And sweet and subtle talk they evermore, The pupil and master shared; until,

blinds,

And in his olive bower at Enoe

Had sate from earliest youth. Like one who finds

A fertile island in the barren sea,
One mariner who has survived his mates
Many a drear month in a great ship-so he,
With soul-sustaining songs, and sweet debates
Of ancient lore, there fed his lonely being:-
"The mind becomes that which it contemplates,"

And thus Zonoras, by for ever seeing

Their bright creations, grew like wisest men;
And when he heard the crash of nations fleeing

A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins then,
O sacred Hellas! many weary years
He wander'd till the path of Laian's glen

Was grass-grown-and the unremember'd tears
Were dry in Laian for their honor'd chief,
Who fell in Byzant, pierced by Moslem spears :-

And as the lady look'd with faithful grief
From her high lattice o'er the rugged path,
Where she once saw that horseman toil, with brief
And blighting hope, who with the news of death
Struck body and soul as with a mortal blight,
She saw beneath the chestnuts, far beneath,

*The Author was pursuing a fuller development of the ideal character of Athanase, when it struck him that in an attempt at extreme refinement and analysis, his conceptions might be betrayed into the assuming a morbid character. The reader will judge whether he is a loser or gainer by this diffidence. Author's Note.

"And the far sighings of yon piny dale Made vocal by some wind, we feel not here,I bear alone what nothing may avail

To lighten-a strange load!"-No human ear Heard this lament; but o'er the visage wan Of Athanase, a ruffling atmosphere

Of dark emotion, a swift shadow ran,
Like wind upon some forest-bosom'd lake,
Glassy and dark.-And that divine old man

Beheld his mystic friend's whole being shake, Even where its inmost depths were gloomiestAnd with a calm and measured voice he spake,

And with a soft and equal pressure, prest
That cold lean hand :-" Dost thou remember yet
When the curved moon, then lingering in the west,

"Paused in yon waves her mighty horns to wet, How in those beams we walk'd, half resting on the sea ?

"Tis just one year-sure thou dost not forget

"Then Plato's words of light in thee and me Linger'd like moonlight in the moonless east, For we had just then read-thy memory

"Is faithful now-the story of the feast; And Agathon and Diotima seem'd From death and [ ] released.

FRAGMENT III.

"Twas at the season when the Earth upsprings From slumber, as a sphered angel's child, Shadowing its eyes with green and golden wings,

Stands up before its mother bright and mild,
Of whose soft voice the air expectant seems-
So stood before the sun, which shone and smiled

How many a spirit then puts on the pinions
Or fancy, and outstrips the lagging blast,
And his own steps-and over wide dominions

Sweeps in his dream-drawn chariot, far and fast,
More fleet than storms-the wide world shrinks below
When winter and despondency are past.

"Twas at this season that Prince Athanase
Past the white Alps-those eagle-baffling mountains
Slept in their shrouds of snow;-beside the ways
The waterfalls were voiceless-for their fountains
Were changed to mines of sunless crystal now,
Or by the curdling winds-like brazen wings
Which clang'd alone the mountain's marble brow,
Warp'd into adamantine fretwork, hung
And fill'd with frozen light the chasm below.

FRAGMENT IV.

Thou art the wine whose drunkenness is all
We can desire, O Love! and happy souls,
Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall,

Catch thee, and feed from their o'erflowing bowls
Thousands who thirst for thy ambrosial dew;-
Thou art the radiance which where ocean rolls

Invests it; and when heavens are blue
Thou fillest them; and when the earth is fair
The shadow of thy moving wings imbue

Its deserts and its mountains, till they wear
Beauty like some bright robe ;-thou ever sarest
Among the towers of men, and as soft air

In spring, which moves the unawaken'd forest,
Clothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak,
Thou floatest among men; and aye implorest

That which from thee they should implore:-the weak
Alone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts
The strong have broken-yet where shall any seek
A garment whom thou clothest not?
Marlow, 1817.

MAZENGHI.*

OH! foster-nurse of man's abandon'd glory,
Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendor,
Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story,
As ocean its wreck'd fanes, severe yet tender:
The light-invested angel Poesy

Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee.

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

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?

Yes; and on Pisa's marble walls the twine
Of direst weeds hangs garlanded-the snake
Inhabits its wreck'd palaces;-in thine
A beast of subtler yenom now doth make
Its lair, and sits amid their glories overthrown,
And thus thy victim's fate is as thine own.

*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. The opening stanzas are addressed to the conquering city.

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 pluck'd together;-
Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make
Thy heart rejoice for dead Mazenghi's sake.

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.

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.

Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast,
He hid himself, and hunger, cold, and toil,
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.

And in the roofless huts of vast morasses,
Deserted by the fever-stricken serf,

All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses,
And hillocks heap'd of moss-inwoven turf,
And where the huge and speckled aloe made
Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade,

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

Through muddy weeds, the shallow, sullen sea.
Naples, 1818.

THE WOODMAN AND THE NIGHTINGALE.

A WOODMAN whose rough heart was out of tune (I think such hearts yet never came to good) Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,

One nightingale in an interfluous wood
Satiate the hungry dark with melody;—
And as a vale is water'd by a flood,

Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness-as a tuberose
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie

Like clouds above the flower from which they rose,
The singing of that happy nightingale
In this sweet forest, from the golden close

Of evening, till the star of dawn may fall,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale

Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness

Of the circumfluous waters,-every sphere
And every flower and beam and cloud and wave
And every wind of the mute atmosphere,

And every beast stretch'd in its rugged cave, And every bird lull'd on its mossy bough, And every silver moth fresh from the grave,

Which is its cradle-ever from below Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far To be consumed within the purest glow

Of one serene and unapproached star, As if it were a lamp of earthly light, Unconscious, as some human lovers are,

Itself how low, how high beyond all height
The heaven where it would perish!--and every form
That worshipp'd in the temple of the night

Was awed into delight, and by the charm
Girt as with an interminable zone,

Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm

Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion
Out of their dreams; harmony became love
In every soul but one-

And so this man return'd with axe and saw At evening close from killing the tall treen, The soul of whom by nature's gentle law

Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green The pavement and the roof of the wild copse, Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene

With jagged leaves, and from the forest tops Singing the winds to sleep-or weeping oft Fast showers of aerial water-drops

Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft, Nature's pure tears which have no bitterness;Around the cradles of the birds aloft

They spread themselves into the loveliness
Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers
Hang like moist clouds :-or, where high branches
kiss,

Make a green space among the silent bowers,
Like a vast fane in a metropolis,
Surrounded by the columns and the towers

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

Odors 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 past
To such brief unison as on the brain
One tone, which never can recur, has cast,

One accent never to return again.