Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 4.djvu/293

CANTO II.] CANTO THE SECOND.

Spirit of the fervent days of Old,

When words were things that came to pass, and Thought

Flashed o'er the future, bidding men behold

Their children's children's doom already brought

Forth from the abyss of Time which is to be,

The Chaos of events, where lie half-wrought

Shapes that must undergo mortality;

What the great Seers of Israel wore within,

That Spirit was on them, and is on me,

And if, Cassandra-like, amidst the din

Of conflict none will hear, or hearing heed

This voice from out the Wilderness, the sin

Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed,

The only guerdon I have ever known.

Hast thou not bled? and hast thou still to bleed,

Italia? Ah! to me such things, foreshown

With dim sepulchral light, bid me forget

In thine irreparable wrongs my own;

We can have but one Country, and even yet

Thou'rt mine—my bones shall be within thy breast,

My Soul within thy language, which once set

With our old Roman sway in the wide West;

But I will make another tongue arise

As lofty and more sweet, in which expressed

The hero's ardour, or the lover's sighs,

Shall find alike such sounds for every theme

That every word, as brilliant as thy skies,

Shall realise a Poet's proudest dream,