weeps

6

But tell me, in the season of sweet sighs,
By what and how thy love to passion rose,
So as his dim desires to recognize ?"
Then she to me: "The greatest of all woes
Is to remind us of our happy days'
In misery, and that thy teacher knows.
But if to learn our passion's first root preys
Upon thy spirit with such sympathy,
I will do even as he who
and says.
We read one day for pastime, seated nigh,
Of Lancilot," how love enchain'd him too.
We were alone, quite unsuspiciously.
But oft our eyes met, and our cheeks in hue
All o'er discolour'd by that reading were;
But one point only wholly us o'erthrew ;
When we read the long-sigh'd-for smile of her,
To be thus kiss'd by such devoted lover,"
He who from me can be divided ne'er
Kiss'd my mouth, trembling in the act all over:
Accursed was the book and he who wrote!
That day no further leaf we did uncover."
While thus one spirit told us of their lot,
The other wept," so that with pity's thralls
I swoon'd, as if by death I had been smote,
And fell down even as a dead body falls.

8

دو

NOTES TO FRANCESCA OF RIMINI.

1 RAVENNA.

2 [The meaning is that she was despoiled of her beauty by death, and that the manner of her death excites her indignation still. Among Lord Byron's unpublished letters are the following different renderings of the passage :

"Seized him for the fair person, which in its

Bloom was ta'en from me, yet the mode offends.
or,

Seized him for the fair form, of which in its
Bloom I was reft, and yet the mode offends.

Love, which to none beloved to love remits,
with mutual wish to please

Seized me

with wish of pleasing him so strong,
with the desire to please

That, as thou see'st, not yet that passion quits, &c.

They

You will find these readings vary from the MS. I sent you. They are closer, but rougher take which is liked best; or, if you like, print them as variations. are all close to the text."-Byron Letters.]

3 [From Cain, the first fratricide. Cainà is that part of the Inferno to which murderers are condemned.]

4 [Virgil, who is Dante's guide through the infernal regions.]

The teacher was Boetius, whom Dante in his distresses had always between his hands.-"In omni adversitate fortunæ infelicissimum genus infortunii est fuisse felicem."-Boetius.]

"I will do even as one who relates while weeping."]

7 [One of the Knights of Arthur's Round Table, and the lover of Genevra, so celebrated in romance.]

10 [The "other spirit" is Francesca's lover, Paolo. It is the poet himself who swoons with pity, and he can hardly have exaggerated his emotion when we consider that he had probably been acquainted with Francesca.]

THE BLUES:

A LITERARY ECLOGUE.

"Nimium ne crede colori."-VIRGIL.

O trust not, ye beautiful creatures, to hue,

Though your hair were as red, as your stockings are bluc.