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And hark! the lash and the increasing howl, | Dwelling deep in my shut and silent heart And the half-inarticulate blasphemy! As dwells the gather'd lightning in its cloud, There be some here with worse than frenzy Encompass'd with its dark and rolling

foul,

Some who do still goad on the o'er-labour'd mind, And dim the little light that's left behind With needless torture, as their tyrant-will Is wound up to the lust of doing ill: With these and with their victims am I class'd,

Mid sounds and sights like these long years have pass'd; 'Mid sights and sounds like these my life may close:

So let it be-for then I shall repose.

I have been patient, let me be so yet; I had forgotten half I would forget, But it revives--oh! would it were my lot To be forgetful as I am forgot!Feel I not wroth with those who bade me dwell

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In this vast lazar-house of many woes? Where laughter is not mirth, nor thought the mind,

Nor words a language, nor even men mankind;

Where cries reply to curses, shrieks to blows,

And each is tortured in his separate hell-
For we are crowded in our solitudes—
Many, but each divided by the wall,
Which echoes Madness in her babbling
moods;-

While all can hear, none heeds his neigh-
bour's call-
None! save that One, the veriest wretch of all,
Who was not made to be the mate of these,
Nor bound between Distraction and Disease.
Feel I not wroth with those who placed
me here?

Who have debased me in the minds of men, Debarring me the usage of my own, Blighting my life in best of its career, Branding my thoughts as things to shun

and fear.

Would I not pay them back these pangs

again, And teach them inward sorrow's stifled groan?

The struggle to be calm, and cold distress,
Which undermines our Stoical success?
No!-still too proud to be vindictive-I
Have pardon'd princes' insults, and would die.
Yes. Sister of my Sovereign! for thy sake
I weed all bitterness from out my breast,
It hath no business where thou art a guest;
Thy brother hates-but I can not detest,
Thou pitiest not--but I can not forsake.

Look on a love which knows not to despair, But all unquench'd is still my better part,

shroud,

Till struck,-forth flies the all-etherial dart!

And thus at the collision of thy name
The vivid thought still flashes through my
frame.

And for a moment all things as they were
Flit by me; they are gone-I am the same.
And yet my love without ambition grew
I knew thy state, my station, and I knew
A princess was no love-mate for a bard ;
I told it not, I breathed it not, it was
Sufficient to itself, its own reward;
And if my eyes reveal'd it, they, alas!
Were punish'd by the silentness of thine,
And yet I did not venture to repine.
Thou wert to me a crystal-girded shrine,
Worshipp'd at holy distance, and around
Hallow'd and meekly kiss'd the saintly
ground;

Not for thou wert a princess, but that Love
Had robed thee with a glory, and array'd
Thy lineaments in beauty that dismay'd-
Oh! not dismay'd-but awed, like One
above;

And in that sweet severity there was
A something which all softness did surpass —
I know not how-thy genius master'd mine—
My star stood still before thee:-if it were
Presumptuous thus to love without design,
That sad fatality hath cost me dear;
But thou art dearest still, and I should be
Fit for this cell, which wrongs me, but
for thee.

The very love which lock'd me to my chain
Hath lighten'd half its weight; and for
the rest,
Though heavy, lent me vigour to sustain,
And look to thee with undivided breast,
And foil the ingenuity of Pain.

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Return'd and wept alone, and dream'd again The visions which arise without a sleep. And with my years my soul began to pant With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain;

And the whole heart exhaled into One Want, But undefined and wandering, till the day I found the thing I sought-and that was thee;

And then I lost my being all to be Absorb'd in thine the world was past away— Thou didst annihilate the earth to me!

I loved all solitude-but little thought To spend I know not what of life, remote From all communion with existence, save The maniac and his tyrant; had I been Their fellow, many years ere this had seen My mind like theirs corrupted to its grave; But who hath seen me writhe, or heard me rave?

Perchance in such a cell we suffer more Than the wreck'd sailor on his desert shore; The world is all before him—mine is here, Scarce twice the space they must accord my bier.

What though he perish, he may lift his eye And with a dying glance upbraid the skyI will not raise my own in such reproof, Although 'tis clouded by my dungeon-roof.

Yet do I feel at times my mind decline, But with a sense of its decay:-I see Unwonted lights along my prison shine, And a strange demon, who is vexing me With pilfering pranks and petty pains, below

The feeling of the healthful and the free; But much to One, who long hath suffer'd so Sickness of heart, and narrowness of place, And all that may be borne, or can debase. I thought mine enemies had been but men, But spirits may be leagued with them-all Earth

Abandons - Heaven forgets me; - in the dearth

Of such defence the Powers of Evil can,
It may be, tempt me further, and prevail
Against the outworn creature they assail.
Why in this furnace is my spirit proved
Like steel in tempering fire? because I loved?
Because I loved what not to love, and see,
Was more or less than mortal, and than me.

I once was quick in feeling - that is o'er;— My scars are callous, or I should have dash'd

My brain against these bars as the sun flash'd

In mockery through them;—if I bear and bore

The much I have recounted, and the more Which bath no words,'tis that I would not die And sanction with self-slaughter the dull lie | Which snared me here, and with the brand of shame Stamp madness deep into my memory, And woo compassion to a blighted name, Sealing the sentence which my foes proclaim No it shall be immortal!-and I make A future temple of my present cell, Which nations yet shall visit for my sake. While thou, Ferrara! when no longer dwell The ducal chiefs within thee, shalt fall down, And crumbling piecemeal view thy hearthless halls,

A poet's wreath shall be thine only crown, A poet's dungeon thy most far renown, While strangers wonder o'er thy unpeopled walls!

And thou, Leonora! thou - who wert ashamed

That such as I could love—who blush'd to

hear

To less than monarchs that thou couldst be dear,

Go! tell thy brother that my heart, untamed By grief, years, weariness-and it may be A taint of that he would impute to meFrom long infection of a den like this, Where the mind rots congenial with the abyss,

Adores thee still;-and add-that when the towers

And battlements which guard his joyous hours

Of banquet, dance, and revel, are forgot,
Or left untended in a dull repose,
This-this shall be a consecrated spot!
But Thou—when all that Birth and Beauty
throws

Of magic round thee is extinct-shalt have One half the laurel which o'ershades my grave.

No power in death can tear our names apart. As none in life could rend thee from my heart.

Yes, Leonora! it shall be our fate
To be entwined for ever-but too late!

!

THE PROPHECY OF DANTE.

'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before.

CAMPBELL.

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 the imitative rhyme,
Harsh Runic 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,
Spak'st; and for thee to speak and be
obey'd

Are one; but only in the sunny South
Such sounds are utter'd, and such charms
display'd,

So sweet a language from so fair a mouth-
Ah! to what effort would it not persuade?

Ravenna, June 21, 1819. ;

PREFACE.

Is 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 of interest in that city, both to the native and to the stranger.

in our language, except it may be by Mr. Hayley, 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 probably 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 translated

If

I

into Italian versi sciolti—that is, a poem
written in the Spenserean stanza into blank
verse, without regard to the natural di-
visions of the stanza, or of the sense.
the present poem, being on a national topic,
should chance to undergo the same fate,
would request the Italian reader to remem-
ber, that when I have failed in the imita-
tion of his great "Padre Alighier," 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 in the first canto of the Inferno,
unless Count Marchetti's ingenious and pro-
bable conjecture may be considered as hav-
ing 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, "On this hint I spake," and the result with a pardonable nationality, are partihas been the following four cantos, in terza cularly jealous of all that is left them as rima, now offered to the reader. If they a nation- their literature; and, in the preare understood and approved, it is my pur- sent bitterness of the classic and romantic pose to continue the poem in various other war, are but ill disposed to permit a foreigncantos to its natural conclusion in the pre-er even to approve or imitate them, without sent age. The reader is requested to sup- finding some fault with his ultramontane pose that Dante addresses him in the inter-presumption. I can easily enter into all val between the conclusion of the Divina this, knowing what would be thought in Commedia and his death, and shortly before England of an Italian imitator of Milton, 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, 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

or if a translation of Monti, or Pindemonte, or Arici, 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, when my business is with the English one, and be they few or many, I must take my leave of both.

CANTO L

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; Midst whom my own bright Beatrice bless'd

My spirit with her light; and to the base Of the Eternal Triad! first, last, best,

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.

Oh Beatrice! whose sweet limbs the sod So long hath press'd, and the cold marblestone,

Thou sole pure seraph of my earliest love, 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 wander'd still in search of, nor her fect Relieved her wing till found; without thy light

My Paradise had still been incomplete. 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, and bright 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, Unto my native soil, they have not yet Quench'd 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

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May form a monument not all obseure, 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 class'd With conquerors, and Virtue's other foes, In bloody chronicles of ages past.

I would have had my Florence great and free:

Oh Florence! Florence! unto me thou wast Like that Jerusalem which the Almighty He Wept over: "but thou wouldst not;" as the bird Gathers its young, I would have gather'd thee Beneath a parent-pinion, hadst thon heard My voice; but as the adder,deaf and fierce, Against the breast that cherish'd thee was stirr'd

Thy venom, and my state thou didst amerce, And doom this body forfeit to the fire. Alas! how bitter is his country's curse To him who for that country would expire, 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 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 re

assume

My indignant bones, because her angry gust Forsooth is over, and repeal'd 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 temptationproof,

The man who fought, toil'd, travell`d, and each part

Of a true citizen fulfill'd, and saw For his reward the Guelf's ascendant art Pass his destruction even into a law.

These things are not made for forgetful

ness

Florence shall be forgotten first; too raw The wound, too deep the wrong, and the distress

Of such endurance too prolong'd, 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 Beatrice, I would hardly take Vengeance upon the land which once was mine,

And still is hallow'd 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 Minturnæ's marsh

And Carthage ruins, my lone breast may

burn At times with evil feelings hot and harsh, And sometimes the last pangs of a vile foe Writhe in a dream before me, and o'erarch My brow with hopes of triumph, them go!

let

Such are the last infirmities of those Who long have suffer'd 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

Great God!

To lift my eyes more to the passing sail 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, 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 rack'd 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 infinityTo live in narrow ways with little men, A common sight to every common eye, A wanderer, while even wolves can find a den, Ripp'd from all kindred, from all home, all things That make communion sweet, and soften pain

Be trampled on, while Death and Ate range | To feel me in the solitude of kings O'er humbled heads and sever'd necks- Without the power that makes them bear a crownTo envy every dove his nest and wings Which waft him where the Apennine looks down

Take these thoughts from me- to thy hands I yield My many wrongs, and thine almighty rod 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 fieldIn 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 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 wreck'd

On the lone rock of desolate Despair

On Arno, till he perches, it may be, Within my all-inexorable town, Where yet my boys are, and that fatal she, 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 II.

THE Spirit of the fervent days of Old, When words were things that came to pass, and thought Flash'd o'er the future, bidding men behold

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