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
63 wanting in 1824.

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

105

110

115

120

125

130

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

135

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;

140

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

145

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,

150

129 winds] landsman; waves, sands or strands cj. Rossetti.

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,

160

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,

On 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.

163

170

175

Their whispers made the solemn silence seem

More still-some wept, . .

18:

Some melted into tears without a sob,

And some with hearts that might be heard to throb

Leaned 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

185

From out the chamber where the women kept;-
Their tears fell on the dear companion cold
Of pleasures now departed; then was knolled
The bell of death, and soon the priests arrived,
And finding Death their penitent had shrived,
Returned like ravens from a corpse whereon
A vulture has just feasted to the bone.
And then the mourning women came.

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
167 On] In cj. Rossetti.

190

195

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 deathbed,

And one to the bier,

And one to the charnel-and one, oh where?
The dark arrow fled

In the noon.

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.

EVENING: PONTE AL MARE, PISA [Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. There is a draft amongst the Boscombe MSS.]

I

THE sun is set; the swallows are asleep;
The bats are flitting fast in the gray 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.

II

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.

III

Within the surface of the fleeting river
The wrinkled image of the city lay,

Immovably unquiet, and forever

It trembles, but it never fades away; Go to the

You, being changed, will find it then as now.

6 summer 1839, 2nd ed.; silent 1824, 1939, 1st ed.

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205

210

215

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10

15

IV

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

[Published in part (11. 1-61, 88-118) by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824; revised and enlarged by Rossetti, Complete P. W. of P. B. S., 1870.]

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,

20

5

10

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 aëry gold

15

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,

20

The crickets were still in the meadow and hill:

25

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 or can be known.

And many rose

Evening, &c.--20 cinereous Boscombe MS.; enormous edd. 1824, 1839.

30