But Greece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war, Based on the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity; Her citizens, imperial spirits, Rule the present from the past, On all this world of men inherits Their seal is set.
What is Freedom? ye can tell That which slavery is, too well For its very name has grown To an echo of your own.
Age cannot Love destroy, But perfidy can blast the flower, Even when in most unwary hour It blooms in Fancy’s bower. Age cannot Love destroy, But perfidy can rend the shrine In which its vermeil splendours shine.
Be your strong and simple words Keen to wound as sharpened swords, And wide as targes let them be, With their shade to cover ye.
And many more Destructions played In this ghastly masquerade, All disguised, even to the eyes, Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.
Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
There is no real wealth but the labor of people. Were the mountains of gold and silver, the world would not be one grain of corn the richer; no one comfort would be added to the human race.
And many an ante-natal tomb Where butterflies dream of the life to come.
Everytime we say that god is the author of some phenomenon, that signifies that we are ignorant of how such a phenomenon was caused by the forces of nature.
Ah! what a divine religion might be found out if charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith.
The old laws of England they Whose reverend heads with age are gray, Children of a wiser day; And whose solemn voice must be Thine own echo Liberty!
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
Swiftly walk o’er the western wave, Spirit of Night! Out of the misty eastern cave, Where, all the long and lone daylight, Thou wovest dreams of joyand fear, Which make thee terrible and dear, Swift be thy flight!
I see the waves upon the shore, Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown.
One nightingale in an interfluous wood Satiate the hungry dark with melody.
O’er Egypt’s land of memory floods are level, And they are thine, O Nile! and well thou knowest The soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil, And fruits, and poisons spring where’er thou flowest.
The world’s great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn; Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.
So is Hope Changed for Despair-one laid upon the shelf, We take the other. Under heaven’s high cope Fortune is god-all you endure and do Depends on circumstance as much as you.
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!
Jealousy’s eyes are green.