Of broken vows, but she with patient look
The golden circle from her finger took,

66

And said- Accept this token of my faith,

The pledge of vows to be absolved by death;
And I am dead or shall be soon
my knell
Will mix it's music with that merry bell,
Does it not sound as if they sweetly said
'We toll a corpse out of the marriage bed?'
The flowers upon my bridal chamber strewn
Will serve unfaded for my bier - So soon
That even the dying violet will not die
Before Ginevra." The strong fantasy

Had made her accents weaker and more weak,
And quenched the crimson life upon her cheek,
And glazed her eyes, and spread an atmosphere
Round her, which chilled the burning noon with fear,
Making her but an image of the thought,

Which, like a prophet or a shadow, brought
News of the terrors of the coming time.
Like an accuser branded with the crime
He would have cast on a beloved friend,
Whose dying eyes reproach not to the end.
The pale betrayer- he then with vain repentance
Would share, he cannot now avert, the sentence
Antonio stood and would have spoken, when

The compound voice of women and of men

Was heard approaching; he retired, while she Was led amid the admiring company

Back to the palace, and her maidens soon

Changed her attire for the afternoon,

And left her at her own request to keep

- like one asleep

An hour of quiet and rest :
With open eyes and folded hands she lay,
Pale in the light of the declining day.

Meanwhile the day sinks fast, the sun is set,
And in the lighted hall the guests are met;
The beautiful looked lovelier in the light
Of love, and admiration, and delight
Reflected from a thousand hearts and eyes
Kindling a momentary Paradise.

This crowd is safer than the silent wood,
Where love's own doubts disturb the solitude;
On frozen hearts the fiery rain of wine
Falls, and the dew of music more divine
Tempers the deep emotions of the time
To spirits cradled in a sunny clime :
How many meet, who never yet have met,
To part too soon, but never to forget.

How many saw the beauty, power and wit

Of looks and words which ne'er inchanted yet; But life's familiar veil was now withdrawn,

As the world leaps before an earthquake's dawn,

And unprophetic of the coming hours,
The matin winds from the expanded flowers,
Scatter their hoarded incense, and awaken
The earth, until the dewy sleep is shaken
From every living heart which it possesses,
Through seas and winds, cities and wildernesses,
As if the future and the past were all

Treasured i' the instant ;- so Gherardi's hall

Laughed in the mirth of its lord's festival,

Till some one asked. "Where is the Bride?" And

then

A bride's-maid went, - and ere she came again

A silence fell upon the

guests a pause

Of expectation, as when beauty awes

All hearts with its approach, though unbeheld;
Then wonder, and then fear that wonder quelled ;-
For whispers past from mouth to ear which drew

The colour from the hearer's cheeks, and flew
Louder and swifter round the company;
And then Gherardi entered with an eye
Of ostentatious trouble, and a crowd
Surrounded him, and some were weeping loud.

They found Ginevra dead! if it be death, To lie without motion, or pulse, or breath,

With waxen cheeks, and limbs cold, stiff, and white, And open eyes, whose fixed and glassy light

Mocked at the speculation they had owned.
If it be death, when there is felt around
A smell of clay, a pale and icy glare,
And silence, and a sense that lifts the hair
From the scalp to the ancles, as it were
Corruption from the spirit passing forth,
And giving all it shrouded to the earth,
And leaving as swift lightning in its flight
Ashes, and smoke, and darkness in our night
Of thought we know thus much of death,
Than the unborn dream of our life before
Their barks are wrecked on its inhospitable shore.
The marriage feast and its solemnity

Was turned to funeral pomp

the company

no more

With heavy hearts and looks, broke up; nor they
Who loved the dead went weeping on their way
Alone, but sorrow mixed with sad surprise
Loosened the springs of pity in all eyes,

On which that form, whose fate they weep in vain,
Will never, thought they, kindle smiles again.
The lamps which half extinguished in their haste
Gleamed few and faint o'er the abandoned feast,
Showed as it were within the vaulted room
A cloud of sorrow hanging, as if gloom
Had past out of men's minds into the air.
Some few yet stood around Gherardi there,

Friends and relations of the dead, — and he,
A loveless man, accepted torpidly

The consolation that he wanted not,

Awe in the place of grief within him wrought.

Their whispers made the solemn silence seem

More still some wept, . .

Some melted into tears without a sob,

And some with hearts that might be heard to throb
Leant on the table, and at intervals

Shuddered to hear through the deserted halls
And corridors the thrilling shrieks which came
Upon the breeze of night, that shook the flame
Of every torch and taper as it swept

From out the chamber where the women kept;·
Their tears fell on the dear companion cold
Of pleasures now departed; then was knolled
The bell of death, and soon the priests arrived,
And finding death their penitent had shrived,
Returned like ravens from a corpse whereon
A vulture has just feasted to the bone.
And then the mourning women came.

THE DIRGE.

Old winter was gone

In his weakness back to the mountains hoar,
And the spring came down