No More Learning

What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme
Freedom and thee? thy shield is as a mirror
To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce gleam
To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer; _80
A new Actaeon's error
Shall theirs have been--devoured by their own hounds!
Be thou like the imperial Basilisk
Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds!
Gaze on Oppression, till at that dread risk _85
Aghast she pass from the Earth's disk:
Fear not, but gaze--for freemen mightier grow,
And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe:--
If Hope, and Truth, and Justice may avail,
Thou shalt be great--All hail! _90

ANTISTROPHE 2a.

From Freedom's form divine,
From Nature's inmost shrine,
Strip every impious gawd, rend
Error veil by veil;
O'er Ruin desolate,
O'er Falsehood's fallen state, _95
Sit thou sublime, unawed; be the Destroyer pale!
And equal laws be thine,
And winged words let sail,
Freighted with truth even from the throne of God:
That wealth, surviving fate, _100
Be thine. --All hail!

NOTE:
_100 wealth-surviving cj. A. C. Bradley.

ANTISTROPHE 1b.

Didst thou not start to hear Spain's thrilling paean
From land to land re-echoed solemnly,
Till silence became music? From the Aeaean
To the cold Alps, eternal Italy _105
Starts to hear thine!
The Sea
Which paves the desert streets of Venice laughs
In light, and music; widowed Genoa wan
By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs,
Murmuring, 'Where is Doria? ' fair Milan, _110
Within whose veins long ran
The viper's palsying venom, lifts her heel
To bruise his head. The signal and the seal
(If Hope and Truth and Justice can avail)
Art thou of all these hopes. --O hail! _115

NOTES:
_104 Aeaea, the island of Circe. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ]
_112 The viper was the armorial device of the Visconti,
tyrants of Milan. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ]

ANTISTROPHE 2b.

Florence! beneath the sun,
Of cities fairest one,
Blushes within her bower for Freedom's expectation:
From eyes of quenchless hope
Rome tears the priestly cope, _120
As ruling once by power, so now by admiration,--
An athlete stripped to run
From a remoter station
For the high prize lost on Philippi's shore:--
As then Hope, Truth, and Justice did avail, _125
So now may Fraud and Wrong! O hail!

EPODE 1b.

Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms
Arrayed against the ever-living Gods?
The crash and darkness of a thousand storms
Bursting their inaccessible abodes _130
Of crags and thunder-clouds?
See ye the banners blazoned to the day,
Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride?