"Wilt thou for ever, even from the tomb,30
Live, yet a music, in the hearts of all;
Arise and save thy country from its doom;
Arise, Immortal, at the angel's call!
The hour shall give thee all thy life implor'd,
And make the lyre more glorious than the sword.
"In vain through yon dull stupor of despair31
Sound Geraint's tromp and Owaine's battle cry;
In vain where yon rude clamour storms the air,
The Council Chiefs stem madd'ning mutiny;
From Trystan's mail the lion heart is gone,
And on the breach stands Lancelot alone!
"Drivelling the wise, and impotent the strong;32
Fast into night the life of Freedom dies;
Awake, Light-Bringer, wake bright soul of song,
Kindler, reviver, re-creator rise!
Crown thy great mission with thy parting breath,
And teach to hosts the Bard's disdain of death!"
Thrill'd at that voice the soul of Caradoc;33
He heard, and knew his glory and his doom.
As when in summer's noon the lightning shock
Smites some fair elm in all its pomp of bloom,
'Mid whose green boughs each vernal breeze had play'd,
And air's sweet race melodious homes had made;
So that young life bow'd sad beneath the stroke34
That sear'd the Fresh and still'd the Musical,
Yet on the sadness Thought sublimely broke:
Holy the tree on which the bolt doth fall!
Wild flowers shall spring the sacred roots around,
And nightly fairies tread the haunted ground;
There, age by age, shall youth with musing brow,35
Hear Legend murmuring of the days of yore;
There, virgin love more lasting deem the vow
Breathed in the shade of branches green no more;
And kind Religion keep the grand decay
Still on the earth while forests pass away.
"So be it, O voice from Heaven," the Bard replied,36
"Some grateful tears may yet embalm my name,
Ever for human love my youth hath sigh'd
And human love's divinest form is fame.
Is the dream erring? shall the song remain?
Say, can one Poet ever live in vain?"
As the warm south on some unfathom'd sea,37
Along the Magian's soul, the awful rest
Stirr'd with the soft emotion: tenderly
He laid his hand upon the brows he blest,
And said, "Complete beneath a brighter sun
That course, The Beautiful, which life begun.
"Joyous and light, and fetterless through all38
The blissful, infinite, empyreal space,
If then thy spirit stoopeth to recall
The ray it shed upon the human race,
See where the ray had kindled from the dearth,
Seeds that shall glad the garners of the earth!
"Never true Poet lived and sung in vain!39
Lost if his name, and wither'd if his wreath,
The thoughts he woke—an element remain
Fused in our light and blended with our breath;
All life more noble, and all earth more fair.
Because that soul refined man's common air!"[2]