70. For, on the night that they were buried, she
Restored the embalmer's ruining, and shook
The light out of the funeral lamps, to be
A mimic day within that deathy nook;
And she unwound the woven imagery

Of second childhood's swaddling bands, and took
The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche,
And threw it with contempt into a ditch.

71. And there the body lay, age after age,

Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying,
Like one asleep in a green hermitage,—

With gentle sleep about its eyelids playing,
And living in its dreams beyond the rage

Of death or life; while they were still arraying

In liveries ever new the rapid, blind,

And fleeting generations of mankind.

72. And she would write strange dreams upon the brain
Of those who were less beautiful, and make
All harsh and crooked purposes more vain
Than in the desert is the serpent's wake
Which the sand covers. All his evil gain

The miser, in such dreams, would rise and shake
Into a beggar's lap; the lying scribe

Would his own lies betray without a bribe.

73. The priests would write an explanation full,
Translating hieroglyphics into Greek,
How the god Apis really was a bull,

And nothing more; and bid the herald stick
The same against the temple doors, and pull

The old cant down: they licensed all to speak
Whate'er they thought of hawks and cats and geese,
By pastoral letters to each diocese.

74. The king would dress an ape up in his crown

And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat,
And on the right hand of the sunlike throne
Would place a gaudy mockbird to repeat
The chatterings of the monkey. Every one
Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet
Of their great emperor when the morning came;
And kissed-alas, how many kiss the same!

75. The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and
Walked out of quarters in somnambulism ;
Round the red anvils you might see them stand
Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm,
Beating their swords to ploughshares :—in a band
The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism
Free through the streets of Memphis-much, I wis,
To the annoyance of king Amasis.

76. And timid lovers, who had been so coy

They hardly knew whether they loved or not,
Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy,
To the fulfilment of their inmost thought;
And, when next day the maiden and the boy

Met one another, both, like sinners caught,
Blushed at the thing which each believed was done
Only in fancy-till the tenth moon shone;

77. And then the Witch would let them take no ill: Of many thousand schemes which lovers find, The Witch found one,-and so they took their fill Of happiness in marriage warm and kind. Friends who, by practice of some envious skill,

Were torn apart (a wide wound, mind from mind) She did unite again with visions clear

Of deep affection and of truth sincere.

78. These were the pranks she played among the cities
Of mortal men. And what she did to Sprites
And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties,
To do her will, and show their subtle sleights,
I will declare another time; for it is

A tale more fit for the weird winter nights
Than for these garish summer days, when we
Scarcely believe much more than we can see.

NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF ST ANNE, PISA.

L'anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nell' infinito un mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro.--Her own words.

My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few

Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning,

Of such hard matter dost thou entertain;

Whence, if by misadventure chance should bring
Thee to base company (as chance may do)

Quite unaware of what thou dost contain
I prithee comfort thy sweet self again,
My last delight: tell them that they are dull
And bid them own that thou art beautiful.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE writer of the following lines died at Florence, as he was preparing for a voyage to one of the wildest of the Sporades, which he had bought, and where he had fitted up the ruins of an old building; and where it was his hope to have realized a scheme of life suited perhaps to that happier and better world of which he is now an inhabitant, but hardly practicable in this. His life was singular; less on account of the romantic vicissitudes which diversified it than the ideal tinge which it received from his own character and feelings. The present poem, like the Vita Nova of Dante, is sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a matter-of-fact history of the circumstances to which it relates; and to a certain other class it must ever remain incomprehensible, from a defect of a common organ of perception for the ideas of which it treats. Not but that "gran vergogna sarebbe a colui che rimasse cosa sotto veste di figura o di colore rettorico, e domandato non sapesse denudare le sue parole da cotal veste, in guisa che avessero verace intendimento."

The present poem appears to have been intended by the writer as the dedica

tion to some longer one. The stanza on the preceding page is almost a literal translation from Dante's famous canzone

Voi che intendendo il terzo ciel movete, &c.

The presumptuous application of the concluding lines to his own composition will raise a smile at the expense of my unfortunate friend: be it a smile not of contempt, but pity.

EPIPSYCHIDION.

SWEET Spirit, sister of that orphan one
Whose empire is the name thou weepest on,
In my heart's temple I suspend to thee
These votive wreaths of withered memory.
Poor captive bird, who from thy narrow cage
Pourest such music that it might assuage
The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee,
Were they not deaf to all sweet melody,—
This song shall be thy rose: its petals pale
Are dead, indeed, my adored nightingale!
But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom,
And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom.
High spirit-winged heart, who dost for ever
Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour,
Till those bright plumes of thought in which arrayed
It oversoared this low and worldly shade
Lie shattered, and thy panting wounded breast
Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest,
I weep vain tears: blood would less bitter bę,
Yet poured forth gladlier could it profit thee.

Seraph of heaven, too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman
All that is insupportable in thee

Of light and love and immortality!
Sweet benediction in the eternal curse!
Veiled glory of this lampless universe! ·

Thou moon beyond the clouds! thou living form
Among the dead! thou star above the storm!
Thou wonder, and thou beauty, and thou terror!
Thou harmony of Nature's art! thou mirror
In whom, as in the splendour of the sun,
All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on,—
Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee now
Flash lightning-like with unaccustomed glow!
I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song
All of its much mortality and wrong

With those clear drops which start like sacred dew
From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through,
Weeping till sorrow becomes ecstacy:

Then smile on it so that it may not die.

I never thought before my death to see
Youth's vision thus made perfect. Emily,

I love thee,-though the world by no thin name
Will hide that love from its unvalued shame.

Would we two had been twins of the same mother!

Or that the name my heart lent to another
Could be a sister's bond for her and thee,
Blending two beams of one eternity!
Yet, were one lawful and the other true,

These names, though dear, could paint not as is due
How beyond refuge I am thine.

Ah me!

I am not thine-I am a part of thee !

Sweet lamp! my moth-like muse has burnt its wings; Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings,

Young Love should teach Time, in his own grey style, All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile

A lovely soul formed to be blessed and bless-

A well of sealed and secret happiness,

Whose waters like blithe light and music are,
Vanquishing dissonance and gloom—a star
Which moves not in the moving heavens, alone---
A smile amid dark frowns-a gentle tone
Amid rude voices-a beloved light-

A solitude, a refuge, a delight

A lute which those whom Love has taught to play
Make music on to soothe the roughest day,
And lull fond Grief asleep-a buried treasure—
A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure-
A violet-shrouded grave of woe?—I measure
The world of fancies, seeking one like thee,
And find-alas! mine own infirmity.

She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way,

And lured me towards sweet death; as Night by Day,
Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope,
Led into light, life, peace. An antelope
In the suspended impulse of its lightness
Were less etherially light. The brightness
Of her divinest presence trembles through
Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew
Embodied in the windless heaven of June,
Amid the splendour-wingèd stars, the moon
Burns inextinguishably beautiful:
And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full
Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops,
Killing the sense with passion, sweet as stops
Of planetary music heard in trance.
In her mild lights the starry spirits dance,
The sunbeams of those wells which ever leap
Under the lightnings of the soul-too deep
For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense.