They found Ginevra dead: if it be death
To lie without motion or pulse or breath,

With waxen cheeks, and limbs cold, stiff, and white,
And open eyes whose fixed and glassy light
Mocked at the speculation they had owned;
If it be death when there is felt around
A smell of clay, a pale and icy glare,
And silence, and a sense that lifts the hair
From the scalp to the ankles, as it were
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
Than the unborn dream of our life, before

Their barks are wrecked on its inhospitable shore.

The marriage-feast and its solemnity

Nor they

Was turned to funeral-pomp. The company,
With heavy hearts and looks, broke up.
Who loved the dead went weeping on their way,
Alone; but sorrow mixed with sad surprise
Loosened the springs of pity in all eyes,

In which that form whose fate they weep in vain 1
Will never, thought they, kindle smiles again.
The lamps, which, half extinguished in their haste,
Gleamed few and faint o'er the abandoned feast,
Showed as it were within the vaulted room

A cloud of sorrow hanging, as if gloom
Had passed out of men's minds into the air.
Some few yet stood around Gherardi there,
Friends and relations of the dead ;--and he,
A loveless man, accepted torpidly

The consolation that he wanted not;

Awe in the place of grief within him wrought.
Their whispers made the solemn silence seem

More still. Some wept ;

Some melted into tears without a sob;

And some, with hearts that might be heard to throb,

Leant on the table, and at intervals

Shuddered to hear through the deserted halls

And corridors the thrilling shrieks which came
Upon the breeze of night, that shook the flame
Of every torch and taper as it swept

From out the chamber where the women kept.
Their tears fell on the dear companion cold
Of pleasures now departed. Then was knolled
The bell of death; and soon the priests arrived,-
And, finding Death their penitent had shrived,
Returned, like ravens from a corpse whereon
A vulture has just feasted to the bone.
And then the mourning-women came.

THE DIRGE.

OLD Winter was gone

In his weakness back to the mountains hoar;
And the Spring came down

From the planet that hovers upon the shore
Where the sea of sunlight encroaches
On the limits of wintry night.

If the land and the air and the sea
Rejoice not when Spring approaches,
We did not rejoice in thee,
Ginevra!

She is still, she is cold,

On the bridal-couch!

One step to the white death-bed,

And one to the bier,

And one to the charnel, and one-oh where?

The dark arrow fled

In the noon.

Ere the sun through heaven once more has rolled, The rats in her heart

Will have made their nest,

And the worms be alive in her golden hair.

While the Spirit that guides the sun
Sits throned in his flaming chair,

She shall sleep.

XIX.

EVENING.

PONTE AL MARE, PISA.

I.

THE sun is set; the swallows are asleep;
The bats are flitting fast in the grey air;
The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep;
And evening's breath, wandering here and there
Over the quivering surface of the stream,
Wakes not one ripple from its summer dream.

II.

There is no dew on the dry grass tonight,

Nor damp within the shadow of the trees; The wind is intermitting, dry, and light;

And in the inconstant motion of the breeze The dust and straws are driven up and down, And whirled about the pavement of the town.

III.

Within the surface of the fleeting river

The wrinkled image of the city lay, Immoveably unquiet, and for ever

It trembles, but it never fades away.

Go to the

You, being changed, will find it then as now.

IV.

The chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut
By darkest barriers of cinereous cloud,
Like mountain over mountain huddled, but
Growing and moving upwards in a crowd;
And over it a space of watery blue,

Which the keen evening star is shining through.

XX.

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 summer snow,
And clothed with light of aery 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.
Fireflies 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.
Like a flock of rooks at a farmer's gun,
Night's dreams and terrors, every one,
Fled from the brains which are their prey
From the lamp's death to the morning ray.

All rose to do the task He set to each

Who shaped us to his ends and not our own. The million rose to learn, and one to teach

What none yet ever knew, nor can be known; 1 .. and many rose

Whose woe was such that fear became desire. Melchior and Lionel were not among those;

They from the throng of men had stepped aside, And made their home under the green hill-side. It was that hill whose intervening brow

Screens Lucca from the Pisan's envious eye; Which the circumfluous plain waving below, Like a wide lake of green fertility,

With streams and fields and marshes bare, Divides from the far Apennines, which lie Islanded in the immeasurable air.

"What think you, as she lies in her green cove, Our little sleeping boat is dreaming of?"

If morning dreams are true, why I should guess1 That she was dreaming of our idleness,

And of the miles of watery way

We should have led her by this time of day.

["Of us and of our lazy motions,”2
Impatiently said Melchior,
"If I can guess a boat's emotions;

And how we ought, two hours before,
To have been the devil knows where."]
And then, in such transalpine Tuscan
As would have killed a Della-Cruscan,

"Never mind!" said Lionel.

"Give care to the winds; they can bear it well About yon poplar-tops. And see!

The white clouds are driving merrily,

And the stars we miss this morn will light

More willingly our return tonight.

How it whistles, Dominic's long black hair!
List, my dear fellow; the breeze blows fair:
Hear how it sings into the air."

So, Lionel according to his art

Weaving his idle words, Melchior said:
"She dreams that we are not yet out of bed;

We'll put a soul into her, and a heart

Which like a dove chased by a dove shall beat