Her voice hath been th’ awakener--and her name The gathering-word of nations. In her might, And all the awful beauty of her fame, Apart she dwelt, in solitary light. High on her cliffs, alone and firm she stood, Fixing the torch upon her beacon-tower-- That torch whose flame, far streaming o’er the flood, Hath guided Europe through her darkest hour. Away, vain dreams of glory!--in the dust Be humbled, Ocean-queen! and own thy sentence just! XII. Hark! ’twas the death-bell’s note! which, full and deep, Unmix’d with aught of less majestic tone, While all the murmurs of existence sleep, Swell’d on the stillness of the air alone! Silent the throngs that fill the darken’d street, Silent the slumbering Thames, the lonely mart; And all is still, where countless thousands meet, Save the full throbbing of the awe-struck heart! All deeply, strangely, fearfully serene, As in each ravaged home th’ avenging one had been. XIII. The sun goes down in beauty--his farewell, Unlike the world he leaves, is calmly bright; And his last mellow’d rays around us dwell, Lingering, as if on scenes of young delight. They smile and fade--but, when the day is o’er, What slow procession moves with measured tread?-- Lo! those who weep, with her who weeps no more, A solemn train--the mourners and the dead! While, throned on high, the moon’s untroubled ray Looks down, as earthly hopes are passing thus away. XIV. But other light is in that holy pile, Where, in the house of silence, kings repose; There, through the dim arcade and pillar’d aisle, The funeral torch its deep-red radiance throws. There pall, and canopy, and sacred strain, And all around the stamp of woe may bear; But Grief, to whose full heart those forms are vain, Grief unexpress’d, unsoothed by them--is there. No darker hour hath Fate for him who mourns, Than when the all he loved, as dust, to dust returns. XV. We mourn--but not _thy_ fate, departed One! We pity--but the living, not the dead; A cloud hangs o’er us[61]--“the bright day is done,” And with a father’s hopes, a nation’s fled. And he, the chosen of thy youthful breast, Whose soul with thine had mingled every thought-- He, with thine early fond affections blest, Lord of a mind with all things lovely fraught; What but a desert to his eye, that earth, Which but retains of thee the memory of thy worth? XVI.