And round that throne whose light to-day
  O’er all the world is cast,
In words though weak, in hues though faint,
Congenial fancy rise and paint
  The spirits of the past
Who here their homage pay—­
  Those who his youthful muse inspired,
  Those who his early genius fired
To emulate their lay: 
And as in some phantasmal glass
Let the immortal spirits pass,
Let each renew the inspiring strain,
And fire the poet’s soul again.

First there comes from classic Greece,
Beaming love and breathing peace,
With her pure, sweet smiling face,
The glory of the Aeolian race,
Beauteous Sappho, violet-crowned,
Shedding joy and rapture round: 
In her hand a harp she bears,
Parent of celestial airs,
Love leaps trembling from each wire,
Every chord a string of fire:—­
How the poet’s heart doth beat,
How his lips the notes repeat,
Till in rapture borne along,
The Sapphic lute, the lyrist’s song,
Blend in one delicious strain,
Never to divide again.

And beside the Aeolian queen
Great Alcaeus’ form is seen: 
He takes up in voice more strong
The dying cadence of the song,
And on loud resounding strings
Hurls his wrath on tyrant kings:—­
Like to incandescent coal
On the poet’s kindred soul
Fall these words of living flame,
Till their songs become the same,—­
The same hate of slavery’s night,
The same love of freedom’s light,
Scorning aught that stops its way,
Come the black cloud whence it may,
Lift alike the inspir`ed song,
And the liquid notes prolong.

Carolling a livelier measure
Comes the Teian bard of pleasure,
Round his brow where joy reposes
Radiant love enwreaths his roses,
Rapture in his verse is ringing,
Soft persuasion in his singing:—­
’Twas the same melodious ditty
Moved Polycrates to pity,
Made that tyrant heart surrender
Captive to a tone so tender: 
To the younger bard inclining,
Round his brow the roses twining,
First the wreath in red wine steeping,
He his cithern to his keeping
Yields, its glorious fate foreseeing,
From her chains a nation freeing,
Fetters new around it flinging
In the flowers of his own singing.

But who is this that from the misty cloud
  Of immemorial years,
Wrapped in the vesture of his vaporous shroud
  With solemn steps appears? 
His head with oak-leaves and with ivy crowned
  Lets fall its silken snow,
While the white billows of his beard unbound
  Athwart his bosom flow: 
Who is this venerable form
Whose hands, prelusive of the storm
  Across his harp-strings play—­
That harp which, trembling in his hand,
Impatient waits its lord’s command
  To pour the impassioned lay? 
Who is it comes with reverential hail
  To greet the bard who sang his country best
’Tis Ossian—­primal poet of the Gael—­
  The Homer of the West.