钠

f

, as the mighty day-star makes its way m darkness into light, they toward their fame

nt, gathering splendor till they grew sublime.

first of all thy sons were they who wove y silken language into tales of love, 1 fairest far the gentle forms that shine thy own poets' faery-songs divine.

long as lips shall smile or pitying tears in from the eyes of beauty,-long as fears doubts or hopes shall sear or soothe the heart,

flatteries softly fall on woman's ears, witching words be spoke at twilighthours,

tender songs be sung in orange bowers,

Long as the stars, like ladies' looks, by night Shall shine,- more constant and almost as bright,

So long, tho' hidden in a foreign shroud,
So long the lamp of fame on Petrarch's urn
Shall Dante's mighty spirit speak aloud:
Shall, like the light of learning, duly burn;
And he be loved-he with his hundred tales,

As varying as the shadowy cloud that sails
Upon the bosom of the April sky,
And musical as when the waters run

Lapsing thro' sylvan haunts deliciously.
Nor may that gay romancer who hath told
Of knight and damsel and enchantments old,
So well, be e'er forgot; nor he who sung
Of Salem's holy city lost and won,
The seer-like Tasso, who enamoured hung
On Leonora's beauty, and became
Her martyr,-blasted by a mingled flame.
The masters of the world have vanished, and
Thy gods have left or lost their old command;
The painter and the poet now have fled,
And slaves usurp the seat of Caesar dead:
Prison and painted palace hast thou still,
But filled with creatures whom mere terrors
kill;

Afraid of life and death they live and die
Eternally, and slay their own weak powers,
And hate the past, and dread the future
time,

And while they steal from pleasure droop
to crime,
Plucking the leaves from all the rosy hours:
Alas, alas, beautiful Italy!

-Yet he who late hath risen like a star
Amongst us, (now by the Venice waves afar
He loiters with his song,) hath writ of thee,
And shar'd his laurell'd immortality
With thy decaying fortunes. Murmur not:
For me, with my best skill will I rehearse
My story, for it speaks of thine and thee:
It is a sad and legendary verse,
And thus it runs:--

And there the convent of Laverna stands
In solitude, built up by saintly hands,
And deemed a wonder in the elder time.
Chasms of the early world are yawning there,
And rocks are seen, craggy,and vast, and bare,
And many a dizzy precipice sublime,
And caverns dark as Death, where the wild air
Rushes from all the quarters of the sky:
Above, in all his old regality,

The monarch eagle sits upon his throne,
Or floats upon the desert winds, alone.
There, belted 'round and 'round by forests
drcar,

Black pine, and giant beech, aud oaks that

rear

Their brown diminished heads like shrubs between,

And guarded by a river that is seen
Flashing and wandering thro' the dell below,
Laverna stands.-It is a place of woe,
And 'midst its cold dim aisles and cells of
gloom,

The pale Franciscan meditates his doom;-
An exile from his kind, save some sad few
(Like him imprison'd and devoted) who,
Deserting their high natures for the creed
A bigot fashioned in his weaker dreams,
Left love and life, (yet love is life, indeed,)
And all the wonders of the world, its gleams
Of joy, of sunshine, fair as those which spring
From the great poet's high imagining,
Sounds, and gay sights, and woman's words

which bless

And fiery love, and dark and starry Fed,with distemper'd food, the achi That haunted all his hours, and g To thirst of enterprize and wishes Which died as they arose,-in prides For he was doom'd by a father's wil The sullen cowl, and was forbid # The splendour of an elder brothers And therefore came distrust and bitr And envy, like the serpent's twining Ran 'round his heart and fixed its

there;

And thro' his veins did lurking feve Until they burst in madness;-the Became, at last, as is that languid That floats across the calm blue sea, And rises o'er the Coliseum's walk And he like that great ruin.-In thi Of misery, when the soul had lest i When memory slept, and that blank More hideous than death-to which Is nothing, nor remorse-came s His features, they (his cautious pare The youth unto Laverna. By the Of the blue dashing Mediterranean They travell'd, and at times when th

breeze

H

De

Sh

O

W

SI

D D

S

T

A

V

re they left him to his fate,-alone.

pain.

returned;

en Colonna's heir bespoke her hand, her to the dance, she question'd why ther joined not in that revelry: he turned aside and did command the many instruments to sound, I did that young couple tread the ground:

p was lost in each accordant note, thro' the palace seemed that night to float

ily, as tho' the Satyr-god

s inspiring reed, (the mighty Pan) his old Arcadian woods, and trod pon the shores Italian.

he asked in vain: yet, as he turned ther) from her,a fierce colour burned s cheek, and fading left it pale 1, and half proclaimed the guilty tale. welt upon that night till pity grew wilder passion: the sweet dew ger'd in her eye for pity's sake, like an exhalation in the sun) d absorbed by love. Oh! love can take ape he pleases, and when once begun y inroad in the soul, how vain er-knowledge which his presence gives!

And ghastly crucifix before him, he
'Rose with a sudden shriek and burst the band
That tied him to his pallet, and stood free:
Darted upon his brain and did unlock
Not thus alone he stood, for the wild shock
The gates of memory, and from his soul
Gradual he felt the clouds of madness roll,
And with his mind's redemption every base
And darker passion fled-shrunk 'fore its
light,

Not suddenly, but slow, from day to day,
As at the glance of morning shrinks the night.
The shadow from his spirit passed away,
And sometimes would return at intervals,
As blight upon the opening blossom falls.
-And then he pondered in his prison-place,
On many an awful theme ne'er conn'd before,
Of darkness and decay, and of that shore
Upon whose shadowy strand pale spirits walk,
'Tis said, for many ages, and would talk
Right eloquent with every monk who there
Boasted of penitence, and felt despair,
In whose dull eye Hope shone not, and whose
breath
Was one unvaried tale of Death and Death.

But in his gentler moments he would gaze, With something of the love of earlier days, On the far prospects, and on summer-morns Would wander to a high and distant peak Against whose rocky bosom the clouds break In showers upon the forests. It adorns The landscape,and from out a pine-wood high, Springs like a craggy giant to the sky. Here, on this summit of the hills, he loved To lie and look upon the world below; And almost did he wish at times to know How in that busy world man could be moved To live for ever-what delights were there To equal the fresh sward and odorous air, The valleys and green slopes, and the sweet call

Of bird to bird, what time the shadows fall Toward the west:-yet something there must be

He felt, and that he now desired to see.
As once he pondered there, on the far world,
And on himself, like a lone creature hurled
From all its pleasures-its temptations, all,
Over his heart there fell, like a dark pall,
The memory of the past: he thought and
thought,

'Till in his brain a busier spirit wrought, And Nature then unlocked with her sweet smile

The icy barrier of his heart, and he
Returned unto his first humanity.

He felt a void.and much he grieved the while, Within his heart, as tho' he wished to share A joy he knew not with another mind; Wild were his thoughts, but every wish refined,

And pure as waters of the mountain-spring: Was it the birth of Love?-did he unbind (Like the far scent of wild flowers blossoming) His perfumed pinions in that rocky lair,. To save a heart so young from perishing there?

Some memory had he of Vitelli's child, But gathered where he now remembered not; Perhaps, like a faint dream or vision wild, Which, once beheld, may never be forgot, She floated in his fancy; and when pain And fevers hot came thronging round his brain,

Her shape and voice fell like a balm upon
His sad and dark imagination.
A gentle minister she was, when he
Saw forms, 'twas said, which often silently
Passed by his midnight-couch, and felt at
times

Strange horror for imaginary crimes,
(Committed, or to be,) and in his walk
Of Fate and Death, and phantom things
would talk.

Shrieks scared him from his sleep, and figures

came

On his alarmed sight, and thro' the glades, When evening filled the woods with trembling shades,

Followed his footsteps; and a starlike flame
Flgated before his eyes palely by day,
And glared by night and would not pass away.
-At last his brother died. Giovanni fell
A victim in a cause he loved too well;
And the Colonna prince, without his heir,
Bethought him of the distant convent, where
A child had been imprison'd, that he might
gain

Riches for one he better lov'd:-How vain,
And idle now! Dead was the favoured son,
And sad the father, but the crime was done.

In the Colonna palace there were tears Flowing from aged eyes that seldom vŋ Their son was gone-the hope of many ye Cold in his marble home for ever slept. -The father met his child: with trenUL S grasp

He pressed his hand, and he returned t clasp,

And spoke assuring words-that he wasc To soothe his grief and cheer his desalo home,―

And then he bade him quite forget the pac Thus hand in hand they sat awhile; at s A deep deep sob came bursting from the gloat That hid the far part of the palace-romm. And, after, all was silent as the grave. Colonna 'rose, and by the lamp that gav A feeble light, saw like a shape of stone. His mother conching in the dusk, alone: Her hand was clenched, and her eye wandere wild

Like one who lost and sought (in vain) : child;

And now and then a smile, but not a tear. Told that she fancied still her darling near And then she shook her head,crossed herarm Over her breast and turned her from the light And seemed as though she mutter'd inward charms,

To scare some doubtful phantom from her sight.

With grief, and every passion else was stilled He spoke to her in vain: her heart was filled Was buried,-lost. Just as the mighty rais Of Autumn, or as rivers when snow decays Which,gathering,flood the valleys in the days Sweep all things in their course, 'till nough remains Distinguishable,-earth, and roots, and grass. And stones, and casual things, a mingled

and yet

At last the woes that wrapped the mother round, Broke and dissolved, and a serener day Shone on her life; but never more the sound Of noisy mirth or festal music gay Was heard within Colonna's walls, A calm and pleasant circle often met. And the despised neglected Marcian now Wore the descended honours on his brow. Unlike he was in boyhood,—yet so grave They doubted sometimes if he quite forgave The past; and then there played a moody smile

About his mouth, and he at times would speak Of one with heavenly bloom upon her check. Whose vision did his convent-hours beguile : A phantom-shape,and which in sleep still camer And fanned the colour of his check to flame