Page:Ode on the Departing Year - Coleridge (1796).djvu/17

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13

EPODE II.

The Voice had ceas'd, the Phantoms fled,

Yet still I gasp'd and reel'd with dread.
And ever when the dream of night
Renews the vision to my sight,
Cold sweat-damps gather on my limbs,
My Ears throb hot, my eye-balls start,
My Brain with horrid tumult swims,
Wild is the Tempest of my Heart;
And my thick and struggling breath
Imitates the toil of Death!
No uglier agony confounds
The Soldier on the war-field spread,
When all foredone with toil and wounds
Death-like he dozes among heaps of Dead!
(The strife is o'er, the day-light fled,
And the Night-wind clamours hoarse;
See! the startful Wretch's head
Lies pillow'd on a Brother's Corse!)
O doom'd to fall, enslav'd and vile,
O Albion! O ray mother Isle!
Thy valleys, fair as Eden's bowers,

D