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And the beams of morn lie dead
On the towers of Venice now,
Like its glory long ago.

By the skirts of that gray cloud
Many-domed Padua proud
Stands, a peopled solitude,
'Mid the harvest-shining plain,
Where the peasant heaps his grain
In the garner of his foe,
And the milk-white oxen slow
With the purple vintage strain,
Heaped upon the creaking wain,
That the brutal Celt may swill
Drunken sleep with savage will;
And the sickle to the sword
Lies unchanged, though many a lord,
Like a weed whose shade is poison,
Overgrows this region's foison,
Sheaves of whom are ripe to come
To destruction's harvest home :
Men must reap the things they sow,
Force from force must ever flow,
Or worse; but 'tis a bitter woe
That love or reason cannot change
The despot's rage, the slave's revenge.

Padua, thou within whose walls
Those mute guests at festivals,
Son and Mother, Death and Sin,
Played at dice for Ezzelin,

Till Death cried, "I win, I win!"
And Sin cursed to lose the wager,
But Death promised, to assuage her,
That he would petition for
Her to be made Vice-Emperor,
When the destined years were o'er,
Over all between the Po
And the eastern Alpine snow,
Under the mighty Austrian.
Sin smiled so as Sin only can,
And since that time, ay, long before,
Both have ruled from shore to shore,
That incestuous pair, who follow
Tyrants as the sun the swallow,
As Repentance follows Crime,
And as changes follow Time.

In thine halls the lamp of learning,
Padua, now no more is burning;

Like a meteor, whose wild way
Is lost over the grave of day,
It gleams betrayed and to betray :
Once remotest nations came
To adore that sacred flame,
When it lit not many a hearth
On this cold and gloomy earth:
Now new fires from antique light
Spring beneath the wide world's might;
But their spark lies dead in thee,
Trampled out by tyranny.
As the Norway woodman quells,
In the depth of piny dells,
One light flame among the brakes,
While the boundless forest shakes,
And its mighty trunks are torn
By the fire thus lowly born:
The spark beneath his feet is dead,
He starts to see the flames it fed
Howling through the darkened sky
With a myriad tongues victoriously,
And sinks down in fear: so thou,
O Tyranny, beholdest now
Light around thee, and thou hearest
The loud flames ascend, and fearest :
Grovel on the earth; ay, hide
In the dust thy purple pride!

Noon descends around me now :
'Tis the noon of autumn's glow,
When a soft and purple mist
Like a vaporous amethyst,
Or an air-dissolved star
Mingling light and fragrance, far
From the curved horizon's bound
To the point of heaven's profound,
Fills the overflowing sky;
And the plains that silent lie
Underneath, the leaves unsodden
Where the infant frost has trodden
With his morning-winged feet,
Whose bright print is gleaming yet;
And the red and golden vines,
Piercing with their trellised lines
The rough, dark-skirted wilderness;
The dun and bladed grass no less,
Pointing from this hoary tower
In the windless air; the flower
Glimmering at my feet; the line

Of the olive-sandalled Apennine
In the south dimly islanded;
And the Alps, whose snows are spread
High between the clouds and sun;
And of living things each one;
And my spirit which so long
Darkened this swift stream of song,
Interpenetrated lie

By the glory of the sky :
Be it love, light, harmony,
Odour, or the soul of all

Which from heaven like dew doth fall,
Or the mind which feeds this verse
Peopling the lone universe.
Noon descends, and after noon
Autumn's evening meets me soon,
Leading the infantine moon,
And that one star, which to her
Almost seems to minister
Half the crimson light she brings
From the sunset's radiant springs :
And the soft dreams of the morn
(Which like wingèd winds had borne
To that silent isle, which lies
'Mid remembered agonies,
The frail bark of this lone being)
Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,
And its ancient pilot, Pain,
Sits beside the helm again.

Other flowering isles must be
In the sea of life and agony :
Other spirits float and flee
O'er that gulph: even now, perhaps,
On some rock the wild wave wraps,
With folded wings they waiting sit
For my bark, to pilot it

To some calm and blooming cove,
Where for me, and those I love,
May a windless bower be built,
Far from passion, pain, and guilt,
In a dell 'mid lawny hills,
Which the wild sea-murmur fills,
And soft sunshine, and the sound
Of old forests echoing round,
And the light and smell divine

Of all flowers that breathe and shine:
We may live so happy there,
That the spirits of the air,

Envying us, may even entice
To our healing paradise
The polluting multitude;
But their rage would be subdued
By that clime divine and calm,
And the winds whose wings rain balmi
On the uplifted soul, and leaves
Under which the bright sea heaves;
While each breathless interval
In their whisperings musical
The inspired soul supplies
With its own deep melodies,
And the love which heals all strife
Circling, like the breath of life,
All things in that sweet abode
With its own mild brotherhood:
They, not it would change; and soon
Every sprite beneath the moon
Would repent its envy vain,
And the earth grow young again.

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Pigna. How are the Duke and
Duchess occupied ?

Albano. Buried in some strange talk.
The Duke was leaning,

His finger on his brow, his lips unclosed. The Princess sate within the windowseat,

And so her face was hid; but on her knee

Her hands were clasped, veined, and pale as snow,

And quivering-young Tasso, too, was there.

Maddalo. Thou seest on whom from thine own worshipped heaven Thou drawest down smiles- they did not rain on thee.

Malpiglio. Would they were parching lightnings for his sake

On whom they fell!

SONG FOR "TASSO"

I

I LOVED-alas! our life is love;
But when we cease to breathe and move
I do suppose love ceases too.
I thought, but not as now I do,
Keen thoughts and bright of linked lore,
Of all that men had thought before,
And all that nature shows, and more.

II

And still I love and still I think,
But strangely, for my heart can drink
The dregs of such despair, and live,
And love;

And if I think, my thoughts come fast,
I mix the present with the past,
And each seems uglier than the last.

III

Sometimes I see before me flee A silver spirit's form, like thee,

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Because they once were sweet, shall lull What but mockery can they mean,

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IV

Yet now despair itself is mild,

Even as the winds and waters are; I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear,

Till death like sleep might steal on

me,

And I might feel in the warm air My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

V

Some might lament that I were cold, As I, when this sweet day is gone, Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,

Insults with this untimely moan;

They might lament-for I am one Whom men love not,—and yet regret, Unlike this day, which, when the

sun

Shall on its stainless glory set,

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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,

Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in To be consumed within the purest glow

memory yet.

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

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

Like clouds above the flower from which In every soul but one.

they rose,

The singing of that happy nightingale

In this sweet forest, from the golden And so this man returned with axe and

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