All overwrought with branch-like traceries
In which there is religion-and the mute
Persuasion of unkindled melodies,

60

Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute

Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast

Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,

Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed

To such brief unison as on the brain
One tone, which never can recur,

One accent never to return again.

has cast,

The world is full of Woodmen who expel Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life, And vex the nightingales in every dell.

70

FRAGMENT OF AN ADDRESS TO
BYRON.

O MIGHTY mind, in whose deep stream this age Shakes like a reed in the unheeding storm, Why dost thou curb not thine own sacred rage?

FRAGMENT TO SILENCE.

SILENCE! O well are Death and Sleep and Thou

Three brethren named, the guardians gloomy

Of one abyss, where life, and truth, and joy Are swallowed up-yet spare me, Spirit, pity

me,

Until the sounds I hear become my soul,
And it has left these faint and weary limbs,
To track along the lapses of the air
This wandering melody until it rests
Among long mountains in some

FRAGMENT.

THE fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses Track not the steps of him who drinks of it; For the light breezes, which for ever fleet Around its margin, heap the sand thereon.

FRAGMENT.

My head is wild with weeping for a grief
Which is the shadow of a gentle mind.
I walk into the air, (but no relief

To seek,-or haply, if I sought, to find;
It came unsought;-) to wonder that a chief
Among men's spirits should be cold and
blind.

FRAGMENT.

FLOURISHING vine, whose kindling clusters glow

Beneath the autumnal sun, none taste of

thee;

For thou dost shroud a ruin, and below

The rotting bones of dead antiquity.

No access to the Duke! You have not said That the Count Maddalo would speak with

him?

PIGNA.

Did you inform his Grace that Signor Pigna Waits with state papers for his signature?

MALPIGLIO.

The Lady Leonora cannot know

That I have written a sonnet to her fame,

In which I

Venus and Adonis.

You should not take my gold and serve me

not.

ALBANO.

In truth I told her, and she smiled and said, "If I am Venus, thou, coy Poesy

Art the Adonis whom I love, and he

The Erymanthian boar that wounded him."
O trust to me, Signor Malpiglio,

ΙΟ

Those nods and smiles were favours worth the

zechin.

MALPIGLIO.

The words are twisted in some double sense
That I reach not: the smiles fell not on me.

PIGNA.

How are the Duke and Duchess occupied?

ALBANO.

Buried in some strange talk. leaning,

The Duke was

20

His finger on his brow, his lips unclosed.
The Princess sate within the window-seat,
And so her face was hid; but on her knee
Her hands were clasped, veinèd, 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.

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,
O Leonora, and I sit

Still watching it,

Till by the grated casement's ledge
It fades, with such a sigh, as sedge
Breathes o'er the breezy streamlet's edge.

MARENGHI.1

I.

LET those who pine in pride or in revenge,
Or think that ill for ill should be repaid,
Or barter wrong for wrong, until the exchange
Ruins the merchants of such thriftless

trade,

Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearn
Such bitter faith beside Marenghi's urn.

1 Mrs. Shelley says-"This fragment refers to an event, told in Sismondi's Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, which occurred during the war when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a province." Pietro Marenghi is said to have been a Florentine exile, who, while Florence was trying to reduce Pisa by famine, swam to a galley that was bringing provision for Pisa and fired it in circumstances of considerable heroism. The galley was taking refuge from the enemy under the tower of Vado at the time.-ED.