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Which led from the cathedral to the
street;

And ever as she went her light fair feet
Erased these images.

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Ginevra saw her lover, and forbore
To shriek or faint, and checked the
stifling blood

Rushing upon her heart, and unsubdued The bride- maidens who round her Said-"Friend, if earthly violence or

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Suspicion, doubt, or the tyrannic will Of parents, chance, or custom, time or change,

Or circumstance, or terror, or revenge, Or wildered looks, or words, or evil speech,

With all their stings and venom can impeach

Making her but an image of the thought,
Which, like a prophet or a shadow,
brought

News of the terrors of the coming time.
Like an accuser branded with the crime
He would have cast on a beloved friend,
Whose dying eyes reproach not to the

end

Our love, we love not:-if the grave The pale betrayer-he then with vain

which hides

The victim from the tyrant, and divides
The cheek that whitens from the eyes
that dart

Imperious inquisition to the heart
That is another's, could dissever ours,
We love not."--" What! do not the
silent hours

Beckon thee to Gherardi's bridal bed?
Is not that ring "—a pledge, he would
have said,

Of broken vows, but she with patient look

The golden circle from her finger took, And said " Accept this token of my faith,

The pledge of vows to be absolved by death;

repentance

Would share, he cannot now avert, the

sentence

Antonio stood and would have spoken, when

The compound voice of women and of

men

Was heard approaching; he retired,
while she

Was led amid the admiring company
Back to the palace, and her maidens

soon

Changed her attire for the afternoon, And left her at her own request to keep

An hour of quiet and rest :-like one asleep

With open eyes and folded hands she lay, And I am dead or shall be soon-my Pale in the light of the declining day.

knell

Will mix its music with that merry

bell,

Meanwhile the day sinks fast, the sun is set,

Does it not sound as if they sweetly And in the lighted hall the guests are

met;

said 'We toll a corpse out of the marriage The beautiful looked lovelier in the light bed?' Of love, and admiration, and delight The flowers upon my bridal chamber Reflected from a thousand hearts and eyes

strewn

Will serve unfaded for my bier-so Kindling a momentary Paradise.

soon

That even the dying violet will not die
Before Ginevra." The strong fantasy
Had made her accents weaker and more
weak,

This crowd is safer than the silent wood,
Where love's own doubts disturb the

solitude;

On frozen hearts the fiery rain of wine Falls, and the dew of music more divine And quenched the crimson life upon her Tempers the deep emotions of the time

cheek,

And glazed her eyes, and spread an atmosphere

Round her, which chilled the burning noon with fear,

To spirits cradled in a sunny clime:—
How many meet, who never yet have

met,

To part too soon, but never to forget.
How many saw the beauty, power and wit

Of looks and words which ne'er enchanted yet;

If it be death, when there is felt around A smell of clay, a pale and icy glare,

But life's familiar veil was now with- And silence, and a sense that lifts the drawn,

hair

As the world leaps before an earthquake's From the scalp to the ankles, as it were

dawn,

And unprophetic of the coming hours, The matin winds from the expanded flowers,

Scatter their hoarded incense, and awaken

Corruption from the spirit passing forth, And giving all it shrouded to the earth, And leaving as swift lightning in its flight Ashes, and smoke, and darkness: in our night

Of thought we know thus much of death,

no more

The earth, until the dewy sleep is shaken
From every living heart which it Than the unborn dream of our life

before

possesses, Through seas and winds, cities and Their barks are wrecked on its inhospit

wildernesses,

As if the future and the past were all Treasured i' the instant;-so Gherardi's hall

Laughed in the mirth of its lord's festival, Till some one asked-"Where is the Bride?" And then

A bride's-maid went,-and ere she came again

A silence fell upon the guests—a pause Of expectation, as when beauty awes All hearts with its approach, though unbeheld;

able shore.

The marriage feast and its solemnity Was turned to funeral pomp-the company

With heavy hearts and looks, broke up; nor they

Who loved the dead went weeping on their way

Alone, but sorrow mixed with sad surprise

Loosened the springs of pity in all eyes, On which that form, whose fate they weep in vain,

Then wonder, and then fear that wonder Will never, thought they, kindle smiles

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For whispers past from mouth to ear The lamps which half extinguished in which drew

their haste

The colour from the hearer's cheeks, Gleamed few and faint o'er the aban

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Of pleasures now departed; then was THE sun is set; the swallows are asleep;
knolled
The bats are flitting fast in the gray air;
The bell of death, and soon the priests The slow soft toads out of damp corners

arrived,

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And one to the charnel-and one, oh The chasm in which the sun has sunk

where?

is shut

By darkest barriers of cinereous cloud, Like mountain over mountain huddledbut

Growing and moving upwards in a crowd,

And over it a space of watery blue, Which the keen evening star is shining through.

THE BOAT ON THE SERCHIO

OUR boat is asleep on Serchio's stream, Its sails are folded like thoughts in a dream,

The helm sways idly, hither and thither; Dominic, the boatman, has brought the mast,

And the oars and the sails; but 'tis sleeping fast,

Like a beast, unconscious of its tether.
The stars burnt out in the pale blue air,
And the thin white moon lay withering
there,

To tower, and cavern, and rift and tree,
The owl and the bat fled drowsily.
Day had kindled the dewy woods,

And the rocks above and the stream
below,

And the vapours in their multitudes, And the Apennine's shroud of sum

mer snow,

And clothed with light of aëry gold
The mists in their eastern caves uprolled.

Day had awakened all things that be, The lark and the thrush and the swallow free,

And the milkmaid's song and the mower's scythe,

And the matin-bell and the mountain bee: Fire-flies were quenched on the dewy

corn,

Glow-worms went out on the river's brim,

Like lamps which a student forgets to trim:

The beetle forgot to wind his horn, The crickets were still in the meadow and hill:

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