So long that 'twas forgotten; and I feel The weight of clay again,-too soon bereft Of the immortal vision which could heal

My earthly sorrows, and to God's own skies Lift me from that deep gulf without repeal, Where late my ears rung with the damned cries Of souls in hopeless bale; and from that place Of lesser torment, whence men may arise Pure from the fire to join the angelic race; Midst whom my own bright Beatrice bless'd My spirit with her light; and to the base Of the eternal Triad! first, last, best,

Mysterious, three, sole, infinite, great God! Soul universal! led the mortal guest, Unblasted by the glory, though he trod

From star to star to reach the almighty throne. Oh Beatricé! whose sweet limbs the sod So long hath press'd, and the cold marble stone, Thou sole pure seraph of my earliest love, Love so ineffable, and so alone, [move, That nought on earth could more my bosom And meeting thee in heaven was but to meet That without which my soul, like the arkless dove,

Had wander'd still in search of, nor her feet Relieved her wing till found: without thy light My paradise had still been incomplete.† Since my tenth sun gave summer to my sight

Thou wert my life, the essence of my thought, Loved ere I knew the name of love, and bright Still in these dim old eyes, now overwrought With the world's war, and years, and banishment,

And tears for thee, by other woes untaught; For mine is not a nature to be bent

By tyrannous faction, and the brawling crowd, And though the long, long conflict hath been spent

eye

Pierces to fancy Florence, once so proud Of me, can I return, though but to die, Unto my native soil, they have not yet Quench'd the old exile's spirit, stern and high. But the sun, though not overcast, must set,

And the night cometh; I am old in days. And deeds, and contemplation, and have met Destruction face to face in all his ways. The world hath left me, what it found me, pure,

And if I have not gather'd yet its praise, I sought it not by any baser lure; [name Man wrongs, and Time avenges, and my May form a monument not all obscure, Though such was not my ambition's end or aim, To add to the vain-glorious list of those Who dabble in the pettiness of fame, And make men's fickle breath the wind that blows Their sail, and deem it glory to be class'd With conquerors, and virtue's other foes, In bloody chronicles of ages past.

I would have had my Florence great and free; * Oh Florence! Florence! unto me thou wast Like that Jerusalem which the Almighty He Wept over, but thou wouldst not; as the bird

Gathers its young, I would have gather'd thee Beneath a parent pinion, hadst thou heard

My voice; but as the adder, deaf and fierce, Against the breast that cherish'd thee was stirr'd

Thy venom, and my state thou didst amerce,
And doom this body forfeit to the fire.
Alas! how bitter is his country's curse
To him who, for that country would expire,
But did not merit to expire by her,

And loves her, loves her even in her ire!
The day may come when she will cease to err,
The day may come she would be proud to

have

--

Too long her armèd wrath hath kept aloof The breast which would have bled for her, the heart

That beat, the mind that was temptation proof, The man who fought, toil'd, travell'd, and each Of a true citizen fulfill'd, and saw [part For his reward, the Guelf's ascendant art Pass his destruction even into a law.

These things are not made for forgetfulness, Florence shall be forgotten first; too raw The wound, too deep the wrong, and the dis

tress

Of such endurance too prolong'd to make My pardon greater, her injustice less, Though late repented; yet - yet for her sake

I feel some fonder yearnings, and for thine, My own Beatrice, I would hardly take Vengeance upon the land which once was mine, And still is hallow'd by thy dust's return, Which would protect the murderess like a shrine,

And save ten thousand foes by thy sole urn. Though, like old Marius from Minturnæ's marsh

And Carthage ruins, my lone breast may burn At times with evil feelings hot and harsh,

And sometimes the last pangs of a vile foe Writhe in a dream before me, and o'erarch My brow with hopes of triumph,-let them go ! Such are the last infirmities of those Who long have suffer'd more than mortal woe, And yet being mortal still have no repose

But on the pillow of Revenge-Revenge, Who sleeps to dream of blood, and waking glows

With the oft-baffled slakeless thirst of change, When we shall mount again, and they that

trod

Be trampled on, while Death and Até range O'er humbled heads and sever'd necks Great God!

[I yield Take these thoughts from me-to thy hands My many wrongs, and thine almighty rod Will fall on those who smote me,-be my shield! As thou hast been in peril, and in pain, In turbulent cities, and the tented fieldIn toil, and many troubles borne in vain

For Florence.-I appeal from her to Thee! Thee whom I late saw in thy loftiest reign, Even in that glorious vision, which to see And live was never granted until now, And yet thou hast permitted this to me. Alas! with what a weight upon my brow

The sense of earth and earthly things come back,

Corrosive passions, feelings dull and low, The heart's quick throb upon the mental rack, Long day, and dreary night; the retrospect Of half a century bloody and black, And the frail few years I may yet expect

Hoary and hopeless, but less hard to bear, For I have been too long and deeply wreck'd On the lone rock of desolate Despair,

To lift my eyes more to the passing sail Which shuns that reef so horrible and bare, Nor raise my voice-for who would heed my I am not of this people, nor this age, [wail? And yet my harpings will unfold a tale Which shall preserve these times when not a page

Of their perturbed annals could attract An eye to gaze upon their civil rage, Did not my verse embalm full many an act Worthless as they who wrought it: 'tis the Of spirits of my order to be rack'd [doom In life, to wear their hearts out, and consume Their days in endless strife, and die alone; Then future thousands crowd around their tomb, [known And pilgrims come from climes where they have The name of him-who now is but a name. And wasting homage o'er the sullen stone, Spread his-by him unheard, unheeded-fame; And mine at least hath cost me dear: to die Is nothing; but to wither thus-to tame My mind down from its own infinity

To live in narrow ways with little men, A common sight to every common eye, A wanderer, while even wolves can find a den, Ripp'd from all kindred, from all home, all things [pain

That make communion sweet, and soften To feel me in the solitude of kings [crownWithout the power that makes them bear a To envy every dove his nest and wings Which waft him where the Apennine looks down On Arno, till he perches, it may be, Within my all inexorable town, Where yet my boys are, and that fatal she,*

the most powerful Guelph families named Donati. Corso This lady, whose name was Gemma, sprung from one of

Donati was the principal adversary of the Ghibellines. She is described as being Admodum morosa, ut de Xantippe Socratis philosophi conjuge scriptum esse legimus,' according to Giannozzo Manetti. But Lionardo Aretino is scandalized

with Boccace, in his Life of Dante, for saying that literary men should not marry. Qui il Boccaccio non ha pazienza, e dice, le mogli esser contrarie agli studj; e non si ricorda che Socrate il più nobile filosofo che mai fosse, ebbe moglie e figliuoli e uffici della Repubblica nella sua Città; e Aristotele che, &c. &c., ebbe due mogli in varj tempi, ed ebbe figliuoli, e ricchezze assai.-E Marco Tullio-e Catone-e Varrone-e Seneca-ebbero moglie,' &c. &c. It is odd that honest Lionardo's examples, with the exception of Seneca, and, for any thing I know, of Aristotle, are not the most felicitous. Tully's Terentia, and Socrates' Xantippe, by no means contributed to their husbands' happiness, whatever they might do to their philosophy-Cato gave away his wife-of Varro's we know no thing-and of Seneca's, only that she was disposed to die with him, but recovered and lived several years afterwards. But says Lionardo, L'uomo è animale civile, secondo piace a tutti i filosofi," And thence concludes that the greatest proof of the animal's civism is 'la prima congiunzione, dalla quale multiplicata nasce la Città'

Their mother, the cold partner who hath brought

Destruction for a dowry-this to see

And feel, and know without repair, hath taught|

A bitter lesson; but it leaves me free: I have not vilely found, nor basely sought, They made an Exile-not a slave of me.

THE Spirit of the fervent days of Old, When words were things that came to pass, and thought

Flash'd o'er the future, bidding men behold Their children's children's doom already brought Forth from the abyss of time which is to be, The chaos of events, where lie half-wrought Shapes that must undergo mortality;

What the great Seers of Israel wore within,
That spirit was on them, and is on me,
And if, Cassandra-like, amidst the din

Of conflict none will hear, or hearing heed
This voice from out the Wilderness, the sin
Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed,
The only guerdon I have ever known.
Hast thou not bled? and hast thou still to
bleed,

Italia? Ah! to me such things, foreshown

With dim sepulchral light, bid me forget In thine irreparable wrongs my own; We can have but one country, and even yet Thou'rt mine-my bones shall be within thy breast,

My soul within thy language, which once set With our old Roman sway in the wide West; But I will make another tongue arise

As lofty and more sweet, in which express'd The hero's ardour, or the lover's sighs,

Shall find alike such sounds for every theme That every word, as brilliant as thy skies, Shall realize a poet's proudest dream,

And make thee Europe's nightingale of song; So that all present speech to thine shall seem The note of meaner birds, and every tongue Confess its barbarism when compared with thine. [wrong, This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so Thy Tuscan bard, the banish'd Ghibelline. Woe! woe! the veil of coming centuries Is rent, a thousand years which yet supine Lie like the ocean waves ere winds arise, Heaving in dark and sullen undulation, Float from eternity into these eyes; The storms yet sleep, the clouds still keep their station,

The unborn earthquake yet is in the womb, The bloody chaos yet expects creation, But all things are disposing for thy doom; The elements await but for the word,

Let there be darkness!' and thou grow'st a
tomb!

Yes! thou, so beautiful, shalt feel the sword,
Thou, Italy! so fair that Paradise,

Ah! must the sons of Adam lose it twice?
Thou, Italy! whose ever golden fields,
Plough'd by the sunbeams solely, would suffice
For the world's granary; thou, whose sky heaven
gilds
[blue;
With brighter stars, and robes with deeper
Thou, in whose pleasant places Summer builds
Her palace, in whose cradle Empire grew,
And form'd the Eternal City's ornaments
From spoils of kings whom freemen over-
threw ;

Birthplace of heroes, sanctuary of saints,

Where earthly first, then heavenly glory made Her home; thou, all which fondest fancy paints,

And finds her prior vision but portray'd

In feeble colours, when the eye-from the Aip Of horrid snow, and rock, and shaggy shade Of desert-loving pine, whose emerald scalp Nods to the storm-dilates and dotes o'er thee, And wistfully implores, as 'twere for help To see thy sunny fields, my Italy,

Nearer and nearer yet, and dearer still The more approach'd, and dearest were they free.

Thou-thou must wither to each tyrant's will: The Goth hath been,-the German, Frank, and Hun

Are yet to come,-and on the imperial hill Ruin, already proud of the deeds done

By the old barbarians, there awaits the new, Throned on the Palatine, while lost and won Rome at her feet lies bleeding; and the hue Of human sacrifice and Roman slaughter Troubles the clotted air, of late so blue, And deepens into red the saffron water

Of Tiber, thick with dead; the helpless priest, And still more helpless nor less holy daughter, Vow'd to their God, have shrieking fled, and ceased

Their ministry: the nations take their prey. Iberian, Almain, Lombard, and the beast And bird, wolf, vulture, more humane than they Are; these but gorge the flesh and lap the gore

Of the departed, and then go their way; But those, the human savages, explore

All paths of torture, and insatiate yet, With Ugolino hunger prowl for more. Nine moons shall rise o'er scenes like this and set;