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He, too, who yet had held untired
A spirit natural or inspired-

He, too, was struck, and day by day
Was wither'd on the stalk away.
Oh, God! it is a fearful thing
To see the human soul take wing
In any shape, in any mood:

I've seen it rushing forth in blood,
I've seen it on the breaking ocean
Strive with a swoln convulsive motion,
I've seen the sick and ghastly bed
Of Sin delirious with its dread:

But these were horrors-this was woe
Unmix'd with such - but sure and slow:
He faded, and so calm and meek,
So softly worn, so sweetly weak,
So tearless, yet so tender-kind,
And grieved for those he left behind;
With all the while a cheek whose bloom
Was as a mockery of the tomb,
Whose tints as gently sunk away
As a departing rainbow's ray-
An eye of most transparent light,
That almost made the dungeon bright,
And not a word of murmur-not
A groan o'er his untimely lot,-
A little talk of better days,
A little hope my own to raise,
For I was sunk in silence-lost
In this last loss, of all the most;
And then the sighs he would suppress
Of fainting nature's feebleness,

More slowly drawn, grew less and less:
I listen'd, but I could not hear;
I call'd, for I was wild with fear;
I knew 't was hopeless, but my dread
Would not be thus admonished;

I call'd, and thought I heard a sound-
I burst my chain with one strong bound,
And rush'd to him:-I found him not,
I only stirr'd in this black spot,
I only lived-I only drew

The accursed breath of dungeon dew;
The last-the sole-the dearest link
Between me and the eternal brink,
Which bound me to my failing race,
Was broken in this fatal place.
One on the earth, and one beneath-
My brothers-both had ceased to breathe :
I took that hand which lay so still,
Alas! my own was full as chill;

I had not strength to stir, or strive,
But felt that I was still alive-
A frantic feeling, when we know
That what we love shall ne'er be so.

I know not why

I could not die,

I had no earthly hope but faith, And that forbade a selfish death.

IX.

What next befell me then and there
I know not well-I never knew-
First came the loss of light, and air,
And then of darkness too:

I had no thought, no feeling-none-
Among the stones I stood a stone,
And was, scarce conscious what I wist,
As shrubless crags within the mist;
For all was blank, and bleak, and gray;
It was not night-it was not day;
It was not even the dungeon-light,
So hateful to my heavy sight,

But vacancy absorbing space,
And fixedness-without a place;

There were no stars-no earth-no time

No check-no change-no good-no crime

But silence, and a stirless breath Which neither was of life nor death; A sea of stagnant idleness,

Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless!

X.

A light broke in upon my brain,—
It was the carol of a bird;
It ceased, and then it came again,
The sweetest song ear ever heard,
And mine was thankful till my eyes
Ran over with the glad surprise,
And they that moment could not see
I was the mate of misery;

But then by dull degrees came back
My senses to their wonted track;
I saw the dungeon walls and floor
Close slowly round me as before,
I saw the glimmer of the sun
Creeping as it before had done,

But through the crevice where it came
That bird was perch'd, as fond and tame,
And tamer than upon the tree;

A lovely bird, with azure wings,
And song that said a thousand things,
And seem'd to say them all for me!
I never saw its like before,

I ne'er shall see its likeness more :
It seem'd like me to want a mate,
But was not half so desolate,
And it was come to love me when
None lived to love me so again,
And cheering from my dungeon's brink,
Had brought me back to feel and think.

I know not if it late were free,

Or broke its cage to perch on mine, But knowing well captivity,

Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine! Or if it were, in winged guise,

A visitant from paradise

For-Heaven forgive that thought! the while

Which made me both to weep and smile;

I sometimes deem'd that it might be
My brother's soul come down to me;
But then at last away it flew,
And then 't was mortal well I knew,
For he would never thus have flown,
And left me twice so doubly lone,-
Lone-as the corse within its shroud,
Lone-as a solitary cloud,

A single cloud on a sunny day,
While all the rest of heaven is clear,
A frown upon the atmosphere
That hath no business to appear

When skies are blue, and earth is gay,

XI.

A kind of change came in my fate,
My keepers grew compassionate;

I know not what had made them so,
They were inured to sights of woe,
But so it was:-my broken chain
With links unfastened did remain,
And it was liberty to stride
Along my cell from side to side,
And up and down, and then athwart,
And tread it over every part;
And round the pillars one by one,
Returning where my walk begun,
Avoiding only, as I trod,

My brothers' graves without a sod;
For if I thought with Leedless tread
My step profaned their lowly bed,
My breath came gaspingly and thick,
And my crush'd heart ell blind and sick.

XII.

I made a footing in the wall,

It was not therefrom to escape,

For I had buried one and all

Who loved me in a human shape;

And the whole earth would henceforth be A wider prison unto me:

No child-no sire-no kin had I,

No partner in my misery;

I thought of this, and I was glad,

For thought of them had made me mad;
But I was curious to ascend

To my barr'd windows, and to bend
Once more, upon the mountains high,
The quiet of a loving eye.

XIII.

I saw them-and they were the same,
They were not changed like me in frame;
I saw their thousand years of snow
On high-their wide long lake below,
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow;
I heard the torrents leap and gush
O'er channell'd rock and broken bush;
I saw the white-wall'd distant town,
And whiter sails go skimming down;
And then there was a little isle,*
Which in my very face did smile,

The only one in view;

A small green isle, it seem'd no more,
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor,
But in it there were three tall trees,
And o'er it blew the mountain breeze,
And by it there were waters flowing,

And on it there were young flowers growing,
Of gentle breath and hue.

The fish swam by the castle wall,
And they seem'd joyous each and all;
The eagle rode the rising blast,
Methought he never flew so fast

*Between the entrances of the Rhone and Villeneuve, not far from Chillon, is a very small island; the only one I could perceive, in my voyage round and over the lake, within its

As then to me he seem'd to fly,
And then new tears came in my eye,
And I felt troubled-and would fain
I had not left my recent chain;
And when I did descend again,
The darkness of my dim abode
Fell on me as a heavy load;
It was as is a new-dug grave,
Closing o'er one we sought to save,-
And yet my glance, too much oppress'd,
Had almost need of such a rest.

XIV.

It might be months, or years, or days,
I kept no count-I took no note,

I had no hope my eyes to raise,
And clear them of their dreary mote;
At last men came to set me free,

I ask'd not why, and reck'd not where, It was at length the same to me, Fetter'd or fetterless to be,

I learn'd to love despair. And thus when they appear'd at last, And all my bonds aside were cast, These heavy walls to me had grown A hermitage and all my own And half I felt as they were come To tear me from a second home: With spiders I had friendship made, And watch'd them in their sullen trade, Had seen the mice by moonlight play, And why should I feel less than they? We were all inmates of one place, And I, the monarch of each race, Had power to kill-yet, strange to tell! In quiet we had learn'd to dwell; My very chains and I grew friends, So much a long communion tends To make us what we are:-even I Regain'd my freedom with a sigh.

circumference. It contains a few trees (I think not above three), and from its singleness and diminutive size has a peculiar effect upon the view.

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BEPPO:

A Venetian Storg.

Rosalind. Farewell, Monsieur Traveller: Look, you lisp, and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your Nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think that you have swam in a Gondola. As You Like It, act iv. sc. 1.

Annotation of the Commentators.

That is, been at Venice, which was much visited by the young English gentlemen of those times, and was then what Paris is now-the seat of all dissoluteness. S. A.

Beppo.

I.

"T is known, at least it should be, that throughout
All countries of the Catholic persuasion,
Some weeks before Shrove Tuesday comes about,
The people take their fill of recreation,
And buy repentance, ere they grow devout,

However high their rank, or low their station, With fiddling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masking, And other things which may be had for asking.

II.

The moment night with dusky mantle covers
The skies (and the more duskily the better),
The time less liked by husbands than by lovers
Begins, and Prudery flings aside her fetter;
And Gayety on restless tiptoe hovers,

Giggling with all the gallants who beset her: And there are songs and quavers, roaring, humming,

Guitars, and every other sort of strumming.

III.

And there are dresses splendid, but fantastical, Masks of all times and nations, Turks and Jews, And harlequins and clowns, with feats gymnastical, Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles, and Hindoos; All kinds of dress, except the ecclesiastical,

All people, as their fancies hit, may choose, But no one in these parts may quiz the clergy,— Therefore take heed, ye Freethinkers! I charge ye.

IV.

You'd better walk about begirt with briars,
Instead of coat and smallclothes, than put on
A single stitch reflecting upon friars,

Although you swore it only was in fun;
They'd haul you o'er the coals, and stir the fires
Of Phlegethon with every mother's son,
Nor say one mass to cool the caldron's bubble
That boil'd your bones, unless you paid them double.

V.

But saving this, you may put on whate'er

You like by way of doublet, cape, or cloak, Such as in Monmouth-street, or in Rag Fair, Would rig you out in seriousness or joke; And even in Italy such places are,

With prettier name in softer accents spoke,

For, bating Covent Garden, I can hit on
No place that 's call'd" Piazza " in Great Britain.

VI.

This feast is named the Carnival, which being
Interpreted, implies "farewell to flesh: "
So call'd, because the name and thing agreeing,
Through Lent they live on fish both salt and
fresh.

But why they usher Lent with so much glee in,
Is more than I can tell, although I guess
'Tis as we take a glass with friends at parting,
In the stage-coach or packet, just at starting.

VII.

And thus they bid farewell to carnal dishes,
And solid meats, and highly spiced ragouts,
To live for forty days on ill-dress'd fishes,

Because they gave no sauces to their stews,
A thing which causes many "poohs" and "pishes,"
And several oaths (which would not suit the Muse),
From travellers accustom'd from a boy

To eat their salmon, at the least, with soy;

VIII.

And therefore humbly I would recommend
"The curious in fish-sauce," before they cross
The sea, to bid their cook, or wife, or friend,
Walk or ride to the Strand, and buy in gross
(Or if set out beforehand, these may send
By any means least liable to loss)
Ketchup, Soy, Chili-vinegar, and Harvey,
Or, by the Lord! a Lent will well nigh starve ye;
IX.

That is to say, if your religion's Roman,
And you at Rome would do as Romans do,
According to the proverb,-although no man,
If foreign, is obliged to fast; and you,
If Protestant, or sickly, or a woman,

Would rather dine in sin on a ragout-
Dine and be d-d! I don't mean to be coarse,
But that's the penalty, to say no worse.
X.

Of all the places where the Carnival

Was most facetious in the days of yore, For dance, and song, and serenade, and ball, And masque, and mime, and mystery, and more Than I have time to tell now, or at all,

Venice the bell from every city bore,And at the moment when I fix my story, That sea-born city was in all her glory.

XI.

They've pretty faces yet, those same Venetians, Black eyes, arch'd brows, and sweet expressions still;

Such as of old were copied from the Grecians,
In ancient arts by moderns mimick'd ill.
And like so many Venuses of Titian's

(The best 's at Florence-see it, if ye will),
They look when leaning over the balcony,
Or stepp'd from out a picture by Giorgione,

XII.

Whose tints are truth and beauty at their best;
And when you to Manfrini's palace go,
That picture (howsoever fine the rest)

Is loveliest to my mind of all the show;
It may perhaps be also to your zest,

And that's the cause I rhyme upon it so: 'Tis but a portrait of his son, and wife, And self; but such a woman! love in life!

XIII.

Love in full life and length, not love ideal,
No, nor ideal beauty, that fine name,
But something better still, so very real,

That the sweet model must have been the same;
A thing that you would purchase, beg, or steal,
Were 't not impossible, besides a shame :
The face recalls some face, as 't were with pain,
You once have seen, but ne'er will see again.

XIV.

One of those forms which flit by us, when we
Are young, and fix our eyes on every face;
And, oh! the loveliness at times we see

In momentary gliding, the soft grace,
The youth, the bloom, the beauty which agree,
In many a nameless being we retrace,

Whose course and home we knew not, nor shall know,

Like the lost Pleiad seen no more below.

XV.

I said that like a picture by Giorgione
Venetian women were, and so they are,
Particularly seen from a balcony

(For beauty's sometimes best set off afar), And there, just like a heroine of Goldoni,

They peep from out the blind, or o'er the bar; And, truth to say, they 're mostly very pretty, And rather like to show it, more's the pity! XVI.

For glances beget ogles, ogles sighs,

Sighs wishes, wishes words, and words a letter,
Which flies on wings of light-heel'd Mercuries,
Who do such things because they know no better;
And then, God knows what mischief may arise,
When love links two young people in one fetter,
Vile assignations, and adulterous beds,
Elopements, broken vows, and hearts, and heads.
XVII.

Shakspeare described the sex in Desdemona
As very fair, but yet suspect in fame,
And to this day from Venice to Verona
Such matters may be probably the same,

Except that since those times was never known a
Husband whom mere suspicion could inflame
To suffocate a wife no more than twenty,
Because she had a "cavalier servente."

XVIII.

Their jealousy (if they are ever jealous)
Is of a fair complexion altogether,

Not like that sooty devi of Othello's

Which smothers women in a bed of feather,

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