THE man of firm and noble soul
No factious clamours can control:
No threatening tyrant's darkling brow
Can swerve him from his just intent;
Gales the warring waves which plough,
By Auster on the billows spent,
To curb the Adriatic main
Would awe his fixed determined mind in vain.
Ay, and the red right arm of Jove,
Hurtling his lightnings from above,
With all his terrors there unfurled,
He would unmoved, unawed behold.
The flames of an expiring world,
Again in crushing chaos rolled,
In vast promiscuous ruin hurled,
Might light his glorious funeral pile,
Still dauntless 'mid the wreck of earth he'd smile.
Byron.
BANDUSIA, stainless mirror of the sky!
Thine is the flower-crowned bowl, for thee shall die
When dawns yon sun, the kid
Whose horns, half-seen, half-hid,
Challenge to dalliance or to strife—in vain.
Soon must the firstling of the wild herd be slain,
And these cold springs of thine
With blood incarnadine.
Fierce glows the Dog-star, but his fiery beam
Toucheth not thee: still grateful thy cool stream
To labour-wearied ox,
Or wanderer from the flocks:
And henceforth thou shalt be a royal fountain:
My harp shall tell how from thy cavernous mountain,
Where the brown oak grows tallest,
All babblingly thou fallest.
C.S. Calverley.