“He spoke no more.  O’er my astonish’d soul
    I felt a flood of high emotions roll: 
    Toss’d on the mighty stream of future time,
    My young heart shook with ecstasies sublime!

      “Oh, look not from thy skies, lamented shade,
    Nor view that land to misery betray’d: 
    If ignorance can cloud immortal sight,
    Be Sweden’s fortunes wrapp’d in tenfold night! 
    Thou saw’st not Devastation sweep her shore,
    Her forests smoke, her rivers roll in gore;
    Thou saw’st not half her woes.  Her senate low,
    Thou thought’st her people would revenge the blow;
    And hope shone kindling in thy dying eye,
    That some new sun would rise to light her starless sky.—­
    ’Twas then, when Christiern thought the axe too slow,
    And watch’d with eager transport every blow,
    And drank each murmur that to death consign’d
    The noblest, wisest, bravest of mankind,—­
    When ev’n the gazing crowd was doom’d to feel
    The fury of his yet unsated steel,—­
    ’Twas then thou met thy fate,—­unshared by me! 
    Thou fell’st, and with thee Sweden’s liberty! 
    Thy spouse, thy daughter, wrapp’d in fetters lie;
    Thy son, self-exiled, quits his native sky!”—­

      He paused, and starting from the verdant ground
    With hurried footsteps paced the forests round,
    Stung with fierce grief, ’till the full tide of woes
    Subsiding sunk, and calmer thoughts arose.

      While yet he roams beneath the shady groves,
    And tears gush forth at every step he roves;
    Sleep’s humid vapours lessening on his eyes,
    Ernestus rose, and mark’d the changing skies. 
    And now a furze-clad eminence he found,
    That wide o’erlook’d the immensity of ground: 
    From this, with eye insatiate, he admires
    Woods, hamlets, fields, and awe-commanding spires. 
    And seeks where first to steer his fateful flight,
    Safe under covert of the quiet night. 
    Wide to the left the blue-tinged river roll’d,
    And faintly tipped with eve’s departing gold,
    The village rose:  half-shaded, on the right
    A sloping hill appeared to bound the sight: 
    From its hoar summit to the midmost vale,
    Unnumbered boughs waved floating in the gale. 
    Imbrown’d with ceaseless toil, a smiling train
    Whirl the keen axe, and clear the farther plain,
    The intruding trees and scatter’d stems o’erthrow,
    And form a grassy theatre below. 
    A hundred piles beneath the moon’s wan beams,
    O’er rock and valley shed their lengthening streams;
    Three youths at each their joyous station keep,
    In festive contest bent to banish sleep,
    And strive which first shall see the morn arise
    With pale-red streamer waving thro’ the skies. 
    Sequester’d from the rest a shaded dome
    Arose, the son of Eric’s