As winter to fair flowers (though some be poison) 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, 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 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, 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, Pursued into forgetfulness, which won From the blind crowd he made secure and free XII. For when by sound of trumpet was declared So much of water with him as might wet 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, All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses, XV. He housed himself. There is a point of strand The treacherous marsh divides it from the land, XVI. Here the earth's breath is pestilence, and few And at the utmost point [of land?] stood there 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 More joyous than the heaven's majestic cope XIX. Nor was his state so lone as you might think. XX. And the marsh-meteors, like tame beasts, at night XXI. He mocked the stars by grouping on each weed Its pictured footprints, as on spots of lawn XXIL 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 XXIII. liberty. And in the moonless nights, when the dim ocean 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 As, when the black storm hurries round at night, XXVI. Yet human hopes and cares and faiths and errors, 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 Its sails and ropes all tense and without motion, 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. . . * POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819. LINES WRITTEN DURING THE CASTLEREAGH ADMINISTRATION. I. • CORPSES are cold in the tomb; Stones on the pavement are dumb; Abortions are dead in the womb, And their mothers look pale-like the white shore II. Her sons are as stones in the way They are masses of senseless clay- III. Then trample and dance, thou Oppressor! Thou art sole lord and possessor |