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 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 Até range O'er humbled heads and sever'd necks--Great God!

Take these thoughts from me--to thy hands 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,

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 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, 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.

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
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,

With our old Roman sway in the wide West;
But I will make another tongue arise
As lofty and more sweet, in which express'd
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; 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.
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,

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,
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 suffice For the world's granary; thou, whose sky heaven gilds

With brighter stars, and robes with deeper blue;

Thou, in whose pleasant places Summer builds Her palace, in whose cradle Empire grew,

And form'd 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 Her home; thou, all which fondest fancy paints,

And finds her prior vision but portray'd

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 approach'd, and dearest were they free,

Thou-thou must wither to each tyrant's will: The Goth hath been, -the German, Frank, and Hun

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,

And still more helpless nor less holy daughter, Vow'd 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.

CANTO

FROM Out the mass of never-dying ill, The Plague, the Prince, the Stranger, and the Sword,

Vials of wrath but emptied to refill And flow again, I cannot all record

Nine moons shall rise o'er scenes like this and set; 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 of 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.
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 the desert spread Her sandy ocean, and the sea-waves' sway Roll'd over Pharaoh and his thousands, why, 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 o'erthrew proud Xerxes, where yet lie

The dead whose tomb Oblivion never knew,
Are the Alps weaker than Thermopyla?
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? 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.
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!
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,

And join their strength to that which with

thee copes;

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,
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 martyr'd nation's gore,

Will not in vain arise to where belongs Omnipotence and mercy evermore :

Like to a harp-string 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 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 fortell thy fortunes-then expire; 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 pour'd 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:

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 learn'd, the generous, and the brave,

Native to thee as summer to thy skies, Conquerors on foreign shores, and the far wave,* Discoverers of new worlds, which take their name: t

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 theeShall they be glorious, and thou still the same? Oh! more than these illustrious far shall be

The being-and even yet he may be bornThe 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 By servitude, and have the mind in prison.

Yet through this centuried eclipse of woe 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,

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,
And look in the sun's face with eagle's gaze,
All free and fearless as the feather'd king,
But fly more near the earth; how many a phrase

* Alexander of Parma, Spinola, Pescara, Eugene of Savoy, Montecucco.

+ Columbus, Americus Vespucius, Sebastian Cabot.

Sublime shall lavish'd be on some small prince In all the prodigality of praise! And language, eloquently false, evince The harlotry of genius, which, like beauty, Too oft forgets its own self-reverence, And looks on prostitution as a duty.

He who once enters in a tyrant's hall
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-
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,
Or force, or forge fit argument of song!
Thus trammell'd, thus condemn'd to Flattery's
trebles,

He toils through all, still trembling to be

Till they are ashes, and repose with me.

The first will make an epoch with his lyre, And fill the earth with feats of chivalry; 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; 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 crimson'd from his veins who died to save, Shall be his sacred argument; the loss

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

* Petrarch.

To shield him from insanity or shame, Such shall be his meet 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,

Harder to bear, and less deserved, for I 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 spawn'd to reign, 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

In penury and pain too many a year, And, dying in despondency, bequeath

Conduct? shall their bright plumage on the rough
Storm be still scatter'd? Yes, and it must be ;
For, form'd of far too penetrable stuff,
These birds of Paradise but long to flee

Back to their native mansion, soon they find 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;

And when at length the wing'd wanderers stoop,

Then is the prey-bird's triumph, then they share

The spoil, o'erpower'd at length by one fell

swoop.

Yet some have been untouch'd who learn'd to bear,

Some whom no power could ever force to droop,

A heritage enriching all who breathe

With the wealth of a genuine poet's soul, And to their country a redoubled wreath, Unmatch'd by time; not Hellas can unroll Through her olympiads two such names, though one

Of hers be mighty,-and is this the whole Of such men's destiny beneath the sun?

Must all the finer thoughts, the thrilling sense, The electric blood with which their arteries run,

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

MANY are poets who have never penn'd
Their inspiration, and perchance the best :
They felt, and loved, and died, but would
not lend

Their thoughts to meaner beings; they com

press'd

The god within them, and rejoin'd the stars Unlaurell'd upon earth, but far more bless'd Than those who are degraded by the jars

Of passion, and their frailties link'd to fame, Conquerors of high renown, but full of scars. Many are poets but without the name,

For what is poesy but to create
From overfeeling good or ill; and aim
At an external life beyond our fate,

And be the new Prometheus of new men, Bestowing fire from heaven, and then, too late, Finding the pleasure given repaid with pain, And vultures to the heart of the bestower, Who, having lavish'd his high gift in vain, Lies chain'd to his lone rock by the sea-shore?

So be it: we can bear.-But thus all they Whose intellect is an o'ermastering power Which still recoils from its encumbering clay Or lightens it to spirit, whatsoe'er

The form which their creations may essay, Are bards; the kindled marble's bust may wear More poesy upon its speaking brow

Than aught less than the Homeric page may bear,

One noble stroke with a whole life may glow,
Or deify the canvas till it shine
With beauty so surpassing all below,

And task most hopeless; but some such have

been,.

And if my name amongst the number were, That destiny austere, and yet serene, Were prouder than more dazzling fame unbless'd;

The Alp's snow summit nearer heaven is seen Than the volcano's fierce eruptive crest,

Whose splendour from the black abyss is flung, While the scorch'd mountain, from whose burning breast

A temporary torturing flame is wrung,
Shines for a night of terror, then repels
Its fire back to the hell from whence it sprung,
The hell which in its entrails ever dwells.
FOURTH.

That they who kneel to idols so divine

Break no commandment, for high heaven is there

Transfused, transfigurated: and the line Of poesy, which peoples but the air With thought and beings of our thought reflected,

Can do no more: then let the artist share
The palm, he shares the peril, and dejected
Faints o'er the labour unapproved-Alas!
Despair and Genius are too oft connected.
Within the ages which before me pass

Art shall resume and equal even the sway
Which with Apelles and old Phidias
She held in Hellas' unforgotten day.

Ye shall be taught by ruin to revive
The Grecian forms at least from their decay,
And Roman souls at last again shall live

In Roman works wrought by Italian hands, And temples, loftier than the old temples, give New wonders to the world; and while still stands

The austere Pantheon, into heaven shall soar A dome, its image, while the base expands * Into a fane surpassing all before,

Such as all flesh shall flock to kneel in: ne'er Such sight hath been unfolded by a door As this, to which all nations shall repair

And lay their sins at this huge gate of heaven. And the bold Architect, unto whose care The daring charge to raise it shall be given,

*The Cupola of St Peter's.

lord,

Whether into the marble chaos driven His chisel bid the Hebrew, at whose word* Israel left Egypt, stop the waves in stone, Or hues of Hell be by his pencil pour'd Over the damn'd before the Judgment-throne,† Such as I saw them, such as all shall see, Or fanes be built of grandeur yet unknown, The stream of his great thoughts shall spring from me

The Ghibelline, who traversed the three realms Which form the empire of eternity. Amidst the clash of swords, and clang of helms, The age which I anticipate, no less Shall be the Age of Beauty, and while whelms, Calamity the nations with distress,

The genius of my country shall arise, A cedar towering o'er the Wilderness, Lovely in all its branches to all eyes,

Fragrant as fair, and recognised afar, Wafting its nature incense through the skies. Sovereigns shall pause amidst their sport of war, Wean'd for an hour from blood, to turn and gaze

On canvas or on stone; and they who mar All beauty upon earth, compell'd to praise, Shall feel the power of that which they destroy;

And Art's mistaken gratitude shall raise To tyrants who but take her for a toy,

Emblems and monuments, and prostitute Her charms to pontiffs proud, who but employ

The man of genius as the meanest brute

To bear a burthen, and to serve a need, To sell his labours, and his soul to boot. Who toils for nations may be poor indeed,

But free; who sweats for monarchs is no more Than the gilt chamberlain, who, clothed and fee'd,

Stand sleek and slavish, bowing at his door.
Oh, Power that rulest and inspirest! how
Is it that they on earth, whose earthly power
Is likest thine in heaven in outward show,
Least like to thee in attributes divine,
Tread on the universal necks that bow,
And then assure us that their rights are thine?
And how is it that they, the sons of fame,
Whose inspiration seems to them to shine
From high, they whom the nations oftest name,
Must pass their days in penury or pain,
Or step to grandeur through the paths of
shame,

*The statue of Moses on the monument of Julius II.

The Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel. See the treatment of Michael Angelo by Julius II., and his neglect by Leo X.

Or if their destiny be born aloof

From lowliness, or tempted thence in vain, In their own souls sustain a harder proof,

The inner war of passions deep and fierce? Florence when thy harsh sentence razed my roof,

I loved thee, but the vengeance of my verse, The hate of injuries which every year

Makes greater, and accumulates my curse, Shall live, outliving all thou holdest dear, Thy pride, thy wealth, thy freedom, and even that,

The most infernal of all evils here, The sway of petty tyrants in a state;

For such sway is not limited to kings, And demagogues yield to them but in date, As swept off sooner; in all deadly things, Which make men hate themselves, and one

another,

In discord, cowardice, cruelty, all that springs, From Death the Sin-born's incest with his mother,

In rank oppression in its rudest shape,

The faction Chief is but the Sultan's brother, And the worst despot's far less human ape: Florence! when this lone spirit, which so long Yearn'd, as the captive toiling at escape, To fly back to thee in despite of wrong, An exile, saddest of all prisoners, Who has the whole world for a dungeon strong, Seas, mountains, and the horizon's verge for bars,

Which shut him from the sole small spot of earth,

Where-whatsoe'er his fate-he still were hers,

His country's, and might die where he had birth

Florence! when this lone spirit shall return To kindred spirits, thou wilt feel my worth, And seek to honour with an empty urn

The ashes thou shalt ne'er obtain-Alas! "What have I done to thee, my people?"

Stern

Are all thy dealings, but in this they pass

The limits of man's common malice, for All that a citizen could be I was; Raised by thy will, all thine in peace or war, And for this thou hast warr'd with me-' Tis done:

I may not overleap the eternal bar Built up between us, and will die alone,

Beholding with the dark eye of a seer The evil days to gifted souls foreshown, Foretelling them to those who will not hear. As in the old time, till the hour be come When truth shall strike their eyes through