544

A mirror found? He knew not-none could know.
But on whoe'er might question him he turned

The light of his frank eyes, as if to show

He knew not of the grief within that burned,
But asked forbearance with a mournful look ;
Or spoke in words from which none ever learned
The cause of his disquietude; or shook
With spasms of silent passion; or turned pale:
So that his friends soon rarely undertook
To stir his secret pain without avail ;-

For all who knew and loved him then perceived
That there was drawn an adamantine veil

Between his heart and mind,-both unrelieved
Wrought in his brain and bosom separate strife.
Some said that he was mad; others believed
That memories of an antenatal life

Made this where now he dwelt a penal hell;
And others said that such mysterious grief

From God's displeasure, like a darkness, fell
On souls like his, which owned no higher law
Than love,-love calm, steadfast, invincible
By mortal fear or supernatural awe.

And others: "'Tis the shadow of a dream
Which the veiled eye of Memory never saw,

But through the soul's abyss, like some dark stream
Through shattered mines and caverns underground,
Rolls, shaking its foundations; and no beam
Of joy may rise but it is quenched and drowned
In the dim whirlpools of this dream obscure.
Soon its exhausted waters will have found

A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure,
O Athanase! In one so good and great,
Evil or tumult cannot long endure."

So spake they, idly of another's state

Babbling vain words and fond philosophy:
Such debate
This was their consolation.

Men held with one another. Nor did he,
Like one who labours with a human woe,
Decline this talk: as if its theme might be

Another, not himself, he to and fro

Questioned and canvassed it with subtlest wit.
And none but those who loved him best could know-

That which he knew not-how it galled and bit

His weary mind, this converse vain and cold;
For, like an eyeless nightmare, grief did sit

Upon his being,- -a snake which fold by fold

Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend
Which clenched him, if he stirred, with deadlier hold.
And so his grief remained—let it remain-untold.

PART II.

PRINCE ATHANASE had one beloved friend;
An old old man, with hair of silver white,

And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend
With his wise words, and eyes whose arrowy light
Shone like the reflex of a thousand minds.

He was the last whom superstition's blight

Had spared in Greece-the blight that cramps and blinds,—
And in his olive bower at Enoe

Had sate from earliest youth. Like one who finds

A fertile island in the barren sea,

One mariner who has survived his mates

Many a drear month in a great ship-so he

With soul-sustaining songs and sweet debates
Of ancient lore there fed his lonely being.
"The mind becomes that which it contemplates:"
And thus Zonoras, by for ever seeing
Their bright creations, grew like wisest men.
And, when he heard the crash of nations fleeing
A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins then,
O sacred Hellas! many weary years
He wandered-till the path of Laian's glen
Was grass-grown, and the unremembered tears
Were dry in Laian for their honoured chief,
Who fell in Byzant, pierced by Moslem spears.
And, as the lady looked with faithful grief

From her high lattice o'er the rugged path

Where she once saw that horseman toil, with brief
And blighting hope, who with the news of death
Struck body and soul as with a mortal blight,
beneath the chesnuts far beneath,
An old man toiling up, a weary wight.

She saw,

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 withered mien,
Yet calm and gentle and majestical.

And Athanase, her child, who must have been
Then three years old, sate opposite and gazed
In patient silence.

IX.

My head is wild with weeping for a grief
Which is the shadow of a gentle mind.
I walk into the air, (but no relief

To seek,-or haply, if I sought, to find;
It came unsought);-to wonder that a chief
Among men's spirits should be cold and blind.

1818.

X.

Flourishing vine, whose kindling clusters glow
Beneath the autumnal sun, none taste of thee;
For thou dost shroud a ruin, and below

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!

1818.

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 linked 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.

XII.
MARENGHI.

I. 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, and unlearn
Such bitter faith beside Marenghi's urn.

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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. And reconciling factions wet their lips

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

6. 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?
7. 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. 8. 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?
9. 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.
Io. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast,

He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and cold,