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LIBERTY.

THE fiery mountains answer each other;
Their thunderings are echoed from zone to zone ;
The tempestuous oceans awake one another,
And the ice-rocks are shaken round winter's throne,
When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown.

From a single cloud the lightning flashes,
Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around;
Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes,

An hundred are shuddering and tottering; the sound
Is bellowing underground.

But keener thy gaze than the lightning's glare,
And swifter thy step than the earthquake's tramp;
Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare
Makes blind the volcanoes; the sun's bright lamp
To thine is a fen-fire damp.

From billow and mountain and exhalation
The sunlight is darted through vapour and blast;
From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation,
From city to hamlet, thy dawning is cast,-

And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night
In the van of the morning light.

AN ALLEGORY.

A PORTAL as of shadowy adamant

Stands yawning on the highway of the life
Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt;
Around it rages an unceasing strife

Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt
The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high
Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky.

And many passed it by with careless tread,
Not knowing that a shadowy [

Tracks every traveller even to where the dead
Wait peacefully for their companion new;
But others, by more curious humour led,

Pause to examine,-these are very few,
And they learn little there, except to know
That shadows follow them where'er they go.

THE TOWER OF FAMINE.❤

AMID the desolation of a city,

Which was the cradle, and is now the grave,
Of an extinguished people; so that pity
Weeps o'er the shipwrecks of oblivion's wave,
There stands the Tower of Famine. It is built
Upon some prison-homes, whose dwellers rave
For bread, and gold, and blood: pain, linked to guilt,
Agitates the light flame of their hours,

Until its vital oil is spent or spilt:

There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers
And sacred domes; each marble-ribbed roof,
The brazen-gated temples, and the bowers
Of solitary wealth! the tempest-proof
Pavilions of the dark Italian air

Are by its presence dimmed-they stand aloof,
And are withdrawn-so that the world is bare,
As if a spectre, wrapt in shapeless terror,
Amid a company of ladies fair

Should glide and glow, till it became a mirror
Of all their beauty, and their hair and hue,
The life of their sweet eyes, with all its error,
Should be absorbed, till they to marble grew.

SONNET.

YE hasten to the dead! What seek ye there,
Ye restless thoughts and busy purposes
Of the idle brain, which the world's livery wear?
O thou quick Heart, which pantest to possess

All that anticipation feigneth fair!

Thou vainly curious Mind which wouldest guess
Whence thou didst come, and whither thou mayest go,
And that which never yet was known wouldst know-
Oh, whither hasten ye, that thus ye press

With such swift feet life's green and pleasant path,
Seeking alike from happiness and woe

A refuge in the cavern of grey death?

O heart, and mind, and thoughts! What thing do you Hope to inherit in the grave below?

* At Pisa there still exists the prison of Ugolino, which goes oy the name of "La Torre della Fame:" in the adjoining bulding the galley-slaves are confined. It is situated near the Ponte al Mare on the Arno.

POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821.

EPIPSYCHIDION:

VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFORTUNATE

LADY EMILIA V.

NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF

"L'anima amante si slancia furio del creato, e si crea nel infinito un Mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro."— Her own words.

My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few
Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning,

Of such hard matter dost thou entertain;

Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring
Thee to base company (as chance may do),
Quite unaware of what thou dost contain,

I prithee comfort thy sweet self again,
My last delight! tell them that they are dull,
And bid them own that thou art beautiful.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE writer of the following lines died at Florence, as he was preparing for a voyage to one of the wildest of the Sporades, which he had bought, and where he had fitted up the ruins of an old building, and where it was his hope to have realised a scheme of life, suited perhaps to that happier and better world of which he is now an inhabitant, but hardly practicable in this. His life was singular; less on account of the romantic vicissitudes which diversified it, than the ideal tinge which it received from his own character and feelings. The present Poem, like the Vita Nuova of Dante, is sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a matter-of-fact history of the circumstances to which it relates; and to a certain other class it must ever remain incomprehensible, from a defect of a common organ

قلة

S.

of perception for the ideas of which it treats. Not but that, gran vergogna sarebbe a colui, che rimasse cosa sotto veste di figura, o di colore rettorico: e domandato non sapesse denudare le sue parole da cotal veste, in guisa che avessero verace intendimento.

The present poem appears to have been intended by the writer as the dedication to some longer one. The stanza on the preceding page is almost a literal translation from Dante's famous canzone

Voi ch' intendendo, il terzo ciel movete, &c.

The presumptuous application of the concluding lines to his own composition will raise a smile at the expense of my unfortunate friend: be it a smile not of contempt, but pity.

EPIPSYCHIDION.

SWEET Spirit! Sister of that orphan one,
Whose empire is the name thou weepest on
In my heart's temple I suspend to thee
These votive wreaths of withered memory.

Poor captive bird! who, from thy narrow cage,
Pourest such music, that it might assuage
The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee,
Were they not deaf to all sweet melody;
This song shall be thy rose: its petals pale
Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale!
But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom,
And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom.

High, spirit-winged Heart! who dost for ever
Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour,
Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed
It over-soared this low and worldly shade,
Lie shattered; and thy panting wounded breast
Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest!
I weep vain tears: blood would less bitter be,
Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee.

Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman
All that is insupportable in thee

Of light, and love, and immortality!
Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse!
Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe!

Thou Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living Form
Among the Dead! thou Star above the Storm!

قية

Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror
Thou Harmony of Nature's art! Thou Mirror
In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun,
All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on!
Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee now
Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow;
I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song
All of its much mortality and wrong,

With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew
From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through,
Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstacy :
Then smile on it, so that it may not die.

I never thought before my death to see
Youth's vision thus made perfect: Emily,

I love thee; though the world by no thin name
Will hide that love from its unvalued shame.
Would we two had been twins of the same mother!

Or, that the name my heart lent to another
Could be a sister's bond for her and thee,
Blending two beams of one eternity!

Yet were one lawful and the other true,

These names, though dear, could paint not, as is due, How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me!

I am not thine: I am a part of thee.

Sweet Lamp! my moth-like Muse has burnt its wings, Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings,

Young Love should teach Time, in his own grey style, All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile,

A lovely soul formed to be blest and bless!

A well of sealed and secret happiness,

Whose waters like blithe light and music are,
Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? A Star
Which moves not in the moving Heavens, alone?
A smile amid dark frowns? a gentle tone
Amid rude voices? a beloved light?

A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight?

A lute, which those whom love has taught to play
Make music on, to soothe the roughest day
And lull fond grief asleep? a buried treasure?
A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure?
A violet-shrouded grave of Woe ?-I measure
The world of fancies, seeking one like thee,
And find-alas! mine own infirmity.

She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way, And lured me towards sweet Death; as Night by Day, Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope, Led into light, life, peace. An antelope,

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