To William Shelley
Lines:52Movement:Romanticism
The billows on the beach are leaping around it,The bark is weak and frail,The sea looks black, and the clouds that bound itDarkly strew the gale.Come with me, thou delightful child,Come with me, though the wave is wild,And the winds are loose, we must not stay,Or the slaves of the law may rend thee away. They have taken thy brother and sister dear,They have made them unfit for thee;They have withered the smile and dried the tearWhich should have been sacred to me.To a blighting faith and a cause of crimeThey have bound them slaves in youthly prime,And they will curse my name and theeBecause we fearless are and free. Come thou, beloved as thou art;Another sleepeth stillNear thy sweet mother's anxious heart,Which thou with joy shalt fill,With fairest smiles of wonder thrownOn that which is indeed our own,And which in distant lands will beThe dearest playmate unto thee. Fear not the tyrants will rule for ever,Or the priests of the evil faith;They stand on the brink of that raging river,Whose waves they have tainted with death.It is fed from the depth of a thousand dells,Around them it foams and rages and swells;And their swords and their sceptres I floating see,Like wrecks on the surge of eternity. Rest, rest, and shriek not, thou gentle child!The rocking of the boat thou fearest,And the cold spray and the clamour wild?--There, sit between us two, thou dearest--Me and thy mother--well we knowThe storm at which thou tremblest so,With all its dark and hungry graves,Less cruel than the savage slavesWho hunt us o'er these sheltering waves. This hour will in thy memoryBe a dream of days forgotten long.We soon shall dwell by the azure seaOf serene and golden Italy,Or Greece, the Mother of the free;And I will teach thine infant tongueTo call upon those heroes oldIn their own language, and will mouldThy growing spirit in the flameOf Grecian lore, that by such nameA patriot's birthright thou mayst claim!