And put her lean hands to the horrid thing: XLIX Ah! wherefore all this wormy circumstance? The simple plaining of a minstrel's song! For here, in truth, it doth not well belong To speak: - O turn thee to the very tale, And taste the music of that vision pale. L With duller steel than the Perséan sword They cut away no formless monster's head, But one, whose gentleness did well accord With death, as life. The ancient harps have said, Love never dies, but lives, immortal Lord: If Love impersonate was ever dead, Pale Isabella kiss'd it, and low moan'd. 'Twas love; cold, — dead indeed, but not dethron'd. LI In anxious secrecy they took it home, She drench'd away: and still she comb'd, and kept LII Then in a silken scarf, — sweet with the dews -- And divine liquids come with odorous ooze LIII And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun, And moisten'd it with tears unto the core. LIV And so she ever fed it with thin tears, Whence thick, and green, and beautiful it grew, So that it smelt more balmy than its peers Of Basil-tufts in Florence; for it drew Nurture besides, and life, from human fears, From the fast mouldering head there shut from view : So that the jewel, safely casketed, Came forth, and in perfumed leafits spread. LV O Melancholy, linger here awhile! O Music, Music, breathe despondingly ! Lift up your heads, sweet Spirits, heavily, And make a pale light in your cypress glooms, Tinting with silver wan your marble tombs. LVI Moan hither, all ye syllables of woe, From the deep throat of sad Melpomene ! Through bronzed lyre in tragic order go, And touch the strings into a mystery; Sound mournfully upon the winds and low; For simple Isabel is soon to be * Among the dead: She withers, like a palm Cut by an Indian for its juicy balm. LVII O leave the palm to wither by itself; It Let not quick Winter chill its dying hour! LVIII And, furthermore, her brethren wonder'd much Greatly they wonder'd what the thing might mean: They could not surely give belief, that such A very nothing would have power to wean Her from her own fair youth, and pleasures gay, And even remembrance of her love's delay. LIX Therefore they watch'd a time when they might sift This hidden whim; and long they watch'd in vain ; For seldom did she go to chapel-shrift, And seldom felt she any hunger-pain : And when she left, she hurried back, as swift As bird on wing to breast its eggs again: And, patient as a hen-bird, sat her there Beside her Basil, weeping through her hair. LX Yet they contrived to steal the Basil-pot, LXI O Melancholy, turn thine eyes away! From isles Lethean, sigh to us - O sigh! Will die a death too lone and incomplete, LXII Piteous she look'd on dead and senseless things, Asking for her lost Basil amorously : And with melodious chuckle in the strings Of her lorn voice, she oftentimes would cry After the Pilgrim in his wanderings, To ask him where her Basil was; and why 'T was hid from her: For cruel 't is,' said she, 'To steal my Basil-pot away from me.' LXIII And so she pined, and so she died forlorn, No heart was there in Florence but did mourn And a sad ditty of this story born From mouth to mouth through all the country pass'd: Still is the burthen sung-'O cruelty, To steal my Basil-pot away from me!' TO HOMER STANDING aloof in giant ignorance, So thou wast blind! - but then the veil was rent, For Jove uncurtain'd Heaven to let thee live, And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent, FRAGMENT OF AN ODE TO MAIA MOTHER of Hermes! and still youthful Maia ! As thou wast hymned on the shores of Baiae ? In earlier Sicilian? or thy smiles Seek as they once were sought, in Grecian isles, By bards who died content on pleasant sward, Leaving great verse unto a little clan ? |