No More Learning

LXXXIII.

I've seen some balls and revels in my time,
And stayed them over for some silly reason,
And then I looked (I hope it was no crime)
To see what lady best stood out the season;
And though I've seen some thousands in their prime
Lovely and pleasing, and who still may please on,
I never saw but one (the stars withdrawn)
Whose bloom could after dancing dare the Dawn.

LXXXIV.

The name of this Aurora I'll not mention,
Although I might, for she was nought to me
More than that patent work of God's invention,
A charming woman, whom we like to see;
But writing names would merit reprehension,
Yet if you like to find out this fair _She,_
At the next London or Parisian ball
You still may mark her cheek, out-blooming all.

LXXXV.

Laura, who knew it would not do at all
To meet the daylight after seven hours' sitting
Among three thousand people at a ball,
To make her curtsey thought it right and fitting;
The Count was at her elbow with her shawl,
And they the room were on the point of quitting,
When lo! those cursed Gondoliers had got
Just in the very place where they _should not. _

LXXXVI.

In this they're like our coachmen, and the cause
Is much the same--the crowd, and pulling, hauling,
With blasphemies enough to break their jaws,
They make a never intermitted bawling.
At home, our Bow-street gem'men keep the laws,
And here a sentry stands within your calling;
But for all that, there is a deal of swearing,
And nauseous words past mentioning or bearing.

LXXXVII.

The Count and Laura found their boat at last,
And homeward floated o'er the silent tide,
Discussing all the dances gone and past;
The dancers and their dresses, too, beside;
Some little scandals eke; but all aghast
(As to their palace-stairs the rowers glide)
Sate Laura by the side of her adorer,[bq]
When lo! the Mussulman was there before her!


LXXXVIII.

"Sir," said the Count, with brow exceeding grave,
"Your unexpected presence here will make
It necessary for myself to crave
Its import? But perhaps 'tis a mistake;
I hope it is so; and, at once to waive
All compliment, I hope so for _your_ sake;
You understand my meaning, or you _shall. _"
"Sir," (quoth the Turk) "'tis no mistake at all:

LXXXIX.

"That Lady is _my wife! _" Much wonder paints
The lady's changing cheek, as well it might;
But where an Englishwoman sometimes faints,
Italian females don't do so outright;
They only call a little on their Saints,
And then come to themselves, almost, or quite;
Which saves much hartshorn, salts, and sprinkling faces,
And cutting stays, as usual in such cases.

XC.

She said,--what could she say? Why, not a word;
But the Count courteously invited in
The Stranger, much appeased by what he heard:
"Such things, perhaps, we'd best discuss within,"
Said he; "don't let us make ourselves absurd
In public, by a scene, nor raise a din,
For then the chief and only satisfaction
Will be much quizzing on the whole transaction. "

XCI.

They entered, and for Coffee called--it came,
A beverage for Turks and Christians both,
Although the way they make it's not the same.
Now Laura, much recovered, or less loth
To speak, cries "Beppo! what's your pagan name?
Bless me! your beard is of amazing growth!
And how came you to keep away so long?
Are you not sensible 'twas very wrong?

XCII.

"And are you _really, truly,_ now a Turk?
With any other women did you wive?
Is't true they use their fingers for a fork?
Well, that's the prettiest Shawl--as I'm alive!
You'll give it me? They say you eat no pork.
And how so many years did you contrive
To--Bless me! did I ever? No, I never
Saw a man grown so yellow! How's your liver?

XCIII.

"Beppo! that beard of yours becomes you not;
It shall be shaved before you're a day older:
Why do you wear it? Oh! I had forgot--
Pray don't you think the weather here is colder?
How do I look? You shan't stir from this spot
In that queer dress, for fear that some beholder
Should find you out, and make the story known.
How short your hair is! Lord! how grey it's grown! "

XCIV.

What answer Beppo made to these demands
Is more than I know. He was cast away
About where Troy stood once, and nothing stands;
Became a slave of course, and for his pay
Had bread and bastinadoes, till some bands
Of pirates landing in a neighbouring bay,
He joined the rogues and prospered, and became
A renegade of indifferent fame.

XCV.

But he grew rich, and with his riches grew so
Keen the desire to see his home again,
He thought himself in duty bound to do so,
And not be always thieving on the main;
Lonely he felt, at times, as Robin Crusoe,
And so he hired a vessel come from Spain,
Bound for Corfu: she was a fine polacca,
Manned with twelve hands, and laden with tobacco.

XCVI.

Himself, and much (heaven knows how gotten! ) cash,
He then embarked, with risk of life and limb,
And got clear off, although the attempt was rash;
_He_ said that _Providence_ protected him--
For my part, I say nothing--lest we clash
In our opinions:--well--the ship was trim,
Set sail, and kept her reckoning fairly on,
Except three days of calm when off Cape Bonn. [233]

XCVII.

They reached the Island, he transferred his lading,
And self and live stock to another bottom,
And passed for a true Turkey-merchant, trading
With goods of various names--but I've forgot 'em.
However, he got off by this evading,
Or else the people would perhaps have shot him;
And thus at Venice landed to reclaim
His wife, religion, house, and Christian name.

XCVIII.

His wife received, the Patriarch re-baptised him,
(He made the Church a present, by the way;)
He then threw off the garments which disguised him,
And borrowed the Count's smallclothes for a day:
His friends the more for his long absence prized him,
Finding he'd wherewithal to make them gay,
With dinners, where he oft became the laugh of them,
For stories--but _I_ don't believe the half of them.

XCIX.

Whate'er his youth had suffered, his old age
With wealth and talking made him some amends;
Though Laura sometimes put him in a rage,
I've heard the Count and he were always friends.
My pen is at the bottom of a page,
Which being finished, here the story ends:
'Tis to be wished it had been sooner done,
But stories somehow lengthen when begun.


FOOTNOTES:

[191] {153}["Although I was in Italie only ix. days, I saw, in that
little tyme, more liberty to sin than ever I heard tell of in our noble
citie of London in ix. yeares. "--_Schoolmaster_, bk. i. _ad fin_. By
Roger Ascham. ]

[192] {155}

["I've often wish'd that I could write a book,
Such as all English people might peruse;
I never shall regret the pains it took,
That's just the sort of fame that I should choose:
To sail about the world like Captain Cook,
I'd sling a cot up for my favourite Muse,
And we'd take verses out to Demerara,
To New South Wales, and up to Niagara.

"Poets consume exciseable commodities,
They raise the nation's spirit when victorious,
They drive an export trade in whims and oddities,
Making our commerce and revenue glorious;
As an industrious and pains-taking body 'tis
That Poets should be reckoned meritorious:
And therefore I submissively propose
To erect one Board for Verse and one for Prose.

"Princes protecting Sciences and Art
I've often seen in copper-plate and print;
I never saw them elsewhere, for my part,
And therefore I conclude there's nothing in't:
But every body knows the Regent's heart;
I trust he won't reject a well-meant hint;
Each Board to have twelve members, with a seat
To bring them in per ann. five hundred neat:--

"From Princes I descend to the Nobility:
In former times all persons of high stations,
Lords, Baronets, and Persons of gentility,
Paid twenty guineas for the dedications;
This practice was attended with utility;
The patrons lived to future generations,
The poets lived by their industrious earning,--
So men alive and dead could live by Learning.

"Then twenty guineas was a little fortune;
Now, we must starve unless the times should mend:
Our poets now-a-days are deemed importune
If their addresses are diffusely penned;
Most fashionable authors make a short one
To their own wife, or child, or private friend,
To show their independence, I suppose;
And that may do for Gentlemen like those.

"Lastly, the common people I beseech--
Dear People! if you think my verses clever,
Preserve with care your noble parts of speech,
And take it as a maxim to endeavour
To talk as your good mothers used to teach,
And then these lines of mine may last for ever;
And don't confound the language of the nation
With long-tailed words in _osity_ and _ation_. "


ODE ON VENICE[234]

I.

Oh Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls
Are level with the waters, there shall be
A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls,
A loud lament along the sweeping sea!
If I, a northern wanderer, weep for thee,
What should thy sons do? --anything but weep:
And yet they only murmur in their sleep.
In contrast with their fathers--as the slime,
The dull green ooze of the receding deep,
Is with the dashing of the spring-tide foam, 10
That drives the sailor shipless to his home,
Are they to those that were; and thus they creep,
Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping streets.
Oh! agony--that centuries should reap
No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years[235]
Of wealth and glory turned to dust and tears;
And every monument the stranger meets,
Church, palace, pillar, as a mourner greets;
And even the Lion all subdued appears,[236]
And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum, 20
With dull and daily dissonance, repeats
The echo of thy Tyrant's voice along
The soft waves, once all musical to song,
That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng
Of gondolas[237]--and to the busy hum
Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds
Were but the overbeating of the heart,
And flow of too much happiness, which needs
The aid of age to turn its course apart
From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood 30
Of sweet sensations, battling with the blood.
But these are better than the gloomy errors,
The weeds of nations in their last decay,
When Vice walks forth with her unsoftened terrors,
And Mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay;
And Hope is nothing but a false delay,
The sick man's lightning half an hour ere Death,
When Faintness, the last mortal birth of Pain,
And apathy of limb, the dull beginning
Of the cold staggering race which Death is winning, 40
Steals vein by vein and pulse by pulse away;
Yet so relieving the o'er-tortured clay,
To him appears renewal of his breath,
And freedom the mere numbness of his chain;
And then he talks of Life, and how again
He feels his spirit soaring--albeit weak,
And of the fresher air, which he would seek;
And as he whispers knows not that he gasps,
That his thin finger feels not what it clasps,
And so the film comes o'er him--and the dizzy 50
Chamber swims round and round--and shadows busy,
At which he vainly catches, flit and gleam,
Till the last rattle chokes the strangled scream,
And all is ice and blackness,--and the earth
That which it was the moment ere our birth. [238]

II.

There is no hope for nations! --Search the page
Of many thousand years--the daily scene,
The flow and ebb of each recurring age,
The everlasting _to be_ which _hath been_,
Hath taught us nought or little: still we lean 60
On things that rot beneath our weight, and wear
Our strength away in wrestling with the air;
For't is our nature strikes us down: the beasts
Slaughtered in hourly hecatombs for feasts
Are of as high an order--they must go
Even where their driver goads them, though to slaughter.
Ye men, who pour your blood for kings as water,
What have they given your children in return?
A heritage of servitude and woes,
A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows. 70
What! do not yet the red-hot ploughshares burn,[239]
O'er which you stumble in a false ordeal,
And deem this proof of loyalty the _real_;
Kissing the hand that guides you to your scars,
And glorying as you tread the glowing bars?
All that your Sires have left you, all that Time
Bequeaths of free, and History of sublime,
Spring from a different theme! --Ye see and read,
Admire and sigh, and then succumb and bleed!
Save the few spirits who, despite of all, 80
And worse than all, the sudden crimes engendered
By the down-thundering of the prison-wall,
And thirst to swallow the sweet waters tendered,
Gushing from Freedom's fountains--when the crowd,[240]
Maddened with centuries of drought, are loud,
And trample on each other to obtain
The cup which brings oblivion of a chain
Heavy and sore,--in which long yoked they ploughed
The sand,--or if there sprung the yellow grain,
'Twas not for them, their necks were too much bowed, 90
And their dead palates chewed the cud of pain:--
Yes! the few spirits--who, despite of deeds
Which they abhor, confound not with the cause
Those momentary starts from Nature's laws,
Which, like the pestilence and earthquake, smite
But for a term, then pass, and leave the earth
With all her seasons to repair the blight
With a few summers, and again put forth
Cities and generations--fair, when free--
For, Tyranny, there blooms no bud for thee! 100

III.

Glory and Empire! once upon these towers[241]
With Freedom--godlike Triad! how you sate!
The league of mightiest nations, in those hours
When Venice was an envy, might abate,
But did not quench, her spirit--in her fate
All were enwrapped: the feasted monarchs knew
And loved their hostess, nor could learn to hate,
Although they humbled--with the kingly few
The many felt, for from all days and climes
She was the voyager's worship;--even her crimes 110
Were of the softer order, born of Love--
She drank no blood, nor fattened on the dead,
But gladdened where her harmless conquests spread;
For these restored the Cross, that from above
Hallowed her sheltering banners, which incessant
Flew between earth and the unholy Crescent,[242]
Which, if it waned and dwindled, Earth may thank
The city it has clothed in chains, which clank
Now, creaking in the ears of those who owe
The name of Freedom to her glorious struggles; 120
Yet she but shares with them a common woe,
And called the "kingdom"[243] of a conquering foe,--
But knows what all--and, most of all, _we_ know--
With what set gilded terms a tyrant juggles!

IV.

The name of Commonwealth is past and gone
O'er the three fractions of the groaning globe;
Venice is crushed, and Holland deigns to own
A sceptre, and endures the purple robe;[244]
If the free Switzer yet bestrides alone
His chainless mountains, 't is but for a time, 130
For Tyranny of late is cunning grown,
And in its own good season tramples down
The sparkles of our ashes. One great clime,
Whose vigorous offspring by dividing ocean[245]
Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion
Of Freedom, which their fathers fought for, and
Bequeathed--a heritage of heart and hand,
And proud distinction from each other land,
Whose sons must bow them at a Monarch's motion,
As if his senseless sceptre were a wand 140
Full of the magic of exploded science--
Still one great clime, in full and free defiance,
Yet rears her crest, unconquered and sublime,
Above the far Atlantic! --She has taught
Her Esau-brethren that the haughty flag,
The floating fence of Albion's feebler crag,[246]
May strike to those whose red right hands have bought
Rights cheaply earned with blood. --Still, still, for ever
Better, though each man's life-blood were a river,
That it should flow, and overflow, than creep 150
Through thousand lazy channels in our veins,
Dammed like the dull canal with locks and chains,
And moving, as a sick man in his sleep,
Three paces, and then faltering:--better be
Where the extinguished Spartans still are free,
In their proud charnel of Thermopylae,
Than stagnate in our marsh,--or o'er the deep
Fly, and one current to the ocean add,
One spirit to the souls our fathers had,
One freeman more, America, to thee! [247] 160



MAZEPPA

I.

'Twas after dread Pultowa's day,[248]
When Fortune left the royal Swede--
Around a slaughtered army lay,
No more to combat and to bleed.
The power and glory of the war,
Faithless as their vain votaries, men,
Had passed to the triumphant Czar,
And Moscow's walls were safe again--
Until a day more dark and drear,[249]
And a more memorable year, 10
Should give to slaughter and to shame
A mightier host and haughtier name;
A greater wreck, a deeper fall,
A shock to one--a thunderbolt to all.

II.

Such was the hazard of the die;
The wounded Charles was taught to fly[250]
By day and night through field and flood,
Stained with his own and subjects' blood;
For thousands fell that flight to aid:
And not a voice was heard to upbraid 20
Ambition in his humbled hour,
When Truth had nought to dread from Power.
His horse was slain, and Gieta gave
His own--and died the Russians' slave.
This, too, sinks after many a league
Of well-sustained, but vain fatigue;
And in the depth of forests darkling,
The watch-fires in the distance sparkling--
The beacons of surrounding foes--
A King must lay his limbs at length. 30
Are these the laurels and repose
For which the nations strain their strength?
They laid him by a savage tree,[251]
In outworn Nature's agony;
His wounds were stiff, his limbs were stark;
The heavy hour was chill and dark;
The fever in his blood forbade
A transient slumber's fitful aid:
And thus it was; but yet through all,
Kinglike the monarch bore his fall, 40
And made, in this extreme of ill,
His pangs the vassals of his will:
All silent and subdued were they.
As once the nations round him lay.

III.

A band of chiefs! --alas! how few,
Since but the fleeting of a day
Had thinned it; but this wreck was true
And chivalrous: upon the clay
Each sate him down, all sad and mute,
Beside his monarch and his steed; 50
For danger levels man and brute,
And all are fellows in their need.
Among the rest, Mazeppa made[252]
His pillow in an old oak's shade--
Himself as rough, and scarce less old,
The Ukraine's Hetman, calm and bold;
But first, outspent with this long course,
The Cossack prince rubbed down his horse,
And made for him a leafy bed,
And smoothed his fetlocks and his mane, 60
And slacked his girth, and stripped his rein,
And joyed to see how well he fed;
For until now he had the dread
His wearied courser might refuse
To browse beneath the midnight dews:
But he was hardy as his lord,
And little cared for bed and board;
But spirited and docile too,
Whate'er was to be done, would do.
Shaggy and swift, and strong of limb, 70
All Tartar-like he carried him;
Obeyed his voice, and came to call,
And knew him in the midst of all:
Though thousands were around,--and Night,
Without a star, pursued her flight,--
That steed from sunset until dawn
His chief would follow like a fawn.


IV.

This done, Mazeppa spread his cloak,
And laid his lance beneath his oak,
Felt if his arms in order good 80
The long day's march had well withstood--
If still the powder filled the pan,
And flints unloosened kept their lock--
His sabre's hilt and scabbard felt,
And whether they had chafed his belt;
And next the venerable man,
From out his havresack and can,
Prepared and spread his slender stock;
And to the Monarch and his men
The whole or portion offered then 90
With far less of inquietude
Than courtiers at a banquet would.
And Charles of this his slender share
With smiles partook a moment there,
To force of cheer a greater show,
And seem above both wounds and woe;--
And then he said--"Of all our band,
Though firm of heart and strong of hand,
In skirmish, march, or forage, none
Can less have said or more have done 100
Than thee, Mazeppa! On the earth
So fit a pair had never birth,
Since Alexander's days till now,
As thy Bucephalus and thou:
All Scythia's fame to thine should yield
For pricking on o'er flood and field. "
Mazeppa answered--"Ill betide
The school wherein I learned to ride! "
Quoth Charles--"Old Hetman, wherefore so,
Since thou hast learned the art so well? " 110
Mazeppa said--"'Twere long to tell;
And we have many a league to go,
With every now and then a blow,
And ten to one at least the foe,
Before our steeds may graze at ease,
Beyond the swift Borysthenes:[253]
And, Sire, your limbs have need of rest,
And I will be the sentinel
Of this your troop. "--"But I request,"
Said Sweden's monarch, "thou wilt tell 120
This tale of thine, and I may reap,
Perchance, from this the boon of sleep;
For at this moment from my eyes
The hope of present slumber flies. "

"Well, Sire, with such a hope, I'll track
My seventy years of memory back:
I think 'twas in my twentieth spring,--
Aye 'twas,--when Casimir was king[254]--
John Casimir,--I was his page
Six summers, in my earlier age:[255] 130
A learned monarch, faith! was he,
And most unlike your Majesty;
He made no wars, and did not gain
New realms to lose them back again;
And (save debates in Warsaw's diet)
He reigned in most unseemly quiet;
Not that he had no cares to vex;
He loved the Muses and the Sex;[256]
And sometimes these so froward are,
They made him wish himself at war; 140
But soon his wrath being o'er, he took
Another mistress--or new book:
And then he gave prodigious fetes--
All Warsaw gathered round his gates
To gaze upon his splendid court,
And dames, and chiefs, of princely port.
He was the Polish Solomon,
So sung his poets, all but one,
Who, being unpensioned, made a satire,
And boasted that he could not flatter. 150
It was a court of jousts and mimes,
Where every courtier tried at rhymes;
Even I for once produced some verses,
And signed my odes 'Despairing Thyrsis. '
There was a certain Palatine,[257]
A Count of far and high descent,
Rich as a salt or silver mine;[258]
And he was proud, ye may divine,
As if from Heaven he had been sent;
He had such wealth in blood and ore 160
As few could match beneath the throne;
And he would gaze upon his store,
And o'er his pedigree would pore,
Until by some confusion led,
Which almost looked like want of head,
He thought their merits were his own.
His wife was not of this opinion;
His junior she by thirty years,
Grew daily tired of his dominion;
And, after wishes, hopes, and fears, 170
To Virtue a few farewell tears,
A restless dream or two--some glances
At Warsaw's youth--some songs, and dances,
Awaited but the usual chances,
Those happy accidents which render
The coldest dames so very tender,
To deck her Count with titles given,
'Tis said, as passports into Heaven;
But, strange to say, they rarely boast
Of these, who have deserved them most. 180

V.

"I was a goodly stripling then;
At seventy years I so may say,
That there were few, or boys or men,
Who, in my dawning time of day,
Of vassal or of knight's degree,
Could vie in vanities with me;
For I had strength--youth--gaiety,
A port, not like to this ye see,
But smooth, as all is rugged now;
For Time, and Care, and War, have ploughed 190
My very soul from out my brow;
And thus I should be disavowed
By all my kind and kin, could they
Compare my day and yesterday;
This change was wrought, too, long ere age
Had ta'en my features for his page:
With years, ye know, have not declined
My strength--my courage--or my mind,
Or at this hour I should not be
Telling old tales beneath a tree, 200
With starless skies my canopy.
But let me on: Theresa's[259] form--
Methinks it glides before me now,
Between me and yon chestnut's bough,
The memory is so quick and warm;
And yet I find no words to tell
The shape of her I loved so well:
She had the Asiatic eye,
Such as our Turkish neighbourhood
Hath mingled with our Polish blood, 210
Dark as above us is the sky;
But through it stole a tender light,
Like the first moonrise of midnight;
Large, dark, and swimming in the stream,
Which seemed to melt to its own beam;
All love, half languor, and half fire,
Like saints that at the stake expire,
And lift their raptured looks on high,
As though it were a joy to die. [bs]
A brow like a midsummer lake, 220
Transparent with the sun therein,
When waves no murmur dare to make,
And heaven beholds her face within.
A cheek and lip--but why proceed?
I loved her then, I love her still;
And such as I am, love indeed
In fierce extremes--in good and ill.
But still we love even in our rage,
And haunted to our very age
With the vain shadow of the past,-- 230
As is Mazeppa to the last.

VI.

"We met--we gazed--I saw, and sighed;
She did not speak, and yet replied;
There are ten thousand tones and signs
We hear and see, but none defines--
Involuntary sparks of thought,
Which strike from out the heart o'erwrought,
And form a strange intelligence,
Alike mysterious and intense,
Which link the burning chain that binds, 240
Without their will, young hearts and minds;
Conveying, as the electric[260] wire,
We know not how, the absorbing fire.
I saw, and sighed--in silence wept,
And still reluctant distance kept,
Until I was made known to her,
And we might then and there confer
Without suspicion--then, even then,
I longed, and was resolved to speak;
But on my lips they died again, 250
The accents tremulous and weak,
Until one hour. --There is a game,
A frivolous and foolish play,
Wherewith we while away the day;
It is--I have forgot the name--
And we to this, it seems, were set,
By some strange chance, which I forget:
I recked not if I won or lost,
It was enough for me to be
So near to hear, and oh! to see 260
The being whom I loved the most.
I watched her as a sentinel,
(May ours this dark night watch as well! )
Until I saw, and thus it was,
That she was pensive, nor perceived
Her occupation, nor was grieved
Nor glad to lose or gain; but still
Played on for hours, as if her will
Yet bound her to the place, though not
That hers might be the winning lot[bt]. 270
Then through my brain the thought did pass,
Even as a flash of lightning there,
That there was something in her air
Which would not doom me to despair;
And on the thought my words broke forth,
All incoherent as they were;
Their eloquence was little worth,
But yet she listened--'tis enough--
Who listens once will listen twice;
Her heart, be sure, is not of ice-- 280
And one refusal no rebuff.

VII.

"I loved, and was beloved again--
They tell me, Sire, you never knew
Those gentle frailties; if 'tis true,
I shorten all my joy or pain;
To you 'twould seem absurd as vain;
But all men are not born to reign,
Or o'er their passions, or as you
Thus o'er themselves and nations too.
I am--or rather _was_--a Prince, 290
A chief of thousands, and could lead
Them on where each would foremost bleed;
But could not o'er myself evince
The like control--But to resume:
I loved, and was beloved again;
In sooth, it is a happy doom,
But yet where happiest ends in pain. --
We met in secret, and the hour
Which led me to that lady's bower
Was fiery Expectation's dower. 300
My days and nights were nothing--all
Except that hour which doth recall,
In the long lapse from youth to age,
No other like itself: I'd give
The Ukraine back again to live
It o'er once more, and be a page,
The happy page, who was the lord
Of one soft heart, and his own sword,
And had no other gem nor wealth,
Save Nature's gift of Youth and Health. 310
We met in secret--doubly sweet[261],
Some say, they find it so to meet;
I know not that--I would have given
My life but to have called her mine
In the full view of Earth and Heaven;
For I did oft and long repine
That we could only meet by stealth.

VIII.

"For lovers there are many eyes,
And such there were on us; the Devil
On such occasions should be civil-- 320
The Devil! --I'm loth to do him wrong,
It might be some untoward saint,
Who would not be at rest too long,
But to his pious bile gave vent--
But one fair night, some lurking spies
Surprised and seized us both.
The Count was something more than wroth--
I was unarmed; but if in steel,
All cap-a-pie from head to heel,
What 'gainst their numbers could I do? 330
'Twas near his castle, far away
From city or from succour near,
And almost on the break of day;
I did not think to see another,
My moments seemed reduced to few;
And with one prayer to Mary Mother,
And, it may be, a saint or two,
As I resigned me to my fate,
They led me to the castle gate:
Theresa's doom I never knew, 340
Our lot was henceforth separate.
An angry man, ye may opine,
Was he, the proud Count Palatine;
And he had reason good to be,
But he was most enraged lest such
An accident should chance to touch
Upon his future pedigree;
Nor less amazed, that such a blot
His noble 'scutcheon should have got,
While he was highest of his line; 350
Because unto himself he seemed
The first of men, nor less he deemed
In others' eyes, and most in mine.
'Sdeath! with a _page_--perchance a king
Had reconciled him to the thing;
But with a stripling of a page--
I felt--but cannot paint his rage.

IX.

"'Bring forth the horse! '--the horse was brought!
In truth, he was a noble steed,
A Tartar of the Ukraine breed, 360
Who looked as though the speed of thought
Were in his limbs; but he was wild,
Wild as the wild deer, and untaught,
With spur and bridle undefiled--
'Twas but a day he had been caught;
And snorting, with erected mane,
And struggling fiercely, but in vain,
In the full foam of wrath and dread
To me the desert-born was led:
They bound me on, that menial throng,
Upon his back with many a thong; 370
They loosed him with a sudden lash--
Away! --away! --and on we dash! --
Torrents less rapid and less rash.

X.

"Away! --away! --My breath was gone,
I saw not where he hurried on:
'Twas scarcely yet the break of day,
And on he foamed--away! --away!
The last of human sounds which rose,
As I was darted from my foes, 380
Was the wild shout of savage laughter,
Which on the wind came roaring after
A moment from that rabble rout:
With sudden wrath I wrenched my head,
And snapped the cord, which to the mane
Had bound my neck in lieu of rein,
And, writhing half my form about,
Howled back my curse; but 'midst the tread,
The thunder of my courser's speed,
Perchance they did not hear nor heed: 390
It vexes me--for I would fain
Have paid their insult back again.
I paid it well in after days:
There is not of that castle gate,
Its drawbridge and portcullis' weight,
Stone--bar--moat--bridge--or barrier left;
Nor of its fields a blade of grass,
Save what grows on a ridge of wall,
Where stood the hearth-stone of the hall;
And many a time ye there might pass, 400
Nor dream that e'er the fortress was.
I saw its turrets in a blaze,
Their crackling battlements all cleft,
And the hot lead pour down like rain
From off the scorched and blackening roof,
Whose thickness was not vengeance-proof.
They little thought that day of pain,
When launched, as on the lightning's flash,
They bade me to destruction dash,
That one day I should come again, 410
With twice five thousand horse, to thank
The Count for his uncourteous ride.
They played me then a bitter prank,
When, with the wild horse for my guide,
They bound me to his foaming flank:
At length I played them one as frank--
For Time at last sets all things even--
And if we do but watch the hour,
There never yet was human power
Which could evade, if unforgiven, 420
The patient search and vigil long
Of him who treasures up a wrong.

XI.

"Away! --away! --my steed and I,
Upon the pinions of the wind!
All human dwellings left behind,
We sped like meteors through the sky,
When with its crackling sound the night[262]
Is chequered with the Northern light.
Town--village--none were on our track,
But a wild plain of far extent, 430
And bounded by a forest black[263];
And, save the scarce seen battlement
On distant heights of some strong hold,
Against the Tartars built of old,
No trace of man. The year before
A Turkish army had marched o'er;
And where the Spahi's hoof hath trod,
The verdure flies the bloody sod:
The sky was dull, and dim, and gray,
And a low breeze crept moaning by-- 440
I could have answered with a sigh--
But fast we fled,--away! --away! --
And I could neither sigh nor pray;
And my cold sweat-drops fell like rain
Upon the courser's bristling mane;
But, snorting still with rage and fear,
He flew upon his far career:
At times I almost thought, indeed,
He must have slackened in his speed;
But no--my bound and slender frame 450
Was nothing to his angry might,
And merely like a spur became:
Each motion which I made to free
My swoln limbs from their agony
Increased his fury and affright:
I tried my voice,--'twas faint and low--
But yet he swerved as from a blow;
And, starting to each accent, sprang
As from a sudden trumpet's clang:
Meantime my cords were wet with gore, 460
Which, oozing through my limbs, ran o'er;
And in my tongue the thirst became
A something fierier far than flame.

XII.

"We neared the wild wood--'twas so wide,
I saw no bounds on either side:
'Twas studded with old sturdy trees,
That bent not to the roughest breeze
Which howls down from Siberia's waste,
And strips the forest in its haste,--
But these were few and far between, 470
Set thick with shrubs more young and green,
Luxuriant with their annual leaves,
Ere strown by those autumnal eyes
That nip the forest's foliage dead,
Discoloured with a lifeless red[bu],
Which stands thereon like stiffened gore
Upon the slain when battle's o'er;
And some long winter's night hath shed
Its frost o'er every tombless head--
So cold and stark--the raven's beak 480
May peck unpierced each frozen cheek:
'Twas a wild waste of underwood,
And here and there a chestnut stood,
The strong oak, and the hardy pine;
But far apart--and well it were,
Or else a different lot were mine--
The boughs gave way, and did not tear
My limbs; and I found strength to bear
My wounds, already scarred with cold;
My bonds forbade to loose my hold.
490
We rustled through the leaves like wind,--
Left shrubs, and trees, and wolves behind;
By night I heard them on the track,
Their troop came hard upon our back,
With their long gallop, which can tire
The hound's deep hate, and hunter's fire:
Where'er we flew they followed on,
Nor left us with the morning sun;
Behind I saw them, scarce a rood,
At day-break winding through the wood, 500
And through the night had heard their feet
Their stealing, rustling step repeat.
Oh! how I wished for spear or sword,
At least to die amidst the horde,
And perish--if it must be so--
At bay, destroying many a foe!
When first my courser's race begun,
I wished the goal already won;
But now I doubted strength and speed:
Vain doubt! his swift and savage breed 510
Had nerved him like the mountain-roe--
Nor faster falls the blinding snow
Which whelms the peasant near the door
Whose threshold he shall cross no more,
Bewildered with the dazzling blast,
Than through the forest-paths he passed--
Untired, untamed, and worse than wild--
All furious as a favoured child
Balked of its wish; or--fiercer still--
A woman piqued--who has her will! 520

XIII.

"The wood was passed; 'twas more than noon,
But chill the air, although in June;
Or it might be my veins ran cold--
Prolonged endurance tames the bold;
And I was then not what I seem,
But headlong as a wintry stream,
And wore my feelings out before
I well could count their causes o'er:
And what with fury, fear, and wrath,
The tortures which beset my path-- 530
Cold--hunger--sorrow--shame--distress--
Thus bound in Nature's nakedness;
Sprung from a race whose rising blood
When stirred beyond its calmer mood,
And trodden hard upon, is like
The rattle-snake's, in act to strike--
What marvel if this worn-out trunk
Beneath its woes a moment sunk? [264]
The earth gave way, the skies rolled round,
I seemed to sink upon the ground; 540
But erred--for I was fastly bound.
My heart turned sick, my brain grew sore,
And throbbed awhile, then beat no more:
The skies spun like a mighty wheel;
I saw the trees like drunkards reel,
And a slight flash sprang o'er my eyes,
Which saw no farther. He who dies
Can die no more than then I died,
O'ertortured by that ghastly ride. [265]
I felt the blackness come and go, 550
And strove to wake; but could not make
My senses climb up from below:
I felt as on a plank at sea,
When all the waves that dash o'er thee,
At the same time upheave and whelm,
And hurl thee towards a desert realm.
My undulating life was as
The fancied lights that flitting pass
Our shut eyes in deep midnight, when
Fever begins upon the brain; 560
But soon it passed, with little pain,
But a confusion worse than such:
I own that I should deem it much,
Dying, to feel the same again;
And yet I do suppose we must
Feel far more ere we turn to dust!
No matter! I have bared my brow
Full in Death's face--before--and now.

XIV.

"My thoughts came back. Where was I? Cold,
And numb, and giddy: pulse by pulse 570
Life reassumed its lingering hold,
And throb by throb,--till grown a pang
Which for a moment would convulse,
My blood reflowed, though thick and chill;
My ear with uncouth noises rang,
My heart began once more to thrill;
My sight returned, though dim; alas!
And thickened, as it were, with glass.
Methought the dash of waves was nigh;
There was a gleam too of the sky, 580
Studded with stars;--it is no dream;
The wild horse swims the wilder stream!
The bright broad river's gushing tide
Sweeps, winding onward, far and wide,
And we are half-way, struggling o'er
To yon unknown and silent shore.
The waters broke my hollow trance,
And with a temporary strength
My stiffened limbs were rebaptized.
My courser's broad breast proudly braves, 590
And dashes off the ascending waves,
And onward we advance!
We reach the slippery shore at length,
A haven I but little prized,
For all behind was dark and drear,
And all before was night and fear.
How many hours of night or day[266]
In those suspended pangs I lay,
I could not tell; I scarcely knew
If this were human breath I drew. 600

XV.

"With glossy skin, and dripping mane,
And reeling limbs, and reeking flank,
The wild steed's sinewy nerves still strain
Up the repelling bank.
We gain the top: a boundless plain
Spreads through the shadow of the night,
And onward, onward, onward--seems,
Like precipices in our dreams,[267]
To stretch beyond the sight;
And here and there a speck of white, 610
Or scattered spot of dusky green,
In masses broke into the light,
As rose the moon upon my right:
But nought distinctly seen
In the dim waste would indicate
The omen of a cottage gate;
No twinkling taper from afar
Stood like a hospitable star;
Not even an ignis-fatuus rose[268]
To make him merry with my woes: 620
That very cheat had cheered me then!
Although detected, welcome still,
Reminding me, through every ill,
Of the abodes of men.

XVI.

"Onward we went--but slack and slow;
His savage force at length o'erspent,
The drooping courser, faint and low,
All feebly foaming went:
A sickly infant had had power
To guide him forward in that hour! 630
But, useless all to me,
His new-born tameness nought availed--
My limbs were bound; my force had failed,
Perchance, had they been free.
With feeble effort still I tried
To rend the bonds so starkly tied,
But still it was in vain;
My limbs were only wrung the more,
And soon the idle strife gave o'er,
Which but prolonged their pain. 640
The dizzy race seemed almost done,
Although no goal was nearly won:
Some streaks announced the coming sun--
How slow, alas! he came!
Methought that mist of dawning gray
Would never dapple into day,
How heavily it rolled away!
Before the eastern flame
Rose crimson, and deposed the stars,
And called the radiance from their cars,[bv] 650
And filled the earth, from his deep throne,
With lonely lustre, all his own.

XVII.

"Uprose the sun; the mists were curled
Back from the solitary world
Which lay around--behind--before.
What booted it to traverse o'er
Plain--forest--river? Man nor brute,
Nor dint of hoof, nor print of foot,
Lay in the wild luxuriant soil--
No sign of travel, none of toil-- 660
The very air was mute:
And not an insect's shrill small horn,[269]
Nor matin bird's new voice was borne
From herb nor thicket. Many a _werst,_
Panting as if his heart would burst,
The weary brute still staggered on;
And still we were--or seemed--alone:
At length, while reeling on our way,
Methought I heard a courser neigh,
From out yon tuft of blackening firs. 670
Is it the wind those branches stirs? [270]
No, no! from out the forest prance
A trampling troop; I see them come!
In one vast squadron they advance!
I strove to cry--my lips were dumb!
The steeds rush on in plunging pride;
But where are they the reins to guide?
A thousand horse, and none to ride!
With flowing tail, and flying mane,
Wide nostrils never stretched by pain, 680
Mouths bloodless to the bit or rein,
And feet that iron never shod,
And flanks unscarred by spur or rod,
A thousand horse, the wild, the free,
Like waves that follow o'er the sea,
Came thickly thundering on,
As if our faint approach to meet!
The sight re-nerved my courser's feet,
A moment staggering, feebly fleet,
A moment, with a faint low neigh, 690
He answered, and then fell!
With gasps and glazing eyes he lay,
And reeking limbs immoveable,
His first and last career is done!
On came the troop--they saw him stoop,
They saw me strangely bound along
His back with many a bloody thong.
They stop--they start--they snuff the air,
Gallop a moment here and there,
Approach, retire, wheel round and round, 700
Then plunging back with sudden bound,
Headed by one black mighty steed,
Who seemed the Patriarch of his breed,
Without a single speck or hair
Of white upon his shaggy hide;
They snort--they foam--neigh--swerve aside,
And backward to the forest fly,
By instinct, from a human eye.
They left me there to my despair,
Linked to the dead and stiffening wretch, 710
Whose lifeless limbs beneath me stretch,
Relieved from that unwonted weight,
From whence I could not extricate
Nor him nor me--and there we lay,
The dying on the dead!
I little deemed another day
Would see my houseless, helpless head.

"And there from morn to twilight bound,
I felt the heavy hours toil round,
With just enough of life to see 720
My last of suns go down on me,
In hopeless certainty of, mind,
That makes us feel at length resigned
To that which our foreboding years
Present the worst and last of fears:
Inevitable--even a boon,
Nor more unkind for coming soon,
Yet shunned and dreaded with such care,
As if it only were a snare
That Prudence might escape: 730
At times both wished for and implored,
At times sought with self-pointed sword,
Yet still a dark and hideous close
To even intolerable woes,
And welcome in no shape.
And, strange to say, the sons of pleasure,
They who have revelled beyond measure
In beauty, wassail, wine, and treasure,
Die calm, or calmer, oft than he
Whose heritage was Misery. 740
For he who hath in turn run through
All that was beautiful and new,
Hath nought to hope, and nought to leave;
And, save the future, (which is viewed
Not quite as men are base or good,
But as their nerves may be endued,)
With nought perhaps to grieve:
The wretch still hopes his woes must end,
And Death, whom he should deem his friend,
Appears, to his distempered eyes, 750
Arrived to rob him of his prize,
The tree of his new Paradise.
To-morrow would have given him all,
Repaid his pangs, repaired his fall;
To-morrow would have been the first
Of days no more deplored or curst,
But bright, and long, and beckoning years,
Seen dazzling through the mist of tears,
Guerdon of many a painful hour;
To-morrow would have given him power 760
To rule--to shine--to smite--to save--
And must it dawn upon his grave?

XVIII.

"The sun was sinking--still I lay
Chained to the chill and stiffening steed!
I thought to mingle there our clay;[271]
And my dim eyes of death had need,
No hope arose of being freed.
I cast my last looks up the sky,
And there between me and the sun[272]
I saw the expecting raven fly, 770
Who scarce would wait till both should die,
Ere his repast begun;[273]
He flew, and perched, then flew once more,
And each time nearer than before;
I saw his wing through twilight flit,
And once so near me he alit
I could have smote, but lacked the strength;
But the slight motion of my hand,
And feeble scratching of the sand,
The exerted throat's faint struggling noise, 780
Which scarcely could be called a voice,
Together scared him off at length.
I know no more--my latest dream
Is something of a lovely star
Which fixed my dull eyes from afar,
And went and came with wandering beam,
And of the cold--dull--swimming--dense
Sensation of recurring sense,
And then subsiding back to death,
And then again a little breath, 790
A little thrill--a short suspense,
An icy sickness curdling o'er
My heart, and sparks that crossed my brain--
A gasp--a throb--a start of pain,
A sigh--and nothing more.

XIX.

"I woke--where was I? --Do I see
A human face look down on me?
And doth a roof above me close?
Do these limbs on a couch repose?
Is this a chamber where I lie? 800
And is it mortal yon bright eye,
That watches me with gentle glance?
I closed my own again once more,
As doubtful that my former trance
Could not as yet be o'er.
A slender girl, long-haired, and tall,
Sate watching by the cottage wall.
The sparkle of her eye I caught,
Even with my first return of thought;
For ever and anon she threw 810
A prying, pitying glance on me
With her black eyes so wild and free:
I gazed, and gazed, until I knew
No vision it could be,--
But that I lived, and was released
From adding to the vulture's feast:
And when the Cossack maid beheld
My heavy eyes at length unsealed,
She smiled--and I essayed to speak,
But failed--and she approached, and made 820
With lip and finger signs that said,
I must not strive as yet to break
The silence, till my strength should be
Enough to leave my accents free;
And then her hand on mine she laid,
And smoothed the pillow for my head,
And stole along on tiptoe tread,
And gently oped the door, and spake
In whispers--ne'er was voice so sweet! [274]
Even music followed her light feet. 830
But those she called were not awake,
And she went forth; but, ere she passed,
Another look on me she cast,
Another sign she made, to say,
That I had nought to fear, that all
Were near, at my command or call,
And she would not delay
Her due return:--while she was gone,
Methought I felt too much alone.

XX.

"She came with mother and with sire-- 840
What need of more? --I will not tire
With long recital of the rest,
Since I became the Cossack's guest.
They found me senseless on the plain,
They bore me to the nearest hut,
They brought me into life again--
Me--one day o'er their realm to reign!
Thus the vain fool who strove to glut
His rage, refining on my pain,
Sent me forth to the wilderness, 850
Bound--naked--bleeding--and alone,
To pass the desert to a throne,--
What mortal his own doom may guess?
Let none despond, let none despair!
To-morrow the Borysthenes
May see our coursers graze at ease
Upon his Turkish bank,--and never
Had I such welcome for a river
As I shall yield when safely there. [275]
Comrades, good night! "--The Hetman threw 860
His length beneath the oak-tree shade,
With leafy couch already made--
A bed nor comfortless nor new
To him, who took his rest whene'er
The hour arrived, no matter where:
His eyes the hastening slumbers steep.
And if ye marvel Charles forgot
To thank his tale, _he_ wondered not,--
The King had been an hour asleep!


DEDICATION.


Lady! if for the cold and cloudy clime
Where I was born, but where I would not die,
Of the great Poet-Sire of Italy
I dare to build[276] the imitative rhyme,
Harsh Runic[277] copy of the South's sublime,
Thou art the cause; and howsoever I
Fall short of his immortal harmony,
Thy gentle heart will pardon me the crime.
Thou, in the pride of Beauty and of Youth,
Spakest; and for thee to speak and be obeyed
Are one; but only in the sunny South
Such sounds are uttered, and such charms displayed,
So sweet a language from so fair a mouth--[278]
Ah! to what effort would it not persuade?

Ravenna, June 21, 1819.





PREFACE

In the course of a visit to the city of Ravenna in the summer of 1819,
it was suggested to the author that having composed something on the
subject of Tasso's confinement, he should do the same on Dante's
exile,--the tomb of the poet forming one of the principal objects[279]
of interest in that city, both to the native and to the stranger.

"On this hint I spake," and the result has been the following four
cantos, in _terza rima_, now offered to the reader. If they are
understood and approved, it is my purpose to continue the poem in
various other cantos to its natural conclusion in the present age. The
reader is requested to suppose that Dante addresses him in the interval
between the conclusion of the _Divina Commedia_ and his death, and
shortly before the latter event, foretelling the fortunes of Italy in
general in the ensuing centuries. In adopting this plan I have had in my
mind the Cassandra of Lycophron,[280] and the Prophecy of Nereus by
Horace, as well as the Prophecies of Holy Writ. The measure adopted is
the _terza rima_ of Dante, which I am not aware to have seen hitherto
_tried in our language, except it may be by Mr. Hayley_,[281] of whose
translation I never saw but one extract, quoted in the notes to _Caliph
Vathek_; so that--if I do not err--this poem may be considered as a
metrical experiment. The cantos are short, and about the same length of
those of the poet, whose name I have borrowed and most likely taken in
vain.

Amongst the inconveniences of authors in the present day, it is
difficult for any who have a name, good or bad, to escape translation. I
have had the fortune to see the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_[282]
translated into Italian _versi sciolti_,--that is, a poem written in the
_Spenserean stanza_ into _blank verse_, without regard to the natural
divisions of the stanza or the sense. If the present poem, being on a
national topic, should chance to undergo the same fate, I would request
the Italian reader to remember that when I have failed in the imitation
of his great "Padre Alighier,"[283] I have failed in imitating that
which all study and few understand, since to this very day it is not yet
settled what was the meaning of the allegory[284] in the first canto of
the _Inferno_, unless Count Marchetti's ingenious and probable
conjecture may be considered as having decided the question.

He may also pardon my failure the more, as I am not quite sure that he
would be pleased with my success, since the Italians, with a pardonable
nationality, are particularly jealous of all that is left them as a
nation--their literature; and in the present bitterness of the classic
and romantic war, are but ill disposed to permit a foreigner even to
approve or imitate them, without finding some fault with his
ultramontane presumption. I can easily enter into all this, knowing what
would be thought in England of an Italian imitator of Milton, or if a
translation of Monti, Pindemonte, or Arici,[285] should be held up to
the rising generation as a model for their future poetical essays. But I
perceive that I am deviating into an address to the Italian reader,
where my business is with the English one; and be they few or many, I
must take my leave of both.




THE PROPHECY OF DANTE.


CANTO THE FIRST.

Once more in Man's frail world! which I had left
So long that 'twas forgotten; and I feel
The weight of clay again,--too soon bereft
Of the Immortal Vision which could heal
My earthly sorrows, and to God's own skies
Lift me from that deep Gulf without repeal,
Where late my ears rung with the damned cries
Of Souls in hopeless bale; and from that place
Of lesser torment, whence men may arise
Pure from the fire to join the Angelic race; 10
Midst whom my own bright Beatric? [286] blessed
My spirit with her light; and to the base
Of the Eternal Triad! first, last, best,[287]
Mysterious, three, sole, infinite, great God!
Soul universal! led the mortal guest,
Unblasted by the Glory, though he trod
From star to star to reach the almighty throne. [bw]
Oh Beatrice! whose sweet limbs the sod
So long hath pressed, and the cold marble stone,
Thou sole pure Seraph of my earliest love, 20
Love so ineffable, and so alone,
That nought on earth could more my bosom move,
And meeting thee in Heaven was but to meet
That without which my Soul, like the arkless dove,
Had wandered still in search of, nor her feet
Relieved her wing till found; without thy light
My Paradise had still been incomplete. [288]
Since my tenth sun gave summer to my sight
Thou wert my Life, the Essence of my thought,
Loved ere I knew the name of Love,[289] and bright 30
Still in these dim old eyes, now overwrought
With the World's war, and years, and banishment,
And tears for thee, by other woes untaught;
For mine is not a nature to be bent
By tyrannous faction, and the brawling crowd,
And though the long, long conflict hath been spent
In vain,--and never more, save when the cloud
Which overhangs the Apennine my mind's eye
Pierces to fancy Florence, once so proud
Of me, can I return, though but to die, 40
Unto my native soil,--they have not yet
Quenched the old exile's spirit, stern and high.
But the Sun, though not overcast, must set
And the night cometh; I am old in days,
And deeds, and contemplation, and have met
Destruction face to face in all his ways.
The World hath left me, what it found me, pure,
And if I have not gathered yet its praise,
I sought it not by any baser lure;
Man wrongs, and Time avenges, and my name 50
May form a monument not all obscure,
Though such was not my Ambition's end or aim,
To add to the vain-glorious list of those
Who dabble in the pettiness of fame,
And make men's fickle breath the wind that blows
Their sail, and deem it glory to be classed
With conquerors, and Virtue's other foes,
In bloody chronicles of ages past.
I would have had my Florence great and free;[290]
Oh Florence! Florence! [291] unto me thou wast 60
Like that Jerusalem which the Almighty He
Wept over, "but thou wouldst not;" as the bird
Gathers its young, I would have gathered thee
Beneath a parent pinion, hadst thou heard
My voice; but as the adder, deaf and fierce,
Against the breast that cherished thee was stirred
Thy venom, and my state thou didst amerce,
And doom this body forfeit to the fire. [292]
Alas! how bitter is his country's curse
To him who _for_ that country would expire, 70
But did not merit to expire _by_ her,
And loves her, loves her even in her ire.
The day may come when she will cease to err,
The day may come she would be proud to have
The dust she dooms to scatter, and transfer[bx]
Of him, whom she denied a home, the grave.
But this shall not be granted; let my dust
Lie where it falls; nor shall the soil which gave
Me breath, but in her sudden fury thrust
Me forth to breathe elsewhere, so reassume 80
My indignant bones, because her angry gust
Forsooth is over, and repealed her doom;
No,--she denied me what was mine--my roof,
And shall not have what is not hers--my tomb.
Too long her armed wrath hath kept aloof
The breast which would have bled for her, the heart
That beat, the mind that was temptation proof,
The man who fought, toiled, travelled, and each part
Of a true citizen fulfilled, and saw
For his reward the Guelf's ascendant art 90
Pass his destruction even into a law.
These things are not made for forgetfulness,
Florence shall be forgotten first; too raw
The wound, too deep the wrong, and the distress
Of such endurance too prolonged to make
My pardon greater, her injustice less,
Though late repented; yet--yet for her sake
I feel some fonder yearnings, and for thine,
My own Beatric? , I would hardly take
Vengeance upon the land which once was mine, 100
And still is hallowed by thy dust's return,
Which would protect the murderess like a shrine,
And save ten thousand foes by thy sole urn.
Though, like old Marius from Minturnae's marsh
And Carthage ruins, my lone breast may burn
At times with evil feelings hot and harsh,[293]
And sometimes the last pangs of a vile foe
Writhe in a dream before me, and o'erarch
My brow with hopes of triumph,--let them go!
Such are the last infirmities of those 110
Who long have suffered more than mortal woe,
And yet being mortal still, have no repose
But on the pillow of Revenge--Revenge,
Who sleeps to dream of blood, and waking glows
With the oft-baffled, slakeless thirst of change,
When we shall mount again, and they that trod
Be trampled on, while Death and Ate range
O'er humbled heads and severed necks----Great God!
Take these thoughts from me--to thy hands I yield
My many wrongs, and thine Almighty rod 120
Will fall on those who smote me,--be my Shield!
As thou hast been in peril, and in pain,
In turbulent cities, and the tented field--
In toil, and many troubles borne in vain
For Florence,--I appeal from her to Thee!
Thee, whom I late saw in thy loftiest reign,
Even in that glorious Vision, which to see
And live was never granted until now,
And yet thou hast permitted this to me.
Alas! with what a weight upon my brow 130
The sense of earth and earthly things come back,
Corrosive passions, feelings dull and low,
The heart's quick throb upon the mental rack,
Long day, and dreary night; the retrospect
Of half a century bloody and black,
And the frail few years I may yet expect
Hoary and hopeless, but less hard to bear,
For I have been too long and deeply wrecked
On the lone rock of desolate Despair,
To lift my eyes more to the passing sail 140
Which shuns that reef so horrible and bare;
Nor raise my voice--for who would heed my wail?
I am not of this people, nor this age,
And yet my harpings will unfold a tale
Which shall preserve these times when not a page
Of their perturbed annals could attract
An eye to gaze upon their civil rage,[by]
Did not my verse embalm full many an act
Worthless as they who wrought it: 'tis the doom
Of spirits of my order to be racked 150
In life, to wear their hearts out, and consume
Their days in endless strife, and die alone;
Then future thousands crowd around their tomb,
And pilgrims come from climes where they have known
The name of him--who now is but a name,
And wasting homage o'er the sullen stone,
Spread his--by him unheard, unheeded--fame;
And mine at least hath cost me dear: to die
Is nothing; but to wither thus--to tame
My mind down from its own infinity-- 160
To live in narrow ways with little men,
A common sight to every common eye,
A wanderer, while even wolves can find a den,
Ripped from all kindred, from all home, all things
That make communion sweet, and soften pain--
To feel me in the solitude of kings
Without the power that makes them bear a crown--
To envy every dove his nest and wings
Which waft him where the Apennine looks down
On Arno, till he perches, it may be, 170
Within my all inexorable town,
Where yet my boys are, and that fatal She,[294]
Their mother, the cold partner who hath brought
Destruction for a dowry--this to see
And feel, and know without repair, hath taught
A bitter lesson; but it leaves me free:
I have not vilely found, nor basely sought,
They made an Exile--not a Slave of me.


CANTO THE SECOND.

The Spirit of the fervent days of Old,
When words were things that came to pass, and Thought
Flashed o'er the future, bidding men behold
Their children's children's doom already brought
Forth from the abyss of Time which is to be,
The Chaos of events, where lie half-wrought
Shapes that must undergo mortality;
What the great Seers of Israel wore within,
That Spirit was on them, and is on me,
And if, Cassandra-like, amidst the din 10
Of conflict none will hear, or hearing heed
This voice from out the Wilderness, the sin
Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed,
The only guerdon I have ever known.
Hast thou not bled? and hast thou still to bleed,
Italia? Ah! to me such things, foreshown
With dim sepulchral light, bid me forget
In thine irreparable wrongs my own;
We can have but one Country, and even yet
Thou'rt mine--my bones shall be within thy breast, 20
My Soul within thy language, which once set
With our old Roman sway in the wide West;
But I will make another tongue arise
As lofty and more sweet, in which expressed
The hero's ardour, or the lover's sighs,
Shall find alike such sounds for every theme
That every word, as brilliant as thy skies,
Shall realise a Poet's proudest dream,
And make thee Europe's Nightingale of Song;[295]
So that all present speech to thine shall seem 30
The note of meaner birds, and every tongue
Confess its barbarism when compared with thine. [bz]
This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so wrong,
Thy Tuscan bard, the banished Ghibelline.
Woe! woe! the veil of coming centuries
Is rent,--a thousand years which yet supine
Lie like the ocean waves ere winds arise,
Heaving in dark and sullen undulation,
Float from Eternity into these eyes;
The storms yet sleep, the clouds still keep their station, 40
The unborn Earthquake yet is in the womb,
The bloody Chaos yet expects Creation,
But all things are disposing for thy doom;
The Elements await but for the Word,
"Let there be darkness! " and thou grow'st a tomb!
Yes! thou, so beautiful, shalt feel the sword,[296]
Thou, Italy! so fair that Paradise,
Revived in thee, blooms forth to man restored:
Ah! must the sons of Adam lose it twice?
Thou, Italy! whose ever golden fields, 50
Ploughed by the sunbeams solely, would suffice
For the world's granary; thou, whose sky Heaven gilds[ca]
With brighter stars, and robes with deeper blue;
Thou, in whose pleasant places Summer builds
Her palace, in whose cradle Empire grew,
And formed the Eternal City's ornaments
From spoils of Kings whom freemen overthrew;
Birthplace of heroes, sanctuary of Saints,
Where earthly first, then heavenly glory made[cb]
Her home; thou, all which fondest Fancy paints, 60
And finds her prior vision but portrayed
In feeble colours, when the eye--from the Alp
Of horrid snow, and rock, and shaggy shade
Of desert-loving pine, whose emerald scalp
Nods to the storm--dilates and dotes o'er thee,
And wistfully implores, as 'twere, for help
To see thy sunny fields, my Italy,
Nearer and nearer yet, and dearer still
The more approached, and dearest were they free,
Thou--Thou must wither to each tyrant's will: 70
The Goth hath been,--the German, Frank, and Hun[297]
Are yet to come,--and on the imperial hill
Ruin, already proud of the deeds done
By the old barbarians, there awaits the new,
Throned on the Palatine, while lost and won
Rome at her feet lies bleeding; and the hue
Of human sacrifice and Roman slaughter
Troubles the clotted air, of late so blue,
And deepens into red the saffron water
Of Tiber, thick with dead; the helpless priest, 80
And still more helpless nor less holy daughter,
Vowed to their God, have shrieking fled, and ceased
Their ministry: the nations take their prey,
Iberian, Almain, Lombard, and the beast
And bird, wolf, vulture, more humane than they
Are; these but gorge the flesh, and lap the gore
Of the departed, and then go their way;
But those, the human savages, explore
All paths of torture, and insatiate yet,
With Ugolino hunger prowl for more. 90
Nine moons shall rise o'er scenes like this and set;[298]
The chiefless army of the dead, which late
Beneath the traitor Prince's banner met,
Hath left its leader's ashes at the gate;
Had but the royal Rebel lived, perchance
Thou hadst been spared, but his involved thy fate.
Oh! Rome, the Spoiler or the spoil of France,
From Brennus to the Bourbon, never, never
Shall foreign standard to thy walls advance,
But Tiber shall become a mournful river. 100
Oh! when the strangers pass the Alps and Po,
Crush them, ye Rocks! Floods whelm them, and for ever!
Why sleep the idle Avalanches so,
To topple on the lonely pilgrim's head?
Why doth Eridanus but overflow
The peasant's harvest from his turbid bed?
Were not each barbarous horde a nobler prey?
Over Cambyses' host[299] the desert spread
Her sandy ocean, and the Sea-waves' sway
Rolled over Pharaoh and his thousands,--why,[cc] 110
Mountains and waters, do ye not as they?
And you, ye Men! Romans, who dare not die,
Sons of the conquerors who overthrew
Those who overthrew proud Xerxes, where yet lie
The dead whose tomb Oblivion never knew,
Are the Alps weaker than Thermopylae?
Their passes more alluring to the view
Of an invader? is it they, or ye,
That to each host the mountain-gate unbar,
And leave the march in peace, the passage free? 120
Why, Nature's self detains the Victor's car,
And makes your land impregnable, if earth
Could be so; but alone she will not war,
Yet aids the warrior worthy of his birth
In a soil where the mothers bring forth men:
Not so with those whose souls are little worth;
For them no fortress can avail,--the den
Of the poor reptile which preserves its sting
Is more secure than walls of adamant, when
The hearts of those within are quivering. 130
Are ye not brave? Yes, yet the Ausonian soil
Hath hearts, and hands, and arms, and hosts to bring
Against Oppression; but how vain the toil,
While still Division sows the seeds of woe
And weakness, till the Stranger reaps the spoil. [300]
Oh! my own beauteous land! so long laid low,
So long the grave of thy own children's hopes,
When there is but required a single blow
To break the chain, yet--yet the Avenger stops,
And Doubt and Discord step 'twixt thine and thee, 140
And join their strength to that which with thee copes;
What is there wanting then to set thee free,
And show thy beauty in its fullest light?
To make the Alps impassable; and we,
Her Sons, may do this with one deed--Unite.


CANTO THE THIRD.

From out the mass of never-dying ill,[cd]
The Plague, the Prince, the Stranger, and the Sword,
Vials of wrath but emptied to refill
And flow again, I cannot all record
That crowds on my prophetic eye: the Earth
And Ocean written o'er would not afford
Space for the annal, yet it shall go forth;
Yes, all, though not by human pen, is graven,
There where the farthest suns and stars have birth,
Spread like a banner at the gate of Heaven, 10
The bloody scroll of our millennial wrongs
Waves, and the echo of our groans is driven
Athwart the sound of archangelic songs,
And Italy, the martyred nation's gore,
Will not in vain arise to where belongs[ce]
Omnipotence and Mercy evermore:
Like to a harpstring stricken by the wind,
The sound of her lament shall, rising o'er
The Seraph voices, touch the Almighty Mind.
Meantime I, humblest of thy sons, and of 20
Earth's dust by immortality refined
To Sense and Suffering, though the vain may scoff,
And tyrants threat, and meeker victims bow
Before the storm because its breath is rough,
To thee, my Country! whom before, as now,
I loved and love, devote the mournful lyre
And melancholy gift high Powers allow
To read the future: and if now my fire
Is not as once it shone o'er thee, forgive!
I but foretell thy fortunes--then expire; 30
Think not that I would look on them and live.
A Spirit forces me to see and speak,
And for my guerdon grants _not_ to survive;
My Heart shall be poured over thee and break:
Yet for a moment, ere I must resume
Thy sable web of Sorrow, let me take
Over the gleams that flash athwart thy gloom
A softer glimpse; some stars shine through thy night,
And many meteors, and above thy tomb
Leans sculptured Beauty, which Death cannot blight: 40
And from thine ashes boundless Spirits rise
To give thee honour, and the earth delight;
Thy soil shall still be pregnant with the wise,
The gay, the learned, the generous, and the brave,
Native to thee as Summer to thy skies,
Conquerors on foreign shores, and the far wave,[301]
Discoverers of new worlds, which take their name;[302]
For _thee_ alone they have no arm to save,
And all thy recompense is in their fame,
A noble one to them, but not to thee-- 50
Shall they be glorious, and thou still the same?
Oh! more than these illustrious far shall be
The Being--and even yet he may be born--
The mortal Saviour who shall set thee free,
And see thy diadem, so changed and worn
By fresh barbarians, on thy brow replaced;
And the sweet Sun replenishing thy morn,
Thy moral morn, too long with clouds defaced,
And noxious vapours from Avernus risen,
Such as all they must breathe who are debased 60
By Servitude, and have the mind in prison. [303]
Yet through this centuried eclipse of woe[cf]
Some voices shall be heard, and Earth shall listen;
Poets shall follow in the path I show,
And make it broader: the same brilliant sky
Which cheers the birds to song shall bid them glow,[cg]
And raise their notes as natural and high;
Tuneful shall be their numbers; they shall sing
Many of Love, and some of Liberty,
But few shall soar upon that Eagle's wing, 70
And look in the Sun's face, with Eagle's gaze,
All free and fearless as the feathered King,
But fly more near the earth; how many a phrase
Sublime shall lavished be on some small prince
In all the prodigality of Praise!
And language, eloquently false, evince[ch]
The harlotry of Genius, which, like Beauty,[ci]
Too oft forgets its own self-reverence,
And looks on prostitution as a duty. [304]
He who once enters in a Tyrant's hall[cj][305] 80
As guest is slave--his thoughts become a booty,
And the first day which sees the chain enthral
A captive, sees his half of Manhood gone[306]--
The Soul's emasculation saddens all
His spirit; thus the Bard too near the throne
Quails from his inspiration, bound to _please_,--
How servile is the task to please alone!
To smooth the verse to suit his Sovereign's ease
And royal leisure, nor too much prolong
Aught save his eulogy, and find, and seize, 90
Or force, or forge fit argument of Song!
Thus trammelled, thus condemned to Flattery's trebles,
He toils through all, still trembling to be wrong:
For fear some noble thoughts, like heavenly rebels,
Should rise up in high treason to his brain,
He sings, as the Athenian spoke, with pebbles
In's mouth, lest Truth should stammer through his strain.
But out of the long file of sonneteers
There shall be some who will not sing in vain,
And he, their Prince, shall rank among my peers,[307]
And Love shall be his torment; but his grief
Shall make an immortality of tears,
And Italy shall hail him as the Chief
Of Poet-lovers, and his higher song
Of Freedom wreathe him with as green a leaf.
But in a farther age shall rise along
The banks of Po two greater still than he;
The World which smiled on him shall do them wrong
Till they are ashes, and repose with me.
The first will make an epoch with his lyre, 110
And fill the earth with feats of Chivalry:[308]
His Fancy like a rainbow, and his Fire,
Like that of Heaven, immortal, and his Thought
Borne onward with a wing that cannot tire;
Pleasure shall, like a butterfly new caught,
Flutter her lovely pinions o'er his theme,
And Art itself seem into Nature wrought
By the transparency of his bright dream. --
The second, of a tenderer, sadder mood,
Shall pour his soul out o'er Jerusalem; 120
He, too, shall sing of Arms, and Christian blood
Shed where Christ bled for man; and his high harp
Shall, by the willow over Jordan's flood,
Revive a song of Sion, and the sharp
Conflict, and final triumph of the brave
And pious, and the strife of Hell to warp
Their hearts from their great purpose, until wave
The red-cross banners where the first red Cross
Was crimsoned from His veins who died to save,[ck]
Shall be his sacred argument; the loss 130
Of years, of favour, freedom, even of fame
Contested for a time, while the smooth gloss
Of Courts would slide o'er his forgotten name
And call Captivity a kindness--meant
To shield him from insanity or shame--
Such shall be his meek guerdon! who was sent
To be Christ's Laureate--they reward him well!
Florence dooms me but death or banishment,
Ferrara him a pittance and a cell,[309]
Harder to bear and less deserved, for I 140
Had stung the factions which I strove to quell;
But this meek man who with a lover's eye
Will look on Earth and Heaven, and who will deign
To embalm with his celestial flattery,
As poor a thing as e'er was spawned to reign,[310]
What will _he_ do to merit such a doom?
Perhaps he'll _love_,--and is not Love in vain
Torture enough without a living tomb?
Yet it will be so--he and his compeer,
The Bard of Chivalry, will both consume[311] 150
In penury and pain too many a year,
And, dying in despondency, bequeath
To the kind World, which scarce will yield a tear,
A heritage enriching all who breathe
With the wealth of a genuine Poet's soul,
And to their country a redoubled wreath,
Unmatched by time; not Hellas can unroll
Through her Olympiads two such names, though one[312]
Of hers be mighty;--and is this the whole
Of such men's destiny beneath the Sun? [313] 160
Must all the finer thoughts, the thrilling sense,
The electric blood with which their arteries run,[cl]
Their body's self turned soul with the intense
Feeling of that which is, and fancy of
That which should be, to such a recompense
Conduct? shall their bright plumage on the rough
Storm be still scattered? Yes, and it must be;
For, formed of far too penetrable stuff,
These birds of Paradise[314] but long to flee
Back to their native mansion, soon they find 170
Earth's mist with their pure pinions not agree,
And die or are degraded; for the mind
Succumbs to long infection, and despair,
And vulture Passions flying close behind,
Await the moment to assail and tear;[315]
And when, at length, the winged wanderers stoop,
Then is the Prey-birds' triumph, then they share
The spoil, o'erpowered at length by one fell swoop.
Yet some have been untouched who learned to bear,
Some whom no Power could ever force to droop, 180
Who could resist themselves even, hardest care!