The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth;
This vaporous horizon, whose dim. round
Is bastion'd by the circumfluous sea,
Repelling invasion from the sacred towers,
Presses upon me like a dungeon's grate,
A low dark roof, a damp and narrow vault:
The mighty universe becomes a cell
Too narrow for the soul that owns no master.
While the lotheliest spot
Of this wide prison, England, is a nest
Of cradled peace built on the mountain-tops,
To which the eagle-spirits of the free,
Oh! would that I could claim exemption
From all the bitterness of that sweet name!
I loved, I love, and when I love no more,
Let joys and grief perish, and leave despair
To ring the knell of youth. He stood beside me,
The embodied vision of the brightest dream,
Which like a dawn heralds the day of life;
The shadow of his presence made my world
A paradise. All familiar things he touch'd,
All common words he spoke, became to me
Like forms and sounds of a diviner world.
Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn He was as is the sun in his fierce youth,
As terrible and lovely as a tempest;
He came, and went, and left me what I am.
Alas! Why must I think how oft we two
Have sate together near the river springs,
Under the green pavilion which the willow
Spreads on the floor of the unbroken fountain
Strewn by the nurslings that linger there,
Over that islet paved with flowers and moss,
While the musk-rose leaves, like flakes of crimson
Shower'd on us, and the dove mourn'd in the pine,
Sad prophetess of sorrows not our own.
Your breath is like soft music, your words are
The echoes of a voice which on my heart
Sleeps like a melody of early days.
But as you said-
He was so awful, yet
So beautiful in mystery and terror,
Calming me as the loveliness of heaven
Soothes the unquiet sea-and yet not so,
For he seem'd stormy, and would often seem
A quenchless sun mask'd in portentous clouds;
For such his thoughts, and even his actions were;
But he was not of them, nor they of him,
But as they hid his splendor from the earth.
Some said he was a man of blood and peril,
And steep'd in bitter infamy to the lips.
More need was there I should be innocent,
More need that I should be most true and kind,
And much more need that there should be found one
To share remorse, and scorn and solitude,
And all the ills that wait on those who do
The tasks of ruin in the world of life.
He fled, and I have follow'd him.
February, 1822.
THERE was a youth, who, as with toil and travel,
Had grown quite weak and gray before his time;
Nor any could the restless griefs unravel
Loved! Oh, I love. Methinks This word of love is fit for all the world, And that for gentle hearts another name Would speak of gentler thoughts than the world And goading him, like fiends, from land to land
And thou lovest not? if so, Young as thou art, thou canst afford to weep.
Which burn'd within him, withering up his prime
Not his the load of any secret crime,
For naught of ill his heart could understand,
But pity and wild sorrow for the same-
Not his the thirst for glory or command,
What he dared do or think, though men might start, On souls like his, which own'd no higher law
Men held with one another; nor did he,
Like one who labors with a human woe,
Decline this talk; as if its theme might be
Another, not himself, he to and fro
Question'd and canvass'd it with subtlest wit,
And none but those who loved him best could know
That which he knew not, how it gall'd and bit
His weary mind, this converse vain and cold;
For like an eyeless night-mare, grief did sit
Upon his being; a snake which fold by fold
Press'd out the life of life, a clinging fiend
Which clench'd him if he stirr'd with deadlier hold;
And so his grief remain'd-let it remain untold.*
PRINCE Athanase had one beloved friend,
An old, old man, with hair of silver white,
An old man toiling up, a weary wight,
And soon within her hospitable hall
She saw his white hairs glittering in the light
Of the wood fire, and round his shoulders fall;
And his wan visage and his wither'd mien
Yet calm and [ } and majestical.
And Athanase, her child, who must have been
Then three years old, sate opposite and gazed.
Such was Zonoras; and as daylight finds
An amaranth glittering on the path of frost,
When autumn nights have nipt all weaker kinds,
Thus had his age, dark, cold, and tempest-tost,
Shone truth upon Zonoras; and he fill'd
From fountains pure, nigh overgrown and lost,
And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend The spirit of Prince Athanase, a child,
With soul-sustaining songs of ancient lore
With his wise words; and eyes whose arrowy light And philosophic wisdom, clear and mild
Shone like the reflex of a thousand minds.
He was the last whom superstition's blight
And sweet and subtle talk they evermore,
The pupil and master shared; until,
Had spared in Greece-the blight that cramps and Sharing the undiminishable store,
"Of fever'd brains, oppress'd with grief and madness,
Were lull'd by thee, delightful nightingale!
And those soft waves, murmuring a gentle sadness,
"And the far sighings of yon piny dale
Made vocal by some wind, we feel not here,
I bear alone what nothing may avail
"To lighten a strange load!"-No human ear
Heard this lament; but o'er the visage wan
Of Athanase, a ruffling atmosphere
Of dark emotion, a swift shadow ran,
Like wind upon some forest-bosom'd lake,
Glassy and dark.-And that divine old man
Beheld his mystic friend's whole being shake,
Even where its inmost depths were gloomiest-
And with a calm and measured voice he spake,
And with a soft and equal pressure, prest
That cold lean hand :-" Dost thou remember yet
When the curved moon, then lingering in the west,
"Paused in yon waves her mighty horns to wet, How in those beams we walk'd, half resting on the sea ?
"Tis just one year-sure thou dost not forget
Then Plato's words of light in thee and me Linger'd like moonlight in the moonless east, For we had just then read-thy memory
"Is faithful now-the story of the feast;
And Agathon and Diotima seem'd
From death and [
] released.
Twas at the season when the Earth upsprings
From slumber, as a sphered angel's child,
Shadowing its eyes with green and golden wings,
Stands up before its mother bright and mild,
Of whose soft voice the air expectant seems—
So stood before the sun, which shone and smiled
"T was at this season that Prince Athanase
Past the white Alps-those eagle-baffling mountains
Slept in their shrouds of snow-beside the ways
The waterfalls were voiceless-for their fountains
Were changed to mines of sunless crystal now,
Or by the curdling winds-like brazen wings
Which clang'd alone the mountain's marble brow,
Warp'd into adamantine fretwork, hung
And fill'd with frozen light the chasm below.
Thou art the wine whose drunkenness is all
We can desire, O Love.! and happy souls,
Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall,
Catch thee, and feed from their o'erflowing bowls
Thousands who thirst for thy ambrosial dew;-
Thou art the radiance which where ocean rolls
Invests it; and when heavens are blue
Thou fillest them; and when the earth is fait
The shadow of thy moving wings imbue
Its deserts and its mountains, till they wear
Beauty like some bright robe ;-thou ever sarest
Among the towers of men, and as soft air
In spring, which moves the unawaken'd forest,
Clothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak,
Thou floatest among men; and aye implorest
That which from thee they should implore:-the weak
Alone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts
The strong have broken-yet where shall any seek
A garment whom thou clothest not?
Marlow, 1817.
OH! foster-nurse of man's abandon'd glory,
Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendor,
Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story,
As ocean its wreck'd fanes, severe yet tender:
The light-invested angel Poesy
Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee.
By loftiest meditations; marble knew
And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught
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?
Yes; and on Pisa's marble walls the twine
Of direst weeds hangs garlanded—the snake
Inhabits its wreck'd 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.
This fragment refers to an event, told in Sismondi s Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, which occurred du. ring the war when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a province. The opening stanzas are addressed to the conquering city.
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 pluck'd together ;-
Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make
Thy heart rejoice for dead Mazenghi's sake.
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.
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.
Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast,
He hid himself, and hunger, cold, and toil,
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.
And in the roofless huts of vast morasses,
Deserted by the fever-stricken serf,
All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses,
And hillocks heap'd of moss-inwoven turf,
And where the huge and speckled aloe made
Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade,
He housed himself. There is a point of strand
Near Vada's tower and town; and on one side
The treacherous marsh divides it from the land,
Shadow'd by pine and ilex forests wide,
And on the other creeps eternally,
Through muddy weeds, the shallow, sullen sea.
Naples, 1818.
THE WOODMAN AND THE NIGHTINGALE.
A WOODMAN whose rough heart was out of tune (I think such hearts yet never came to good) Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,
One nightingale in an interfluous wood Satiate the hungry dark with melody ;And as a vale is water'd by a flood,
Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness-as a tuberose
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie
Like clouds above the flower from which they rose,
The singing of that happy nightingale
In this sweet forest, from the golden close
Of evening, till the star of dawn may fall,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale
Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness
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