Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 4.djvu/299

CANTO III.] CANTO THE THIRD.

out the mass of never-dying ill,

The Plague, the Prince, the Stranger, and the Sword,

Vials of wrath but emptied to refill

And flow again, I cannot all record

That crowds on my prophetic eye: the Earth

And Ocean written o'er would not afford

Space for the annal, yet it shall go forth;

Yes, all, though not by human pen, is graven,

There where the farthest suns and stars have birth,

Spread like a banner at the gate of Heaven,

The bloody scroll of our millennial wrongs

Waves, and the echo of our groans is driven

Athwart the sound of archangelic songs,

And Italy, the martyred nation's gore,

Will not in vain arise to where belongs

Omnipotence and Mercy evermore:

Like to a harpstring stricken by the wind,

The sound of her lament shall, rising o'er

The Seraph voices, touch the Almighty Mind.

Meantime I, humblest of thy sons, and of

Earth's dust by immortality refined

To Sense and Suffering, though the vain may scoff,

And tyrants threat, and meeker victims bow

Before the storm because its breath is rough,

To thee, my Country! whom before, as now,

I loved and love, devote the mournful lyre