Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 4.djvu/303

CANTO III.] And he, their Prince, shall rank among my peers,

And Love shall he his torment; but his grief

Shall make an immortality of tears,

And Italy shall hail him as the Chief

Of Poet-lovers, and his higher song

Of Freedom wreathe him with as green a leaf.

But in a farther age shall rise along

The banks of Po two greater still than he;

The World which smiled on him shall do them wrong

Till they are ashes, and repose with me.

The first will make an epoch with his lyre,

And fill the earth with feats of Chivalry:

His Fancy like a rainbow, and his Fire,

Like that of Heaven, immortal, and his Thought

Borne onward with a wing that cannot tire;

Pleasure shall, like a butterfly new caught,

Flutter her lovely pinions o'er his theme,

And Art itself seem into Nature wrought

By the transparency of his bright dream.—

The second, of a tenderer, sadder mood,

Shall pour his soul out o'er Jerusalem;

He, too, shall sing of Arms, and Christian blood

Shed where Christ bled for man; and his high harp

Shall, by the willow over Jordan's flood,

Revive a song of Sion, and the sharp

Conflict, and final triumph of the brave

And pious, and the strife of Hell to warp

Their hearts from their great purpose, until wave

The red-cross banners where the first red Cross

Was crimsoned from His veins who died to save,

Shall be his sacred argument; the loss

Of years, of favour, freedom, even of fame

Contested for a time, while the smooth gloss

Of Courts would slide o'er his forgotten name