With light like a harsh voice, which bids him rise And look upon his day of life with eyes
Which weep in vain that they can dream no more, Ginevra saw her lover; and forbore
To shriek or faint, and checked the stifling blood Rushing upon her heart, and unsubdued Said: "Friend, if earthly violence or ill, Suspicion, doubt, or the tyrannic will Of parents, chance or custom, time or change, Or circumstance or terror or revenge,
Or wildered looks or words, or evil speech, With all their stings and venom, can impeach
Our love, -we love not. If the grave, which hides The victim from the tyrant, and divides
The cheek that whitens from the eyes that dart Imperious inquisition to the heart
That is another's, could dissever ours,
We love not."-" What! do not the silent hours Beckon thee to Gherardi's bridal bed?
Is not that ring". a pledge, he would have said, Of broken vows. But she with patient look The golden circle from her finger took, And said: "Accept this token of my faith, The pledge of vows to be absolved by death. And I am dead, or shall be soon-my knell Will mix its music with that merry bell; Does it not sound as if they sweetly said 'We toll a corpse out of the marriage bed?' The flowers upon my bridal chamber strewn Will serve unfaded for my bier-so soon That even the dying violet will not die Before Ginevra." The strong fantasy
Had made her accents weaker and more weak, And quenched the crimson life upon her cheek, And glazed her eyes, and spread an atmosphere Round her which chilled the burning noon with fear, Making her but an image of the thought Which, like a prophet or a shadow, brought News of the terrors of the coming time.
Like an accuser branded with the crime He would have cast on a beloved friend, Whose dying eyes reproach not to the end The pale betrayer-he then with vain repentance Would share, he cannot now avert, the sentence- Antonio stood, and would have spoken; when The compound voice of women and of men Was heard approaching. He retired; while she Was led amid the admiring company
Back to the palace,—and her maidens soon Changed her attire for the afternoon,
And left her at her own request to keep An hour of quiet and rest. Like one asleep With open eyes and folded hands she lay, Pale in the light of the declining day.
Meanwhile the day sinks fast, the sun is set, And in the lighted hall the guests are met. The beautiful looked lovelier in the light Of love and admiration and delight Reflected from a thousand hearts and eyes, Kindling a momentary paradise.
This crowd is safer than the silent wood, Where love's own doubts disturb the solitude. On frozen hearts the fiery rain of wine Falls, and the dew of music more divine Tempers the deep emotions of the time To spirits cradled in a sunny clime. How many meet who never yet have met, To part too soon, but never to forget! How many saw the beauty, power, and wit, Of looks and words which ne'er enchanted yet! But life's familiar veil was now withdrawn. As the world leaps before an earthquake's dawn, And, unprophetic of the coming hours, The matin winds from the expanded flowers Scatter their hoarded incense, and awaken The earth, until the dewy sleep is shaken From every living heart which it possesses, Through seas and winds, cities and wildernesses,— As if the future and the past were all
Treasured i' the instant; so Gherardi's hall Laughed in the mirth of its lord's festival;-
Till some one asked "Where is the Bride?" And then A bridesmaid went; and ere she came again
A silence fell upon the guests—a pause
Of expectation, as when beauty awes
All hearts with its approach, though unbeheld;
Then wonder; and then fear that wonder quelled :- For whispers passed from mouth to ear which drew The colour from the hearer's cheeks, and flew Louder and swifter round the company. And then Gherardi entered with an eye Of ostentatious trouble, and a crowd Surrounded him, and some were weeping loud.
They found Ginevra dead: if it be death To lie without motion or pulse or breath,
With waxen cheeks, and limbs cold, stiff, and white, And open eyes whose fixed and glassy light Mocked at the speculation they had owned; If it be death when there is felt around
A smell of clay, a pale and icy glare,
And silence, and a sense that lifts the hair From the scalp to the ankles, as it were Corruption from the spirit passing forth, And giving all it shrouded to the earth, And leaving, as swift lightning in its flight, Ashes and smoke and darkness. In our night
Of thought, we know thus much of death,—no more Than the unborn dream of our life, before
Their barks are wrecked on its inhospitable shore.
The marriage-feast and its solemnity Was turned to funeral pomp. The company, With heavy hearts and looks, broke up. Nor they Who loved the dead went weeping on their way, Alone; but sorrow mixed with sad surprise Loosened the springs of pity in all eyes,
In which that form whose fate they weep in vain Will never, thought they, kindle smiles again. The lamps, which, half extinguished in their haste, Gleamed few and faint o'er the abandoned feast, Showed as it were within the vaulted room A cloud of sorrow hanging, as if gloom Had passed out of men's minds into the air. Some few yet stood around Gherardi there, Friends and relations of the dead ;—and he, A loveless man, accepted torpidly
The consolation that he wanted not;
Awe in the place of grief within him wrought. Their whispers made the solemn silence seem More still.
Some melted into tears without a sob;
And some, with hearts that might be heard to throb, Leant on the table, and at intervals
Shuddered to hear through the deserted halls And corridors the thrilling shrieks which came Upon the breeze of night, that shook the flame Of every torch and taper as it swept
From out the chamber where the women kept. Their tears fell on the dear companion cold Of pleasures now departed.
The bell of death; and soon the priests arrived,—
And, finding Death their penitent had shrived,
Returned, like ravens from a corse whereon
A vulture has just feasted to the bone.
And then the mourning women came.
THE DIRGE.
OLD Winter was gone
In his weakness back to the mountains hoar;
And the Spring came down From the planet that hovers upon the shore Where the sea of sunlight encroaches On the limits of wintry night.
If the land and the air and the sea Rejoice not when Spring approaches, We did not rejoice in thee, Ginevra!
She is still, she is cold,
On the bridal couch!
One step to the white death-bed, And one to the bier,
And one to the charnel, and one-oh where? The dark arrow fled
Ere the sun through heaven once more has rolled, The rats in her heart
Will have made their nest,
And the worms be alive in her golden hair. While the Spirit that guides the sun Sits throned in his flaming chair, She shall sleep.
I. THE sun is set; the swallows are asleep; The bats are flitting fast in the grey air; The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep; And evening's breath, wandering here and there Over the quivering surface of the stream, Wakes not one ripple from its summer dream. 2. There is no dew on the dry grass to-night,
Nor damp within the shadow of the trees; The wind is intermitting, dry, and light;
And in the inconstant motion of the breeze The dust and straws are driven up and down, And whirled about the pavement of the town. 3. Within the surface of the fleeting river The wrinkled image of the city lay, Immovably unquiet, and for ever
It trembles, but it never fades away. Go to the
You, being changed, will find it then as now. 4. The chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut By darkest barriers of cinereous cloud,
Like mountain over mountain huddled, but Growing and moving upwards in a crowd; And over it a space of watery blue,
Which the keen evening star is shining through.
THE BOAT ON THE SERCHIO.
OUR boat is asleep on Serchio's stream, Its sails are folded like thoughts in a dream; The helm sways idly, hither and thither.
Dominic the boatman has brought the mast And the oars and the sails; but 'tis sleeping fast, Like a beast unconscious of its tether.
The stars burnt out in the pale blue air,
And the thin white moon lay withering there; To tower and cavern and rift and tree
The owl and the bat fled drowsily.
Day had kindled the dewy woods,
And the rocks above and the stream below,
And the vapours in their multitudes,
And the Apennines' shroud of summer snow, And clothed with light of aery gold
The mists in their eastern caves uprolled.
Day had awakened all things that be ;
The lark and the thrush and the swallow free,
And the milkmaid's song, and the mower's scythe, And the matin-bell, and the mountain bee. Fireflies were quenched on the dewy corn; Glow-worms went out on the river's brim, Like lamps which a student forgets to trim; The beetle forgot to wind his horn;
The crickets were still in the meadow and hill. Like a flock of rooks at a farmer's gun, Night's dreams and terrors, every one, Fled from the brains which are their prey From the lamp's death to the morning ray.
All rose to do the task He set to each
Who shaped us to his ends and not our own. The million rose to learn, and one to teach What none yet ever knew, nor can be known; and many rose
Whose woe was such that fear became desire. Melchior and Lionel were not among those; They from the throng of men had stepped aside, And made their home under the green hill side. It was that hill whose intervening brow
Screens Lucca from the Pisan's envious eye; Which the circumfluous plain waving below,
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