Thou vainly curious mind which wouldest

While the meek blest sit smiling; if
Despair

guess

Whence thou didst come, and whither thou must go,

And Hate, the rapid bloodhounds with which Terror

And all that never yet was known Hunts through the world the homeless would know-

steps of Error,

Oh, whither hasten ye, that thus ye
press,

Are the true secrets of the commonweal
To make men wise and just;

With such swift feet life's green and
pleasant path,

And not the sophisms of revenge and
fear,

Seeking, alike from happiness and woe,
A refuge in the cavern of gray death?
O heart, and mind, and thoughts, what
thing do you

Hope to inherit in the grave below?

Bloodier than is revenge
Then send the priests to every hearth
and home

To preach the burning wrath which is to

come,

In words like flakes of sulphur, such as thaw

Until his mind's eye paint thereon--
Let scorn like
yawn below,
And rain on him like flakes of fiery

wave,

Seen through the caverns of the shadowy grave,

snow.

Hurling the damned into the murky This cannot be, it ought not, evil still

air

Refuses stern her heaven-born embrace. On one side of this jagged and shapeless hill

Upon the startled sense. Chorus. Does he still sing? Methought he rashly cast away his harp There is a cave, from which there eddies When he had lost Eurydice. up

A.

Awhile he paused.

A pale mist, like aërial gossamer,
Whose breath destroys all life-awhile

it veils

stag A moment shudders on the fearful brink The rock-then, scattered by the wind, Of a swift stream-the cruel hounds

it flies

press on

Along the stream, or lingers on the With deafening yell, the arrows glance and wound,

clefts,

Killing the sleepy worms, if aught bide | He plunges in: so Orpheus, seized and there.

As, with a graceful spire and stirring
life,

Pierce the pure heaven of your native
vale,
Whose branches the air plays among,
but not

Disturbs, fearing to spoil their solemn
grace;
But blasted and all wearily they stand,
One to another clinging; their weak
boughs

Sigh as the wind buffets them, and they
shake

Beneath its blasts a weatherbeaten crew!

torn

Upon the beetling edge of that dark By the sharp fangs of an insatiate grief, rock Mænad-like waved his lyre in the bright air,

There stands a group of cypresses; not such

And wildly shrieked "Where she is, it is dark!"

And then he struck from forth the strings a sound

Ah no! As a poor hunted

The waning sound, scattering it like dew

A many-sided mirror for the sun,
While it flows musically through green
banks,

Ceaseless and pauseless, ever clear and
fresh,

Chorus. What wondrous sound is that, mournful and faint, But more melodious than the murmuring wind

So flowed his song, reflecting the deep joy

Which through the columns of a temple And tender love that fed those sweetest notes,

glides?

A. It is the wandering voice of The heavenly offspring of ambrosial food. Orpheus' lyre, But that is past. Returning from drear Borne by the winds, who sigh that their Hell, rude king

Hurries them fast from these air-feeding
notes;

He chose a lonely seat of unhewn
stone,
Blackened with lichens, on a herbless
plain.

But in their speed they bear along with
them

Then from the deep and overflowing

Alas!

Of deep and fearful melody.
In times long past, when fair Eurydice
With her bright eyes sat listening by
his side,

He

gently sang of high and heavenly themes.

As in a brook, fretted with little waves, By the light airs of spring-each riplet makes

spring
Of his eternal ever-moving grief

There rose to Heaven a sound of angry Or I must borrow from her perfect song.

works,

'Tis as a mighty cataract that parts
Two sister rocks with waters swift and
strong,

And casts itself with horrid roar and din
Adown a steep; from a perennial source
It ever flows and falls, and breaks the
air

With loud and fierce, but most harmoni-
ous roar,

And as it falls casts up a vaporous spray Which the sun clothes in hues of Iris light.

And sea-green olives with their grateful fruit,

And elms dragging along the twisted vines,

Which drop their berries as they follow fast

Thus the tempestuous torrent of his grief And blackthorn bushes with their infant Is clothed in sweetest sounds and varying words Of poesy. Unlike all human works, It never slackens, and through every change Wisdom and beauty and the power divine Of mighty poesy together dwell, Mingling in sweet accord. As I have

seen

A fierce south blast tear through the darkened sky,

Driving along a rack of winged clouds,
Which may not pause, but ever hurry

on,

As their wild shepherd wills them, while
the stars,
Twinkling and dim, peep from between
the plumes.
Anon the sky is cleared, and the high
dome

Of serene Heaven, starred with fiery
flowers,

Shuts in the shaken earth; or the still

moon

Swiftly, yet gracefully, begins her walk,
Rising all bright behind the eastern

hills.

I talk of moon, and wind, and stars,

and not

To picture forth his perfect attributes.
He does no longer sit upon his throne
Of rock upon a desert herbless plain,
For the evergreen and knotted ilexes,
And cypresses that seldom wave their
boughs,

song, Nature must lend me words ne'er used before,

race

Of blushing rose blooms; beeches, to lovers dear,

And weeping willow trees; all swift or slow,

As their huge boughs or lighter dress permit,

Have circled in his throne, and Earth herself

Has sent from her maternal breast a growth

Of starlike flowers and herbs of odour
sweet,

To pave the temple that his poesy
Has framed, while near his feet grim
lions couch,

And kids, fearless from love, creep near
his lair.

Even the blind worms seem to feel the sound.

The birds are silent, hanging down their heads,

Perched on the lowest branches of the
trees;

Not even the nightingale intrudes a note
In rivalry, but all entranced she listens.

FIORDISPINA

Of song; but would I echo his high THE season was the childhood of sweet

June,

Whose sunny hours from morning until

noon

Went creeping through the day with Fiordispina said, and threw the flowers silent feet, Which she had from the breathing

Each with its load of pleasure, slow yet
sweet;

Like the long years of blest Eternity
Never to be developed. Joy to thee,
Fiordispina and thy Cosimo,
For thou the wonders of the depth canst
know

-A table near of polished porphyry.
They seemed to wear a beauty from the
eye

That looked on them-a fragrance from
the touch
Whose warmth

checked their life;

a light such

Of this unfathomable flood of hours, Sparkling beneath the heaven which As sleepers wear, lulled by the voice embowerswhich did reprove They were two cousins, almost like to The childish pity that she felt for them, twins, And a remorse that from their

they love,

Except that from the catalogue of sins Nature had rased 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

stem

She had divided such fair shapes
made

A feeling in the

which was a shade Of gentle beauty on the flowers: there lay All gems that make the earth's dark bosom gay.

Lull or awaken in their purple prime,
Which the same hand will gather-the| And that leaf tinted lightly which

same clime

assumes

Shake with decay. This fair day smiles The livery of unremembered snow-
Violets whose eyes have drunk—

to see
All those who love-and who e'er loved
like thee,

rods of myrtle-buds and lemonblooms,

Fiordispina and her nurse are now
Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo,
Upon the steps of the high portico;
Within whose bosom and whose brain Under the withered arm of Media
now glow
She flings her glowing arm

The ardours of a vision which obscure
The very idol of its portraiture.

He faints, dissolved into a sea of love;
But thou art as a planet sphered above;
But thou art Love itself-ruling the

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

Lie there; sleep awhile in your own
dew,
Ye faint-eyed children of the

Hours,

step by step and stair by stair, That withered woman, gray and white and brown

motion

Of his subjected spirit: such emotion
Must end in sin and sorrow, if sweet And ever as she goes the palsied woman
May

More like a trunk by lichens overgrown Than anything which once could have been human.

"How slow and painfully you seem to
walk,

Poor Media! you tire yourself with
talk.".
"And well it may,
Fiordispina, dearest-well-a-day!
You are hastening to a marriage-bed;