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How! is not thy quick heart cold?

What spark is alive on thy hearth? How! is not his death-knell knolled?

And livest thou still, Mother Earth?
Thou wert warming thy fingers old
O'er the embers covered and cold

Of that most fiery spirit, when it fled-
What, Mother, do you laugh now he is dead?
"Who has known me of old," replied Earth,
Or who has my story told?

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It is thou who art overbold."

And the lightning of scorn laughed forth
As she sung, "To my bosom I fold
All my sons when their knell is knolled,
And so with living motion all are fed,

And the quick spring like weeds out of the dead.
"Still alive and still bold," shouted Earth,
"I grow bolder and still more bold.
The dead fill me ten thousandfold

Fuller of speed, and splendour, and mirth;
I was cloudy and sullen and cold,
Like a frozen chaos uprolled,
Till by the spirit of the mighty dead

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I feed on whom I fed.

"Ay, alive and still bold," muttered Earth,

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Napoleon's fierce spirit rolled,

In terror, and blood, and gold,

A torrent of ruin to death from his birth. Leave the millions who follow to mould The metal before it be cold,

And weave into his shame, which like the dead Shrouds me, the hopes that from his glory fled."

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Fancying strange comments in her dizzy brain
Of usual shapes, till the familiar train
Of objects and of persons passed like things
Strange as a dreamer's mad imaginings,
Ginevra from the nuptial altar went;

The vows to which her lips had sworn assent
Rung in her brain still with a jarring din,
Deafening the lost intelligence within.

And so she moved under the bridal veil,
Which made the paleness of her cheek more pale,
And deepened the faint crimson of her mouth,
And darkened her dark locks as moonlight doth,—
And of the gold and jewels glittering there
She scarce felt conscious, but the weary glare
Lay like a chaos of unwelcome light,
Vexing the sense with gorgeous undelight.
A moonbeam in the shadow of a cloud
Was less heavenly fair-her face was bowed,
And as she passed, the diamonds in her hair
Were mirrored in the polished marble stair
Which led from the cathedral to the street;
And even as she went her light fair feet
Erased these images.

The bridemaidens who round her thronging came,
Some with a sense of self-rebuke and shame,
Envying the unenviable; and others,
Making the joy which should have been another's
Their own by gentle sympathy; and some
Sighing to think of an unhappy home;
Some few admiring what can ever lure
Maidens to leave the heaven serene and pure
Of parent's smiles for life's great cheat; a thing
Bitter to taste, sweet in imagining.

But they are all dispersed and lo! she stands Looking in idle grief on her white hands, Alone within the garden now her own; And through the sunny air, with jangling tone, The music of the merry marriage-bells, Killing the azure silence, sinks and swells;Absorbed like one within a dream who dreams That he is dreaming, until slumber seems A mockery of itself when suddenly Antonio stood before her, pale as she. With agony, with sorrow, and with pride, He lifted his wan eyes upon the bride, And said-Is this thy faith?" and then as one Whose sleeping face is stricken by the sun 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 among 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 bridemaid 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,

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.
Their whispers made the solemn silence seem
More still some wept, [

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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; 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 wonen came.-

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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,
Glowworms 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 or can be known.

And many rose

Whose wo 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,
Like a wide lake of green fertility,

With streams and fields and marshes bare,
Divides from the far Apennines-which lie
Islanded in the immeasurable air.

"What think you, as she lies in her green cove,
Our little sleeping boat is dreaming of?
If morning dreams are true, why I should guess
That she was dreaming of our idleness,
And of the miles of watery way

We should have led her by this time of day."

"Never mind," said Lionel,

"Give care to the winds, they can bear it well, About yon poplar tops; and see! The white clouds are driving merrily,

And the stars we miss this morn will light
More willingly our return to night.—
List, my dear fellow, the breeze blows fair;
How it scatters Dominic's long black hair!
Singing of us, and our lazy motions,
If I can guess a boat's emotions."-

The chain is loosed, the sails are spread,
The living breath is fresh behind,
As, with dews and sunrise fed,
Comes the laughing morning wind;-
The sails are full, the boat makes head
Against the Serchio's torrent fierce,
Then flags with intermitting course,
And hangs upon the wave,

Which fervid from its mountain source
Shallow, smooth, and strong, doth come,-
Swift as fire, tempestuously

It sweeps into the affrighted sea;
In morning's smile its eddies coil,
Its billows sparkle, toss, and boil,
Torturing all its quiet light
Into columns fierce and bright.

The Serchio, twisting forth Between the marble barriers which it clove At Ripafratta, leads through the dread chasm The wave that died the death which lovers love, Living in what it sought; as if this spasm Had not yet past, the toppling mountains cling, But the clear stream in full enthusiasm Pours itself on the plain, until wandering, Down one clear path of effluence crystalline Sends its clear waves, that they may fling At Arno's feet tribute of corn and wine: Then, through the pestilential deserts wild Of tangled marsh and woods of stunted fir, It rushes to the Ocean.

July, 1821.

THE AZIOLA.

"Do you not hear the Aziola cry? Methinks she must be nigh,"

Said Mary, as we sate

In dusk, ere the stars were lit, or candles brought; And I, who thought

This Aziola was some tedious woman,

Asked, "Who is Aziola ?" How elate

I felt to know that it was nothing human,
No mockery of myself to fear and hate!
And Mary saw my soul,

And laughed and said, "Disquiet yourself not,
"Tis nothing but a little downy owl."

Sad Aziola! many an eventide

Thy music I had heard

By wood and stream, meadow and mountain side, And fields and marshes wide,

Such as nor voice, nor lute, nor wind, nor bird, The soul ever stirred;

Unlike and far sweeter than they all:

Sad Aziola! from that moment I
Loved thee and thy sad cry.

A FRAGMENT.

THEY were two cousins, almost like two twins,
Except that from the catalogue of sins

Nature had razed their love-which could not be
But by dissevering their nativity.

And so they grew together, like two flowers
Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers
Lull or awaken in their purple prime,

Which the same hand will gather-the same clime
Shake with decay. This fair day smiles to see
All those who love,-and who ever loved like thee,
Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo,

Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow
The ardours of a vision which obscure
The very idol of its portraiture;

He faints, dissolved into a sense of love;
But thou art as a planet sphered above,

But thou art Love itself-ruling the motion
Of his subjected spirit-such emotion
Must end in sin or sorrow, if sweet May

Had not brought forth this morn-your wedding.day.

ΤΟ

ONE word is too oftened profaned
For me to profane it,

One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it.
One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother,
And Pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.

I can give not what men call love, But wilt thou accept not

The worship the heart lifts above

And the Heavens reject not: The desire of the moth for the star,

Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar

From the sphere of our sorrow.

GOOD-NIGHT.

GOOD-NIGHT? ah! no; the hour is ill
Which severs those it should unite;

Let us remain together still,
Then it will be good night.

How can I call the lone night good,
Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight?
Be it not said, thought, understood,
Then it will be good night.

To hearts which near each other move
From evening close to morning light,
The night is good; because, my love,
They never say good-night.

LINES TO AN INDIAN AIR.

I ARISE from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet

Has led me who knows how?
To thy chamber window, sweet!

The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream-
The champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on thine,
O beloved as thou art.

O lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!

Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast,
Oh! press it close to thine again,
Where it will break at last.

MUSIC.

I PANT for the music which is divine,
My heart in its thirst is a dying flower;
Pour forth the sound like enchanted wine,
Loosen the notes in a silver shower;
Like an herbless plain for the gentle rain,
I gasp, I faint, till they wake again.

Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet sound,
More, O more!-I am thirsting yet,

It loosens the serpent which care has bound
Upon my heart, to stifle it;

The dissolving strain, through every vein,
Passes into my heart and brain.

As the scent of a violet withered up,

Which grew by the brink of a silver lake, When the hot noon has drained its dewy cup, And mist there was none its thirst to slakeAnd the violet lay dead while the odour flew On the wings of the wind o'er the waters blue

As one who drinks from a charmed cup

Of foaming, and sparkling, and murmuring wine, Whom, a mighty Enchantress filling up, Invites to love with her kiss divine.

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