and the sulky senate withdrew:  When the tyrannous Ten sword-silenced the land, and the necks of the strong By the heel of their great Dictator were bruised, wrong trampling on wrong.  Least willing of despots! and fain the fair temple of Law to restore, Sheathing the sword in the sceptre:  But lo! as in legends of yore, Once drawn, once redden’d, it may not return to the scabbard!—­and straight On that iron-track’d path he had framed to the end he is goaded by Fate.  And yet, as a temperate man, to flavour some exquisite dish, Without stint pours forth the red wine, thus only can compass his wish; Upon Erin the death-mark he brands, the Party and Cause to secure; Not bloodthirsty by birth; just, liquor ’twas needful to pour; Only the wine of man’s blood! . . .  But the horrible sacrament thrill’d Right through the heart of a nation; nor yet is the memory still’d; E’en yet the dim spectre returns, the ghost of the murderous years, Blood flushing out in hatred; or blood transmuted to tears!  —­Ah strange drama of Fate! what motley pageantries rise On the stage of this make-shift world! what irony silenced in sighs!  For as when the Switzer looks down on the dell, from the pass and the snow, Sees the peace of the fields, the white farms, the clear equable streamlet below, And before him the world unknown, the blaze of the shadowless Line, Riches ill-purchased in exile, the toiling plantation and mine; And the horn floats up the faint music of youth from his forefathers’ fold, And he sighs for the patient life, the peace more golden than gold:—­ So He now looks back on the years, and groans ’neath the load he must bear, Loving this England that loathed him, and none the burden to share!  Gagging not gaining souls:  to the close he wonders in vain Why he cannot win hearts:  why ’tis only the will that resigns to his reign.  As that great image in Dura, the land perforce must obey, Unloved, unlovely,—­and not the feet only of iron and clay,—­ Atlas of this wide realm! in himself he summ’d up the whole; Its children the Cause had devour’d:  the sword was childless and sole.

—­Ah strange drama of Fate! what motley pageantries rise
On the stage of this make-shift world! what irony silenced in sighs! 
In the strait beneath Etna for as the waves ebb, and Scylla betrays
The monster below, foul scales of the serpent and slime,—­could we gaze
On Tyranny stript of her tinsel, what vision of dool and dismay! 
Terror in confidence clothed, and anarchy biding her day: 
Selfishness hero-mask’d; stage-tricks of the shabby-sublime;
Impotent gaspings at good; and the deluge after her time!

—­Is it war that thunders o’er England, and bursts the millennial oak
From his base like a castle uprooted, and shears with impalpable stroke
The sails from the ocean, the houses of men, while the Conqueror lay
On the morn of his crowning mercy, and life flicker’d down with the day? 
Is it war on the earth, or war in the skies, or Nature