But finally he thought fit to dismount,
And said, "I am as light as any feather,
And he has burst;-to this what say you, count?
Orlando answer'd, "Like a ship's mast rather
You seem to me, and with the truck for front:-
Let him go; Fortune wills that we together
Should march, but you on foot Morgante still."
To which the giant answer'd, "So I will.
"When there shall be occasion, you will see How I approve my courage in the fight." Orlando said, "I really think you'll be,
If it should prove God's will, a goodly knight; Nor will you napping there discover me.
But never mind your horse, though out of sight 'Twere best to carry him into some wood, If but the means or way I understood."
The giant said, "Then carry him I will,
Since that to carry me he was so slack-
To render, as the gods do, good for ill;
But lend a hand to place him on my back."
Orlando answer'd, "If my counsel still
May weigh, Morgante, do not undertake
To lift or carry this dead courser, who,
As you have done to him, will do to you.
The honors they continued to receive
Perhaps exceeded what his merits claim'd
He said, "I mean, and quickly, to retrieve
The lost days of time past, which may be blamed
Some days ago I should have ask'd your leave,
Kind father, but I really was ashamed,
And know not how to show my sentiment,
So much I see you with our stay content
LXXVII.
"But in my heart I bear through every clime
The abbot, abbey, and this solitude-
So much I love you in so short a time;
For me, from heaven reward you with all good
The God so true, the eternal Lord sublime!
Whose kingdom at the last hath open stood.
Meantime we stand expectant of your blessing,
And recommend us to your prayers with pressing '
"Take care he don't revenge himself, though dead," We can indeed but honor you with masses,
As Nessus did of old beyond all cure.
I don't know if the fact you've heard or read;
But he will make you burst, you may be sure."
But help him on my back," Morgante said,
"And you shall see what weight I can endure.
In place, my gentle Roland, of this palfrey,
With all the bells, I'd carry yonder belfry."
And sermons, thanksgivings, and pater-nosters,
Hot suppers, dinners, (fitting other places
In verity much rather than the cloisters ;)
But such a love for you my heart embraces,
For thousand virtues which your bosom fosters.
That wheresoe'er you go I too shall be,
And, on the other part, you rest with me
LADY! if for the cold and cloudy clime
Where was I 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.
"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 his 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, 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, of whose transla tion 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.
Among the inconveniences of authore in the IN the course of a visit to the city of Ravenna in present day, it is difficult for any who have a name, the summer of 1819, it was suggested to the author good or bad, to escape translation. I have had the that having composed something on the subject of fortune to see the fourth canto of Childe Harold Tasso's confinement, he should do the same on translated into Italian versi sciolti that is, a poem Dante's exile--the tomb of the poet forming one of written in Spenserean stanza into blank verse, witt the principal objects of interest in that city, both to out regard to the natural divisions of the stanza, of the native and to the stranger. of the sense. If the present poem, being on &
By tyrannous faction, and the brawling crowd;
And though the long, long conflict hath been spert
Which overhangs the Apennine, my mind's eye
Pierces to fancy Florence, once so proud
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 In vain, and never more, save when the cloud
"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 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 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, 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.
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 prest, and the cold marble stone,
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 feet
Relieved her wing till found; without thy light
My paradise had still been incomplete.2
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
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 hig).
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, ure,
And if I have not gather'd yet its praise,
sought it not by any baser lure;
Man wrongs, and Time avenges, and my name
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 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 would'st not; " as the bird
Gathers its young, I would have gather'd thee
Beneath a parent pinion, hadst thou heard
My voice; but as the adder, deaf and fierce,
Against the breast that cherished thee was stirr'd
Thy venom, and my state thou didst amerco
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 reassume
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 temptation procf,
The man who fought, toil'd, travelled, 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 forgetfulness
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 | Where yet my boys are, and that fatal she,
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,-let them go!
Such are the last infirmities of those
Who long have suffer'd more than mortal wo,
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 Até range
O'er humbled heads and sever'd necks-Great God!
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 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
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.
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
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
Of conflict none will hear, or hearing heed
This voice from out the Wilderness, the sin
The only guerdon I have ever known.
The sense of earth and earthly things come back, Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed,
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
IIoary and hopeless, but less hard to bear,
For I have been too long and deeply wreck'd
On the lone rock of desolate Despair
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 infinity-
To 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 softer 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,
Within my all inexorable town,
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,
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 exprest
The hero's ardor, or the lover's sighs,
Shall find alike such sounds for every theme
That every word, as brilliant as thy skies,
Shall realize a poet's proudest dream,
And make thee Europe's nightingale of song.
So that all present speech to thine shall seem
The note of meaner birds, and every tongue
Confess its barbarism, when compared with thine
This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so wrong,
Thy Tuscan Bard, the banish'd Ghibelline.
Wo! wo! 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 thets
station,
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 s
tomb!
Yes! thou so beautiful, shall feel the sword,
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,
Plough'd by the sunbeams solely, would suffic
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