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Then rise, ye crownéd Elohim[1]—rise trembling from your thrones; Soon shall cease the eternal rhythm betwixt them and human groans.

Ah! ye thought the nations, faint and weary, lay for ever bound;

They were sleeping like Orestes, with the Furies watching round;

Soon they'll spring to vengeance, maddened by the whisperings divine,

That breathed of human freedom, as they knelt before God's shrine.

See you not a form advancing, as the shadow of the Gnomon,

Step by step, in darkness, onward—can ye read the fatal omen!

Coarse the hand, and rude the raiment, and the brow is dark to see,

But flashes fierce the eye as those of vengeful Zincali.

On its brow a name is written—France read it once before,

And like a demon's compact, it was written in her gore—

A fearful name—thrones trembled as the murmur passed along—

Retribution, proud oppressors, for your centuries of wrong.

From the orient to the ocean, from the palm-tree to the pine,

From Innisfail, by Tagus, to the lordly Appenine—