Page:Posthumous poems (IA posthumousswinb00swin).pdf/201

They wound us with their glories bright and fleet,
 The fame that would not last,
 The hopes that were too sweet;
 A voice of lamentation
Shakes the high places of the thronèd nation,
The crownless nation sitting wan and bare
 Upon the royal seat."

IV^[1]
Too long the world has waited. Day by day
 The noiseless feet of murder pass and stain
 Palace and prison, street and loveliest plain,
And the slow life of freedom bleeds away.

1. In the MS., Stanza IV originally began as follows—
   "Too long the world has waited. Day by day
   Fresh murders ease the thirst of widening sway:
    And still their blood who lie without a shroud
     Left to the wild bleak air,
     As they were slaughter'd there,
    Cries from the desolate Apennine aloud.
     Father and children lain
     A white bleak pile of slain,
    Left to the sunlight and the freezing rain.
     Thro' blood-polluted halls
     Still the king-serpent sprawls
    His shiny way athwart the floors defiled;
     From that foul nest of sin
     His soul sits cowering in
    Still creeps and stings his anger blind and wild.
     Still from that loathsome lair," etc.
   
   
   Swinburne evidently cancelled these lines, as being too violent to represent anything that was happening in 1857.

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