III.

Another scene ere wise Etruria knew

Its second ruin through internal strife,

And tyrants through the breach of discord threw
The chain which binds and kills.

As death to life,

As winter to fair flowers (though some be poison)
So Monarchy succeeds to Freedom's foison.

IV.

In Pisa's church a cup of sculptured gold

Was brimming with the blood of feuds forsworn

At sacrament: more holy ne'er of old

Etrurians mingled with the shades forlorn Of moon-illumined forests.

V.

And reconciling factions wet their lips

With that dread wine, and swear to keep each spirit Undarkened by their country's last eclipse.

VI.

Was Florence the liberticide? that band

Of free and glorious brothers who had planted,
Like a green isle 'mid Ethiopian sand,

A nation amid slaveries, disenchanted
Of many impious faiths-wise, just—do they,
Does Florence, gorge the sated tyrants' prey?

VII.

O foster-nurse of man's abandoned glory

Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendour, Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story, As ocean its wrecked fanes, severe yet tender. The light-invested angel Poesy

Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee.

VIII.

And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught
By loftiest meditations; marble knew

The sculptor's fearless soul, and, as he wrought,

The grace of his own power and freedom grew.
And-more than all-heroic, just, sublime,
Thou wert among the false.-Was this thy crime?

IX.

Yes; and on Pisa's marble walls the twine
Of direst weeds hangs garlanded-the snake
Inhabits its wrecked palaces: in thine

A beast of subtler venom now doth make
Its lair, and sits amid their glories overthrown,
And thus thy victim's fate is as thine own.

X.

The sweetest flowers are ever frail and rare,
And love and freedom blossom but to wither;
And good and ill like vines entangled are,

So that their grapes may oft be plucked together;
Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make
Thy heart rejoice for dead Marenghi's sake.

XI.

No record of his crime remains in story;
But, if the morning bright as evening shone,
It was some high and holy deed, by glory
Pursued into forgetfulness, which won

From the blind crowd he made secure and free
The patriot's meed, toil, death, and infamy.

XII.

For, when by sound of trumpet was declared
A price upon his life, and there was set
A penalty of blood on all who shared

So much of water with him as might wet
His lips, which speech divided not-he went
Alone, as you may guess, to banishment.

XIII.

Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast,
He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and cold,
Month after month endured; it was a feast
Whene'er he found those globes of deep-red gold
Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,
Suspended in their emerald atmosphere.

XIV.

And in the roofless huts of vast morasses,

Deserted by the fever-stricken serf,

All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses, And hillocks heaped of moss-inwoven turf,

And where the huge and speckled aloe made,
Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade,

XV.

He housed himself.-There is a point of strand
Near Vado's tower and town; and on one side
The treacherous marsh divides it from the land,
Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide;
And on the other creeps eternally

Through muddy weeds the shallow sullen sea.

XVI.

Here the earth's breath is pestilence, and few
But things whose nature is at war with life-
Snakes and ill worms-endure its mortal dew.

The trophies of the clime's victorious strife-
White bones, and locks of dun and yellow hair,
And ringed horns which buffaloes did wear-

XVII.

And at the utmost point. . stood there

The relics of a weed-inwoven cot,

Thatched with broad flags. An outlawed murderer

Had lived seven days there: the pursuit was hot When he was cold. The birds that were his grave Fell dead upon their feast in Vado's wave.

XVIII.

There must have lived within Marenghi's heart
That fire, more warm and bright than life or hope,

(Which to the martyr makes his dungeon . .

More joyous than the heaven's majestic cope

To his oppressor), warring with decay,—
Or he could ne'er have lived years, day by day.

XIX.

Nor was his state so lone as you might think.

He had tamed every newt and snake and toad, And every seagull which sailed down to drink

Those. . ere the death-mist went abroad. And each one, with peculiar talk and play, Wiled, not untaught, his silent time away.

XX.

And the marsh-meteors, like tame beasts, at night
Came licking with blue tongues his veinèd feet;
And he would watch them, as, like spirits bright,

In many entangled figures quaint and sweet
To some enchanted music they would dance-
Until they vanished at the first moon-glance.

XXI.

He mocked the stars by grouping on each weed
The summer dewdrops in the golden dawn;
And, ere the hoar-frost vanished, he could read
Its pictured footprints, as on spots of lawn
Its delicate brief touch in silence weaves
The likeness of the wood's remembered leaves.

XXII.

And many a fresh Spring-morn would he awakenWhile yet the unrisen sun made glow, like iron Quivering in crimson fire, the peaks unshaken

Of mountains and blue isles which did environ With air-clad crags that plain of land and sea,— And feel liberty.

XXIII.

And in the moonless nights, when the dim ocean
Heaved underneath the heaven,

Starting from dreams

Communed with the immeasurable world; And felt his life beyond his limbs dilated, Till his mind grew like that it contemplated.

XXIV.

His food was the wild fig and strawberry;

The milky pine-nuts which the autumnal blast Shakes into the tall grass; and such small fry

As from the sea by winter-storms are cast; And the coarse bulbs of iris-flowers he found Knotted in clumps under the spongy ground.

XXV.

And so were kindled powers and thoughts which made His solitude less dark. When memory came

(For years gone by leave each a deepening shade), His spirit basked in its internal flame,

As, when the black storm hurries round at night,
The fisher basks beside his red firelight.

XXVI.

Yet human hopes and cares and faiths and errors,
Like billows unawakened by the wind,

Slept in Marenghi still; but that all terrors,

Weakness, and doubt, had withered in his mind. His couch

XXVII.

And, when he saw beneath the sunset's planet
A black ship walk over the crimson ocean,-
Its pennons streaming on the blasts that fan it,

Its sails and ropes all tense and without motion,
Like the dark ghost of the unburied even
Striding across the orange-coloured heaven,—

XXVIII.

The thought of his own kind who made the soul

Which sped that wingèd shape through night and day,— The thought of his own country