Unseen, uninterrupted:-books are there,
Pictures, and casts from all those statues fair
Which were twin-born with poetry; and all
We seek in towns, with little to recal
Regret for the green country:-I might sit
In Maddalo's great palace, and bis wit
And subtle talk would cheer the winter night,
And make me know myself:--and the fire light
Would flash upon our faces, till the day
Might dawn, and make me wonder at my stay.
But I had friends in London too. The chief
Attraction bere was that I sought relief
From the deep tenderness that maniac wrought
Within me 'twas perhaps an idle thought,
But I imagined that if, day by day,
I watched him, and seldom went away,
And studied all the beatings of his heart
With zeal, as men study some stubborn art
For their own good, and could by patience find
An entrance to the caverns of his mind,
I might reclaim him from his dark estate.
In friendships I had been most fortunate,
Yet never saw I one whom I would call
More willingly my friend :-and this was all
Accomplish'd not;-such dreams of baseless good
Oft come and go, in crowds or solitude,
And leave no trace !-but what I now design'd,
Made, for long years, impression on my mind.
-The following morning, urged by my affairs,
I left bright, Venice.-
And many changes, I returned; the name
Of Venice, and its aspect, was the same
But Maddalo was travelling, far away,
Among the mountains of Armenia.
His dog was dead: his child had now become
A woman, such as it has been my doom
To meet with few; a wonder of this earth,
Where there is little of transcendent worth,-
Like one of Shakspeare's women. Kindly she,
And with a manner beyond courtesy,
Receiv'd her father's friend; and, when I ask'd
Of the lorn maniac, she her memory task'd,
And told, as she had heard, the mournful tale:
"That the poor sufferer's health began to fail
Two years from my departure; but that then
The lady, who had left him, came again.
Her mien had been imperious, but she now
Look'd meek; perhaps remorse had brought her low.
Her coming made him better; and they stayed
Together at my father's,-for I played,
As I remember, with the lady's shawl;
I might be six years old :-But, after all,
She left him."-
"Why, her heart must have been tough;
"And was not this enough?
"Child, is there no more?"
66 Something within that interval, which bore The stamp of why they parted, how they met ;
Yet, if thine aged eyes disdain to wet
Those wrinkled cheeks with youth's remember'd tears,
Ask me no more; but let the silent years
Unseen, uninterrupted:-books are there,
Pictures, and casts from all those statues fair
Which were twin-born with poetry;-and all
We seek in towns, with little to recal
Regret for the green country:-I might sit
In Maddalo's great palace, and bis wit
And subtle talk would cheer the winter night,
And make me know myself:--and the fire light
Would flash upon our faces, till the day
Might dawn, and make me wonder at my stay.
But I had friends in London too. The chief
Attraction bere was that I sought relief
From the deep tenderness that maniac wrought
Within me 'twas perhaps an idle thought,
But I imagined that if, day by day,
I watched him, and seldom went away,
And studied all the beatings of his heart
With zeal, as men study some stubborn art
For their own good, and could by patience find
An entrance to the caverns of his mind,
I might reclaim him from his dark estate.
In friendships I had been most fortunate,
Yet never saw I one whom I would call
More willingly my friend :-and this was all ́
Accomplish'd not;-such dreams of baseless good
Oft come and go, in crowds or solitude,
And leave no trace !-but what I now design'd,
Made, for long years, impression on my mind.
-The following morning, urged by my affairs,
I left bright Venice.-
And many changes, I returned; the name
Of Venice, and its aspect, was the same
But Maddalo was travelling, far away,
Among the mountains of Armenia.
His dog was dead: his child had now become
A woman, such as it has been my doom
To meet with few; a wonder of this earth,
Where there is little of transcendent worth,-
Like one of Shakspeare's women. Kindly she,
And with a manner beyond courtesy,
Receiv'd her father's friend; and, when I ask'd
Of the lorn maniac, she her memory task'd,
And told, as she had heard, the mournful tale:
"That the poor sufferer's health began to fail
Two years from my departure; but that then
The lady, who had left him, came again.
Her mien had been imperious, but she now
Look'd meek; perhaps remorse had brought her low.
Her coming made him better; and they stayed
Together at my father's,-for I played,
As I remember, with the lady's shawl;
I might be six years old :-But, after all,
She left him."-
"Why, her heart must have been tough;
"And was not this enough?
"Child, is there no more?"
"Something within that interval, which bore The stamp of why they parted, how they met;
Yet, if thine aged eyes disdain to wet
Those wrinkled cheeks with youth's remember'd tears,
Ask me no more; but let the silent years
Be clos'd and cer'd over their memory,
As yon mute marble where their corpses lie."
I urged and questioned still: she told me how
All happen'd-but the cold world shall not know.
Rome, May, 1819.
BEFORE those cruel Twins, whom at one birth
Incestuous Change bore to her father Time,
Error and Truth, had hunted from the earth
All those bright natures which adorned its prime,
And left us nothing to believe in, worth
The pains of putting into learned rhyme,
A lady-witch there lived on Atlas' mountain
Within a cavern by a secret fountain.
Her mother was one of the Atlantides:
The all-beholding Sun had ne'er beholden
In his wide voyage o'er continents and seas
So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden
In the warm shadow of her loveliness;~
He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden The chamber of grey rock in which she layShe, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.
"Tis said, she was first changed into a vapour,
And then into a cloud, such clouds as flit,
Like splendour-winged moths about a taper,
Round the red west when the sun dies in it:
And then into a meteor, such as caper
On hill-tops when the moon is in a fit;
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