Should we be less in deed than in desire ?"—
-"Ay, if we were not weak,-and we aspire,
How vainly to be strong," said Maddalo :
"You talk Utopian "-

"It remains to know,"
I then rejoined, "and those who try, may find
How strong the chains are which our spirit bind:
Brittle perchance as straw. We are assured
Much may be conquered, much may be endured,
Of what degrades and crushes us. We know
That we have power over ourselves to do
And suffer-what, we know not till we try;
But something nobler than to live and die :
So taught the kings of old philosophy,
Who reigned before religion made men blind;
And those who suffer with their suffering kind,
Yet feel this faith, religion.”

"My dear friend,"
Said Maddalo, "my judgment will not bend
To your opinion, though I think you might
Make such a system refutation-tight,
As far as words go. I knew one like you,
Who to this city came some months ago,
With whom I argued in this sort,—and he
Is now gone mad-and so he answered me,
Poor fellow !-But if you would like to go,
We'll visit him, and his wild talk will show
How vain are such aspiring theories."-

"I hope to prove the induction otherwise,
And that a want of that true theory still,
Which seeks a soul of goodness in things ill,
Or in himself or others, has thus bowed
His being there are some by nature proud,
Who, patient in all else, demand but this-
To love and be beloved with gentleness :-
And being scorned, what wonder if they die
Some living death? This is not destiny,
But man's own wilful ill."

As thus I spoke, Servants announced the gondola, and we Through the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea Sailed to the island where the madhouse stands. We disembarked. The clap of tortured hands, Fierce yells and howlings, and lamentings keen, And laughter where complaint had merrier been, Accosted us. We climbed the oozy stairs Into an old court-yard. I heard on high, Then, fragments of most touching melody, But looking up saw not the singer there.Thro' the black bars in the tempestuous air I saw, like weeds on a wrecked palace growing, Long tangled locks flung wildly forth and flowing, Of those on a sudden who were beguiled Into strange silence, and looked forth and smiled, Hearing sweet sounds. Then I :

"Methinks there were A cure of these with patience and kind care,

If music can thus move. Whom we seek here?"

But what is he,

But he was ever talking in such sort
As you do, but more sadly ;-he seemed hurt,
Even as a man with his peculiar wrong,
To hear but of the oppression of the strong,
Or those absurd deceits (I think with you
In some respects, you know) which carry through
The excellent impostors of this earth
When they outface detection. He had worth,
Poor fellow but a humourist in his way."-

-"Alas, what drove him mad?"

"I cannot say:

A lady came with him from France, and when She left him and returned, he wandered then About yon lonely isles of desert sand,

Till he grew wild. He had no cash nor land Remaining the police had brought him here→ Some fancy took him, and he would not bear Removal, so I fitted up for him

Those rooms beside the sea, to please his whim; And sent him busts, and books, and urns for flowers,

Which had adorned his life in happier hours,
And instruments of music. You may guess

A stranger could do little more or less
For one so gentle and unfortunate-

And those are his sweet strains which charm the weight

From madmen's chains, and make this hell appear A heaven of sacred silence, hushed to hear."

"Nay, this was kind of you,-he had no claim, As the world says."

"None but the very same Which I on all mankind, were I, as he, Fallen to such deep reverse. His melody

Is interrupted now: we hear the din
Of madmen, shriek on shriek, again begin :
Let us now visit him: after this strain,
He ever communes with himself again,
And sees and hears not any."

Having said
These words, we called the keeper, and he led
To an apartment opening on the sea-
There the poor wretch was sitting mournfully
Near a piano, his pale fingers twined

One with the other; and the ooze and wind
Rushed through an open casement, and did sway
His hair, and starred it with the brackish spray :
His head was leaning on a music-book,

And he was muttering; and his lean limbs shook.
His lips were pressed against a folded leaf,
In hue too beautiful for health, and grief
Smiled in their motions as they lay apart,
As one who wrought from his own fervid heart
The eloquence of passion: soon he raised

His sad meek face, and eyes lustrous and glazed,
And spoke,-sometimes as one who wrote, and

thought

His words might move some heart that heeded not,
If sent to distant lands ;-and then as one
Reproaching deeds never to be undone,
With wondering self-compassion; then his speech
Was lost in grief, and then his words came each
Unmodulated and expressionless,—

But that from one jarred accent you might guess

"That you had never seen me! never heard
My voice! and more than all had ne'er endured
The deep pollution of my loathed embrace;
That your eyes ne'er had lied love in my face!
That, like some maniac monk, I had torn out
The nerves of manhood by their bleeding root
With mine own quivering fingers! so that ne'er
Our hearts had for a moment mingled there,
To disunite in horror! These were not
With thee like some suppressed and hideous thought,
Which flits athwart our musings, but can find
No rest within a pure and gentle mind-
Thou sealedst them with many a bare broad word,
And sear❜dst my memory o'er them, for I heard
And can forget not-they were ministered,
One after one, those curses. Mix them up
Like self-destroying poisons in one cup;
And they will make one blessing, which thou ne'er
Didst imprecate for on me-death!

"It were
A cruel punishment for one most cruel,
If such can love, to make that love the fuel
Of the mind's hell-hate, scorn, remorse, despair:
But me, whose heart a stranger's tear might wear
As water-drops the sandy fountain stone;
Who loved and pitied all things, and could moan
For woes which others hear not, and could see
The absent with the glass of phantasy,
And near the poor and trampled sit and weep,
Following the captive to his dungeon deep;
Me, who am as a nerve o'er which do creep
The else-unfelt oppressions of this earth,
And was to thee the flame upon thy hearth,
When all beside was cold:-that thou on me
Should rain these plagues of blistering agony-
Such curses are from lips once eloquent
With love's too partial praise! Let none relent
Who intend deeds too dreadful for a name
Henceforth, if an example for the same

They seek for thou on me lookedst so and so, And didst speak thus and thus. I live to show How much men bear and die not.

With the grimace of hate, how horrible
It was to meet my love when thine grew less;
Thou wilt admire how I could e'er address
Such features to love's work . . . . This taunt,
though true,

(For indeed Nature nor in form nor hue
Bestowed on me her choicest workmanship)
Shall not be thy defence: for since thy life
Met mine first, years long past,-since thine eye
kindled

With soft fire under mine,-I have not dwindled,
Nor changed in mind, or body, or in aught
But as love changes what it loveth not
After long years and many trials.

"How vain

Are words; I thought never to speak again,
Not even in secret, not to my own heart-
But from my lips the unwilling accents start,
And from my pen the words flow as I write,
Dazzling my eyes with scalding tears-my sight

Is dim to see that charactered in vain,
On this unfeeling leaf, which burns the brain
And eats into it, blotting all things fair,
And wise and good, which time had written there.
Those who inflict must suffer, for they see
The work of their own hearts, and that must be
Our chastisement or recompense.—O child!
I would that thine were like to be more mild
For both our wretched sakes,-for thine the most,
Who feel'st already all that thou hast lost,
Without the power to wish it thine again.
And, as slow years pass, a funereal train,
Each with the ghost of some lost hope or friend
Following it like its shadow, wilt thou bend
No thought on my dead memory?

"Alas, love!

Fear me not: against thee I'd not move
A finger in despite. Do I not live
That thou mayst have less bitter cause to grieve?
I give thee tears for scorn, and love for hate;
And, that thy lot may be less desolate
Than his on whom thou tramplest, I refrain
From that sweet sleep which medicines all pain.
Then-when thou speakest of me-never say,
'He could forgive not.'-Here I cast away
All human passions, all revenge, all pride;
I think, speak, act no ill; I do but hide
Under these words, like embers, every spark
Of that which has consumed me. Quick and dark
The grave is yawning:-as its roof shall cover
My limbs with dust and worms, under and over,
So let oblivion hide this grief.-The air
Closes upon my accents as despair
Upon my heart-let death upon my care!”

He ceased, and overcome, leant back awhile;
Then rising, with a melancholy smile,
Went to a sofa, and lay down, and slept
A heavy sleep, and in his dreams he wept,
And muttered some familiar name, and we
Wept without shame in his society.

I think I never was impressed so much!
The man, who was not, must have lacked a touch
Of human nature.-Then we lingered not,
Although our argument was quite forgot;
But, calling the attendants, went to dine
At Maddalo's;-yet neither cheer nor wine
Could give us spirits, for we talked of him,
And nothing else, till daylight made stars dim.
And we agreed it was some dreadful ill
Wrought on him boldly, yet unspeakable,
By a dear friend; some deadly change in love
Of one vowed deeply which he dreamed not of;
For whose sake he, it seemed, had fixed a blot,
Of falsehood in his mind, which flourished not
But in the light of all-beholding truth;

And having stamped this canker on his youth,
She had abandoned him:-and how much more
Might be his woe, we guessed not;-he had store
Of friends and fortune once, as we could guess
From his nice habits and his gentleness:
These now were lost-it were a grief indeed
If he had changed one unsustaining reed
For all that such a man might else adorn.
The colours of his mind seemed yet unworn;
For the wild language of his grief was high-
Such as in measure were called poetry.
And I remember one remark, which then
Maddalo made: he said-" Most wretched men

Are cradled into poetry by wrong:
They learn in suffering what they teach in song."

If I had been an unconnected man,

I, from the moment, should have formed some plan

Never to leave sweet Venice: for to me
It was delight to ride by the lone sea:
And then the town is silent-one may write
Or read in gondolas, by day or night,
Having the little brazen lamp alight,
Unseen, uninterrupted:-books are there,
Pictures, and casts from all those statues fair
Which were twin-born with poetry !-and all
We seek in towns, with little to recall
Regret for the green country:-I might sit
In Maddalo's great palace, and his wit
And subtle talk would cheer the winter night,
And make me know myself:-and the fire light
Would flash upon our faces, till the day
Might dawn, and make me wonder at my stay.
But I had friends in London too. The chief
Attraction here was that I sought relief
From the deep tenderness that maniac wrought
Within me 'twas perhaps an idle thought,
But I imagined that if, day by day,

I watched him, and seldom went away,
And studied all the beatings of his heart
With zeal, as men study some stubborn art
For their own good, and could by patience find
An entrance to the caverns of his mind,
I might reclaim him from his dark estate.
In friendships I had been most fortunate,
Yet never saw I one whom I would call
More willingly my friend :—and this was all
Accomplished not;-such dreams of baseless good
Oft come and go, in crowds or solitude,
And leave no trace!-but what I now designed
Made, for long years, impression on my mind.
The following morning urged by my affairs,
I left bright Venice.

After many years,

And many changes, I returned: the name
Of Venice, and its aspect was the same;
But Maddalo was travelling, far away,
Among the mountains of Armenia.
His dog was dead: his child had now become
A woman, such as it has been my doom
To meet with few; a wonder of this earth,
Where there is little of transcendent worth,—
Like one of Shakspeare's women. Kindly she,
And with a manner beyond courtesy,
Received her father's friend; and, when I asked,
Of the lorn maniac, she her memory tasked,
And told, as she had heard, the mournful tale:
"That the poor sufferer's health began to fail
Two years from my departure: but that then
The lady, who had left him, came again,
Her mien had been imperious, but she now
Looked meek; perhaps remorse had brought
her low.

Her coming made him better; and they stayed
Together at my father's,-for I played,
As I remember, with the lady's shawl;
I might be six years old:-But, after all,
She left him."

"Why her heart must have been tough; How did it end?"

"And was not this enough?

They met, they parted."

"Child, is there no more?"

"Something within that interval which bore
The stamp of why they parted, how they met ;—
Yet, if thine aged eyes disdain to wet
Those wrinkled cheeks with youth's remembered
Ask me no more; but let the silent years [tears,
Be closed and cered over their memory,

As yon mute marble where their corpses lie."
I urged and questioned still: she told me how

All happened-but the cold world shall not know.

THE WOODMAN AND THE NIGHTINGALE.

A WOODMAN, whose rough heart was out of tune (I think such hearts yet never came to good), Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,

One nightingale in an interfluous wood
Satiate the hungry dark with melody ;-
And, as a vale is watered by a flood,

Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness-as a tuberose
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie

Like clouds above the flower from which they rose,
The singing of that happy nightingale
In this sweet forest, from the golden close

Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale

Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness

Of the circumfluous waters,-every sphere
And every flower and beam and cloud and wave,
And every wind of the mute atmosphere,

And every beast stretched in its rugged cave,
And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,
And every silver moth, fresh from the grave,

Which is its cradle-ever from below
Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,
To be consumed within the purest glow

Of one serene and unapproached star,
As if it were a lamp of earthly light,
Unconscious as some human lovers are,

Itself how low, how high, beyond all height
The heaven where it would perish !-and every form
That worshipped in the temple of the night

Was awed into delight, and by the charm
Girt as with an interminable zone,
Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm

Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion
Out of their dreams; harmony became love
In every soul but one. . . .

And so this man returned with axe and saw At evening close from killing the tall treen, The soul of whom by nature's gentle law

Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green The pavement and the roof of the wild copse, Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene

With jagged leaves,—and from the forest tops Singing the winds to sleep-or weeping oft Fast showers of aërial water drops,