ADVERTISEMENT To ROSALIND and helen, AND LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS. THE story of ROSALIND and HELEN is, undoubtedly, not an attempt in the highest style of poetry. It is in no degree calculated to excite profound meditation; and if, by interesting the affections and amusing the imagination, it awaken a certain ideal melancholy favourable to the reception of more important impressions, it will produce in the reader all that the writer experienced in the composition. I resigned myself, as I wrote, to the impulse of the feelings which moulded the conception of the story; and this impulse determined the pauses of a measure, which only pretends to be regular, inasmuch as it corresponds with, and expresses, the irregularity of the imaginations which inspired it. I do not know which of the few scattered poems I left in England will be selected by my bookseller to add to this collection. One, which I sent from Italy, was written after a day's excursion among those lovely mountains which surround what was once the retreat, and where is now the sepulchre, of Petrarch. If any one is inclined to condemn the insertion of the introductory lines, which image forth the sudden relief of a state of deep despondency by the radiant visions disclosed by the sudden burst of an Italian sunrise in autumn, on the highest peak of those delightful mountains, I can only offer as my excuse, that they were not erased at the request of a dear friend, with whom added years of intercourse only add to my apprehension of its value, and who would have had more right than any one to complain, that she has not been able to extinguish in me the very power of delineating sadness. NAPLES, Dec. 20, 1818. ROSALIND AND HELEN. SCENE. The Shore of the Lake of Como. ROSALIND, HELEN, and her Child. HELEN. COME hither, my sweet Rosalind. 'Tis long since thou and I have met: Come, sit by me. I see thee stand None doth behold us now: the power If thou depart in scorn: O! come, And we are exiles. Talk with me Of that our land, whose wilds and floods Speak to me. Leave me not.-When morn did come, When evening fell upon our common home, And not my scorned self who prayed to thee. ROSALIND. Is it a dream, or do I see And hear frail Helen? I would flee Nor ever did I love thee less, Though mourning o'er thy wickedness Even with a sister's woe. I knew Till our mournful talk be done. HELEN. Alas! not there; I cannot bear It stirs Less like our own. The ghost of peace ROSALIND. Thou lead, my sweet, And I will follow. HENRY. 'Tis Fenici's seat Where you are going?—This is not the way, But it might break any one's heart to see HELEN. It is a gentle child, my friend. Go home, The boy Lifted a sudden look upon his mother, glee Of light and unsuspecting infancy, And whispered in her ear, "Bring home with you That sweet, strange lady friend." Then off he flew |