1818.

They spread themselves into the loveliness

Of fan-like leaves; and over pallid flowers

Hang like moist clouds; or, where high branches kiss,
Make a green space among the silent bowers--

Like a vast fane in a metropolis,1

Surrounded by the columns and the towers
All overwrought with branch-like traceries,-
In which there is religion, and the mute
Persuasion of unkindled melodies,

Odours, and gleams, and murmurs, which the lute
Of the blind Pilot-Spirit of the blast

Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,

Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed,
To such brief unison as on the brain
One tone which never can recur has cast,
One accent never to return again.

The world is full of Woodmen who expel
Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,
And vex the nightingales in every dell.

IV.

SCENE FROM TASSO.

MADDALO
MALPIGLIO.

Mad.

No access to the Duke! You have not said

That the Count Maddalo would speak with him?

Pigna. Did you inform his Grace that Signor Pigna

Waits with state-papers for his signature?

Mal. The Lady Leonora cannot know

That I have written a sonnet to her fame,

In which I . . . Venus and Adonis.

You should not take my gold, and serve me not.

Alb. In truth I told her; and she smiled and said,

"If I am Venus, thou, coy Poesy,

Art the Adonis whom I love, and he

The Erymanthian boar that wounded him."

Oh trust to me, Signor Malpiglio,

Those nods and smiles were favours worth the zechin.

Mal. The words are twisted in some double sense That I reach not: the smiles fell not on me.

Pigna. How are the Duke and Duchess occupied ? Alb. Buried in some strange talk. The Duke was leaning— His finger on his brow, his lips unclosed.

The Princess sate within the window-seat,

And so her face was hid; but on her knee

Her hands were clasped, veinèd, and pale as snow,

And quivering. Young Tasso too was there.

Mad. Thou seest on whom from thine own worshiped heaven Thou draw'st down smiles-they did not rain on thee.

Mal. Would they were parching lightnings, for his sake On whom they fell!

SONG FOR TASSO.

I LOVED-alas! our life is love;

But, when we cease to breathe and move,

I do suppose love ceases too.

I thought (but not as now I do)

Keen thoughts and bright of linkèd lore,—

Of all that men had thought before,
And all that Nature shows, and more.

And still I love, and still I think,
But strangely, for my heart can drink
The dregs of such despair, and live,
And love.

And, if I think, my thoughts come fast

I mix the present with the past,
And each seems uglier than the last.

Sometimes I see before me flee

A silver spirit's form, like thee,

O Leonora ! and I sit

... still watching it,

Till by the grated casement's ledge
It fades, with such a sigh as sedge

Breathes o'er the breezy streamlet's edge.

V.

MARENGHI. I

1.

LET those who pine in pride or in revenge,
Or think that ill for ill should be repaid,
Or barter wrong for wrong until the exchange
Ruins the merchants of such thriftless trade,
Visit the tower of Vado,2 and unlearn
Such bitter faith beside Marenghi's urn.

II.

A massy tower yet overhangs the town,
A scattered group of ruined dwellings now.

III.

Another scene ere wise Etruria knew

Its second ruin through internal strife, And tyrants through the breach of discord threw The chain which binds and kills. As death to life, As winter to fair flowers (though some be poison), So Monarchy succeeds to Freedom's foison.

IV.

In Pisa's church a cup of sculptured gold

Was brimming with the blood of feuds forsworn

At sacrament: more holy ne'er of old

Etrurians mingled with the shades forlorn

Of moon-illumined forests.

V.

And reconciling factions wet their lips

With that dread wine, and swear to keep each spirit Undarkened by their country's last eclipse.

VI.

Was Florence the liberticide? that band

Of free and glorious brothers who had planted,

Like a green isle mid Ethiopian sand,

A nation amid slaveries, disenchanted
Of many impious faiths-wise, just-do they,
Does Florence, gorge the sated tyrants' prey?

VII.

O foster-nurse of man's abandoned glory

Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendour, Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story,

As ocean its wrecked fanes, severe yet tender. The light-invested angel Poesy

Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee.

VIII.

And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught
By loftiest meditations; marble knew
The sculptor's fearless soul, and, as he wrought,

The grace of his own power and freedom grew.
And-more than all-heroic, just, sublime,
Thou wert among the false.-Was this thy crime?

IX.

Yes; and on Pisa's marble walls the twine

Of direst weeds hangs garlanded-the snake Inhabits its wrecked palaces: in thine

A beast of subtler venom now doth make Its lair, and sits amid their glories overthrown, And thus thy victim's fate is as thine own.

X.

The sweetest flowers are ever frail and rare,
And love and freedom blossom but to wither;
And good and ill like vines entangled are,

So that their grapes may oft be plucked together;
Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make
Thy heart rejoice for dead Marenghi's sake.

XI.

No record of his crime remains in story;

But, if the morning bright as evening shone,
It was some high and holy deed, by glory
Pursued into forgetfulness, which won

From the blind crowd he made secure and free
The patriot's meed, toil, death, and infamy.

XII.

For, when by sound of trumpet was declared
A price upon his life, and there was set
A penalty of blood on all who shared

So much of water with him as might wet
His lips, which speech divided not—he went,
Alone, as you may guess, to banishment.

XIII.

Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast,

He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and cold, Month after month endured; it was a feast

Whene'er he found those globes of deep-red gold Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear, Suspended in their emerald atmosphere.

XIV.

And in the roofless huts of vast morasses,
Deserted by the fever-stricken serf,

All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses,
And hillocks heaped of moss-inwoven turf,
And where the huge and speckled aloe made,
Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade,

XV.

He housed himself.-There is a point of strand
Near Vado's tower and town; and on one side
The treacherous marsh divides it from the land,
Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide;
And on the other creeps eternally

Through muddy weeds the shallow sullen sea.

XVI.

Here the earth's breath is pestilence, and few
But things whose nature is at war with life-
Snakes and ill worms—endure its mortal dew.

The trophies of the clime's victorious strife-
White bones, and locks of dun and yellow hair,
And ringed horns which buffaloes did wear-