VIII And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught By loftiest meditations; marble knew The sculptor's fearless soul, and as he wrought, The grace of his own power and freedom grew. And more than all, heroic, just, sublime, Thou wert among the false IX was this thy crime? Yes; and on Pisa's marble walls the twine A beast of subtler venom now doth make X The sweetest flowers are ever frail and rare, And love and freedom blossom but to wither; And good and ill like vines entangled are, So that their grapes may oft be plucked together. Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make XI No record of his crime remains in story, XII For when by sound of trumpet was declared So much of water with him as might wet XIII Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast, Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear, XIV And in the roofless huts of vast morasses, All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses, XV He housed himself. There is a point of strand Through muddy weeds, the shallow sullen sea. XVI Here the earth's breath is pestilence, and few The trophies of the clime's victorious strifeWhite bones, and locks of dun and yellow hair, And ringèd horns which buffaloes did wear - XVII stood there And at the utmost point The relics of a weed-inwoven cot, Thatched with broad flags. An outlawed murderer Had lived seven days there; the pursuit was hot When he was cold. The birds that were his grave Fell dead upon their feast in Vado's wave. XVIII There must have lived within Marenghi's heart That fire, more warm and bright than life or More joyous than the heaven's majestic cope XIX Nor was his state so lone as you might think. Those And each one, with peculiar talk and play, XX And the marsh-meteors, like tame beasts, at night XXI He mocked the stars by grouping on each weed XXII And many a fresh Spring morn would he awaken, While yet the unrisen sun made glow, like iron Quivering in crimson fire, the peaks unshaken Of mountains and blue isles which did environ With air-clad crags that plain of land and sea, And feel liberty. XXIII And in the moonless nights, when the dim ocean Heaved underneath the heaven, Starting from dreams . . . Communed with the immeasurable world; And felt his life beyond his limbs dilated, Till his mind grew like that it contemplated. XXIV His food was the wild fig and strawberry; The milky pine-nuts which the autumnal blast Shakes into the tall grass; and such small fry As from the sea by winter-storms are cast; And the coarse bulbs of iris flowers he found Knotted in clumps under the spongy ground. XXV And so were kindled powers and thoughts which made His solitude less dark. When memory came (For years gone by leave each a deepening shade), His spirit basked in its internal flame, As, when the black storm hurries round at night The fisher basks beside his red firelight. XXVI Yet human hopes and cares and faiths and errors, Like billows unawakened by the wind, Slept in Marenghi still; but that all terrors, Weakness, and doubt, had withered in his mind. His couch XXVII And, when he saw beneath the sunset's planet |