caves, and groves,
Beyond the reddening heights? 'Tis Artemis come
With all her buskined Nymphs and sylvan rout,
To scare the silence and the sacred shades,
And with dim music break their rapturous trance!
But soon the music swells, and as the gleam
Of sunrise tips the summits tremblingly,
And the dense forests on their sides exchange
Shadows opaque for warm transparent tones,
Though still of depth and grandeur, nearer grows
The revelry; and echoes multiply
Behind the rocks and uplands, with the din
Of reed-pipe, timbrel, and clear silver horns,
With cry of Wood-nymphs, Fauns, and chasing hounds.
FROM BOOK I., CANTO II.
THERE was a slumb'rous silence in the air,
By noon-tide's sultry murmurs from without
Made more oblivious. Not a pipe was heard
From field or wood; but the grave beetle's drone
Passed near the entrance; once the cuckoo called
O'er distant meads, and once a horn began
Melodious plaint, then died away. A sound
Of murmurous music yet was in the breeze,
For silver gnats that harp on glassy strings,
And rise and fall in sparkling clouds, sustained
Their dizzy dances o'er the seething meads.
MIDST chequered sunbeams through the glancing woods No more Orion hunted; from the dawn Till eve, within some lonely grot he sat, His thoughts reviewing, or beneath a rock
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