Too long her armèd wrath hath kept aloof
The breast which would have bled for her,
the heart

That beat, the mind that was temptation proof,
The man who fought, toil'd, travell'd, and each
Of a true citizen fulfill'd, and saw [part
For his reward, the Guelf's ascendant art
Pass his destruction even into a law.

These things are not made for forgetfulness,
Florence shall be forgotten first; too raw
The wound, too deep the wrong, and the dis-
tress

Of such endurance too prolong'd to make
My pardon greater, her injustice less,
Though late repented; yet yet for her sake
I feel some fonder yearnings, and for thine,
My own Beatrice, I would hardly take
Vengeance upon the land which once was mine,
And still is hallow'd by thy dust's return,
Which would protect the murderess like a
shrine,

And save ten thousand foes by thy sole urn.
Though, like old Marius from Minturnæ's
marsh

The sense of earth and earthly things come
back,

Corrosive passions, feelings dull and low,
The heart's quick throb upon the mental rack,
Long day, and dreary night; the retrospect
Of half a century bloody and black,
And the frail few years I may yet expect

Hoary and hopeless, but less hard to bear,
For I have been too long and deeply wreck'd
On the lone rock of desolate Despair,

To lift my eyes more to the passing sail
Which shuns that reef so horrible and bare;
Nor raise my voice-for who would heed my
I am not of this people, nor this age, [wail?
And yet my harpings will unfold a tale
Which shall preserve these times when not a

page

Of their perturbed annals could attract
An eye to gaze upon their civil rage,
Did not my verse embalm full many an act
Worthless as they who wrought it: 'tis the
Of spirits of my order to be rack'd [doom
In life, to wear their hearts out, and consume
Their days in endless strife, and die alone;
Then future thousands crowd around their
tomb,
[known
And pilgrims come from climes where they have
The name of him-who now is but a name.
And wasting homage o'er the sullen stone,
Spread his-by him unheard, unheeded-fame;
And mine at least hath cost me dear; to die
Is nothing; but to wither thus--to tame
My mind down from its own infinity--
To live in narrow ways with little men,
A common sight to every common eye,

And Carthage ruins, my lone breast may burn | A wanderer, while even wolves can find a den,

At times with evil feelings hot and harsh,
And sometimes the last pangs of a vile foe
Writhe in a dream before me, and o'erarch
My brow with hopes of triumph,-let them go!
Such are the last infirmities of those
Who long have suffer'd more than mortal woe,
And yet being mortal still have no repose
But on the pillow of Revenge-Revenge,
Who sleeps to dream of blood, and waking
glows

With the oft-baffled slakeless thirst of change,
When we shall mount again, and they that
trod

Be trampled on, while Death and Até range
O'er humbled heads and sever'd necks
Great God!

[I yield
Take these thoughts from me-to thy hands
My many wrongs, and thine almighty rod
Will fall on those who smote me,-be my shield
As thou hast been in peril, and in pain,
In turbulent cities, and the tented field-
In toil, and many troubles borne in vain

For Florence.-I appeal from her to Thee!
Thee whom I late saw in thy loftiest reign,
Even in that glorious vision, which to see
And live was never granted until now,
And yet thou hast permitted this to me.
Alas! with what a weight upon my brow

Ripp'd from all kindred, from all home, all
things
[pain-
That make communion sweet, and soften
To feel me in the solitude of kings [crown-
Without the power that makes them bear a
To envy every dove his nest and wings
Which waft him where the Apennine looks down
On Arno, till he perches, it may be,
Within my all inexorable town,
Where yet my boys are, and that fatal she,"

the most powerful Guelph families named Donati. Corso
This lady, whose name was Gemma, sprung from one of

Donati was the principal adversary of the Ghibellines. She is described as being 'Admodum morosa, ut de Xantippe Socratis philosophi conjuge scriptum esse legimus, according to Giannozzo Manetti. But Lionardo Aretino is scandalized with Boccace, in his Life of Dante, for saying that literary men should not marry. Qui il Boccaccio non ha pazienza, e dice, le mogli esser contrarie agli studj; e non si ricorda che Socrate il più nobile filosofo che mai fosse, ebbe moglie e figliuoli e uffici della Repubblica nella sua Città; e Aristotele che, &c. &c., ebbe due mogli in varj tempi, ed ebbe figliuoli,

e ricchezze assai.-E Marco Tullio-e Catone-e Varrone-e Seneca-ebbero moglie,' &c. &c. It is odd that honest Lionardo's examples, with the exception of Seneca, and, for any. thing I know, of Aristotle, are not the most felicitous. Tully's Terentia, and Socrates' Xantippe, by no means contributed to their husbands' happiness, whatever they might do to their philosophy-Cato gave away his wife-of Varro's we know no thing-and of Seneca's, only that she was disposed to die with him, but recovered and lived several years afterwards. But says Lionardo, L'uomo è animale civile, secondo piace a tutti i filosofi.' And thence concludes that the greatest proot of the animal's civism is 'la prima congiunzione, dalla quale multiplicata nasce la Città,'

Their mother, the cold partner who hath
brought

Destruction for a dowry-this to see
And feel, and know without repair, hath taught|

A bitter lesson; but it leaves me free:
I have not vilely found, nor basely sought,
They made an Exile-not a slave of me.

CANTO THE SECOND.

THE Spirit of the fervent days of Old,
When words were things that came to pass,
and thought

Flash'd o'er the future, bidding men behold
Their children's children's doom already brought
Forth from the abyss of time which is to be,
The chaos of events, where lie half-wrought
Shapes that must undergo mortality;

What the great Seers of Israel wore within, That spirit was on them, and is on me, And if, Cassandra-like, amidst the din

Of conflict none will hear, or hearing heed This voice from out the Wilderness, the sin Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed, The only guerdon I have ever known.

Ah! must the sons of Adam lose it twice?
Thou, Italy! whose ever golden fields,
Plough'd by the sunbeams solely, would suffice
For the world's granary; thou, whose sky heaven
gilds
[blue;

With brighter stars, and robes with deeper
Thou, in whose pleasant places Summer builds
Her palace, in whose cradle Empire grew,
And form'd the Eternal City's ornaments
From spoils of kings whom freemen over-
threw ;

Birthplace of heroes, sanctuary of saints,

Where earthly first, then heavenly glory made Her home; thou, all which fondest fancy paints,

Hast thou not bled? and hast thou still to And finds her prior vision but portray'd bleed,

Italia? Ah! to me such things, foreshown

With dim sepulchral light, bid me forget
In thine irreparable wrongs my own;
We can have but one country, and even yet
Thou'rt mine—my bones shall be within thy
breast,

My soul within thy language, which once set
With our old Roman sway in the wide West;
But I will make another tongue arise
As lofty and more sweet, in which express'd
The hero's ardour, or the lover's sighs,

Shall find alike such sounds for every theme
That every word, as brilliant as thy skies,
Shall realize a poet's proudest dream,

And make thee Europe's nightingale of song;
So that all present speech to thine shall seem
The note of meaner birds, and every tongue
Confess its barbarism when compared with
thine.
[wrong,
This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so
Thy Tuscan bard, the banish'd Ghibelline.
Woe! woe! the veil of coming centuries
Is rent, a thousand years which yet supine
Lie like the ocean waves ere winds arise,
Heaving in dark and sullen undulation,
Float from eternity into these eyes;
The storms yet sleep, the clouds still keep their
station,

The unborn earthquake yet is in the womb,
The bloody chaos yet expects creation,
But all things are disposing for thy doom;
The elements await but for the word,

Let there be darkness!' and thou grow'st a
tomb!

Yes! thou, so beautiful, shalt feel the sword,
Thou, Italy! so fair that Paradise,

In feeble colours, when the eye-from the Alp
Of horrid snow, and rock, and shaggy shade
Of desert-loving pine, whose emerald scalp
Nods to the storm-dilates and dotes o'er thee,
And wistfully implores, as 'twere for help
To see thy sunny fields, my Italy,

Nearer and nearer yet, and dearer still
The more approach'd, and dearest were they
free.

Thou-thou must wither to each tyrant's will:
The Goth hath been,-the German, Frank,
and Hun

Are yet to come,-and on the imperial hill
Ruin, already proud of the deeds done

By the old barbarians, there awaits the new,
Throned on the Palatine, while lost and won
Rome at her feet lies bleeding; and the hue
Of human sacrifice and Roman slaughter
Troubles the clotted air, of late so blue,
And deepens into red the saffron water

Of Tiber, thick with dead; the helpless priest,
And still more helpless nor less holy daughter,
Vow'd to their God, have shrieking fled, and
ceased

Their ministry: the nations take their prey. Iberian, Almain, Lombard, and the beast And bird, wolf, vulture, more humane than they Are; these but gorge the flesh and lap the gore

Of the departed, and then go their way;
But those, the human savages, explore

All paths of torture, and insatiate yet,
With Ugolino hunger prowl for more.
Nine moons shall rise o'er scenes like this and
set; *

See 'Sacco di Roma,' generally attributed to Guicciardini. Revived in thee, blooms forth to man restored: There is another written by a Jacopo Buenaparte.

CANTO THE THIRD.

FROM out the mass of never-dying ill, [Sword, [To
The Plague, the Prince, the Stranger, and the
Vials of wrath but emptied to refill
And flow again, I cannot all record

That crowds on my prophetic eye: the earth
And ocean written o'er would not afford
Space for the annal, yet it shall go forth;

Yes, all, though not by human pen, is graven, There where the farthest suns and stars have birth,

Spread like a banner at the gate of heaven,

The bloody scroll of our millennial wrongs Waves, and the echo of our groans is driven Athwart the sound of archangelic songs,

And Italy, the martyr'd nation's gore, Will not in vain arise to where belongs Omnipotence and mercy evermore :

Must all the finer thoughts, the thrilling sense, The electric blood with which their arteries run, Their body's self turn'd soul with the intense

Feeling of that which is, and fancy of

That which should be, to such a recompense Conduct? shall their bright plumage on the rough

Storm be still scatter'd? Yes, and it must be,
For, form'd of far too penetrable stuff,
These birds of Paradise but long to flee

Back to their native mansion, soon they find
Earth's mist with their pure pinions not agree,
And die or are degraded; for the mind

Succumbs to long infection, and despair,
And vulture passions flying close behind,
Await the moment to assail and tear; [stoop,
And when at length the winged wanderers
Then is the prey-bird's triumph, then they
share

[swoop.

Yet some have been untouch'd who learn'd to bear,

Some whom no power could ever force to droop,

Who could resist themselves even, hardest care! And task most hopeless; but some such have been,

And if my name amongst the number were, That destiny austere, and yet serene,

Were prouder than more dazzling fame unbless'd

The Alp's snow summit nearer heaven is seen Than the volcano's fierce eruptive crest,

Whose splendour from the black abyss is flung,
While the scorch'd mountain, from whose
burning breast

A temporary torturing flame is wrung,
Shines for a night of terror, then repels
Its fire back to the hell from whence it sprung,

The spoil, o'erpower'd at length by one fell! The hell which in its entrails ever dwells.

CANTO THE FOURTH.

MANY are poets who have never penn'd
Their inspiration, and perchance the best :
They felt, and loved, and died, but would not
lend
[press'd
Their thoughts to meaner beings; they com-
The god within them, and rejoin'd the stars
Unlaurell'd upon earth, but far more bless'd
Than those who are degraded by the jars

Of passion, and their frailties link'd to fame,
Conquerors of high renown, but full of scars.
Many are poets but without the name,

For what is poesy but to create
From overfeeling good or ill; and aim
At an external life beyond our fate,

And be the new Prometheus of new men,
Bestowing fire from heaven, and then, too late,
Finding the pleasure given repaid with pain,

And vultures to the heart of the bestower, Who, having lavish'd his high gift in vain, Lies chain'd to his lone rock by the sea-shore? So be it: we can bear.-But thus all they Whose intellect is au o'ermastering power Which still recoils from its encumbering clay Or lightens it to spirit, whatsoe'er

The form which their creations may essay,
Are bards; the kindled marble's bust may wear
More poesy upon its speaking brow [bear;
Than aught less than the Homeric page may
One noble stroke with a whole life may glow,
Or deify the canvas till it shine

With beauty so surpassing all below,
That they who kneel to idols so divine [there
Break no commandment, for high heaven is
Transfused, transfigurated: and the line

Of poesy, which peoples but the air

[flected,

With thought and beings of our thought re-
Can do no more: then let the artist share

The palm, he shares the peril, and dejected
Faints o'er the labour unapproved-Alas!
Despair and Genius are too oft connected.
Within the ages which before me pass

Art shall resume and equal even the sway
Which with Apelles and old Phidias
She held in Hellas' unforgotten day.

Ye shall be taught by Ruin to revive
The Grecian forms at least from their decay,
And Roman souls at last again shall live

In Roman works wrought by Italian hands,
And temples, loftier than the old temples, give
New wonders to the world; and while still stands
The austere Pantheon, into heaven shall soar
A dome, its image, while the base expands
Into a fane surpassing all before,

Such as all flesh shall flock to kneel in: ne'er
Such sight hath been unfolded by a door
As this, to which all nations shall repair
And lay their sins at this huge gate of heaven.
And the bold Architect unto whose care
The daring charge to raise it shall be given,
Whom all hearts shall acknowledge as their
Whether into the marble chaos driven [lord,
His chisel bid the Hebrew, at whose word t

The Cupola of St Peter's.

†The statue of Moses on the monument of Julius II.
SONETTO

Di Giovanni Battista Zappi.

Chi è costui, che in dura pietra scolto,
Siede gigante; e le più illustre, e conte
Opre dell' arte avvanza, e ha vive, e pronte
Le labbia si, che le parole ascolto?
Quest' è Mosé; ben me I diceva il folto
Onor del mento, e 'l doppio raggio in fronte,
Quest' è Mosè, quando scendea del monte,
E gran parte del Nume avea nel volto.
Tal era allor, che le sonanti, e vaste
Acque ei sospese a se d' intorno, e tale
Quando il mar chiuse, e ne fè tomba altrui.