The innocent ringlets of a child's free hair,

And crouches, when the thought of some great spirit, With world-wide murmur, like a rising gale,

Over men's hearts, as over standing corn,

Rushes, and bends them to its own strong will.
So shall some thought of mine yet circle earth,
And puff away thy crumbling altars, Jove!

And, wouldst thou know of my supreme revenge, Poor tyrant, even now dethroned in heart,

Realmless in soul, as tyrants ever are,

Listen! and tell me if this bitter peak,
This never-glutted vulture, and these chains
Shrink not before it; for it shall befit

A sorrow-taught, unconquered Titan-heart.

Men, when their death is on them, seem to stand

On a precipitous crag that overhangs

The abyss of doom, and in that depth to see,

As in a glass, the features dim and vast

Of things to come, the shadows, as it seems,
Of what have been. Death ever fronts the wise;

Not fearfully, but with clear promises

Of larger life, on whose broad vans upborne,
Their out-look widens, and they see beyond
The horizon of the Present and the Past,
Even to the very source and end of things.
Such am I now: immortal woe hath made

My heart a seer, and my soul a judge

Between the substance and the shadow of Truth.

The sure supremeness of the Beautiful,

By all the martyrdoms made doubly sure
Of such as I am, this is my revenge,

Which of my wrongs builds a triumphal arch,
Through which I see a sceptre and a throne.
The pipings of glad shepherds on the hills,
Tending the flocks no more to bleed for thee, -
The songs of maidens pressing with white feet
The vintage on thine altars poured no more,
The murmurous bliss of lovers, underneath
Dim grape-vine bowers, whose rosy bunches press
Not half so closely their warm cheeks, unchecked
By thoughts of thy brute lust, the hive-like hum

Of peaceful commonwealths, where sunburnt Toil Reaps for itself the rich earth, made its own

By its own labor, lightened with glad hymns
To an omnipotence which thy mad bolts
Would cope with as a spark with the vast sea,
Even the spirit of free love and peace,

Duty's sure recompense through life and death, -
These are such harvests as all master-spirits

Reap, haply not on earth, but reap no less
Because the sheaves are bound by hands not theirs;
These are the bloodless daggers wherewithal

They stab fallen tyrants, this their high revenge:

For their best part of life on earth is when,

Long after death, prisoned and pent no more,

Their thoughts, their wild dreams even, have become

Part of the necessary air men breathe;

When, like the moon, herself behind a cloud,

They shed down light before us on life's sea,

That cheers us to steer onward still in hope.
Earth with her twining memories ivies o'er
Their holy sepulchres; the chainless sea,
In tempest or wide calm, repeats their thoughts;
The lightning and the thunder, all free things,
Have legends of them for the ears of men.

All other glories are as falling stars,

But universal Nature watches theirs :

Such strength is won by love of human kind.

Not that I feel that hunger after fame, Which souls of a half-greatness are beset with; But that the memory of noble deeds

Cries, shame upon the idle and the vile,

And keeps the heart of Man for ever up
To the heroic level of old time.

To be forgot at first is little pain
To a heart conscious of such high intent
As must be deathless on the lips of men;
But, having been a name, to sink and be

A something which the world can do without,
Which, having been or not, would never change
The lightest pulse of fate, this is indeed

A

cup of bitterness the worst to taste,

And this thy heart shall empty to the dregs.
Endless despair shall be thy Caucasus,
And memory thy vulture; thou wilt find
Oblivion far lonelier than this peak, -

Behold thy destiny! Thou think'st it much
That I should brave thee, miserable god!

But I have braved a mightier than thou,

Even the tempting of this soaring heart,
Which might have made me, scarcely less than thou,
A god among my brethren weak and blind,-
Scarce less than thou, a pitiable thing

To be down-trodden into darkness soon.
But now I am above thee, for thou art
The bungling workmanship of fear, the block
That awes the swart Barbarian ; but I

Am what myself have made,

a nature wise

With finding in itself the types of all,

With watching from the dim verge of the time
What things to be are visible in the gleams

Thrown forward on them from the luminous past,

Wise with the history of its own frail heart,

With reverence and sorrow, and with love,

Broad as the world, for freedom and for man.

Thou and all strength shall crumble, except Love, By whom, and for whose glory, ye shall cease: