XIV.

[lair

'Twas morn; and Neuha, who by dawn of day
Swam smoothly forth to catch the rising ray,
And watch if aught approach'd the amphibious
Where lay her lover, saw a sail in air :
It flapp'd, it fill'd, and to the growing gale
Bent its broad arch; her breath began to fail
With fluttering fear, her heart beat thick and
high,

But when these vanish'd, she pursued her prow,
Regain'd, and urged to where they found it now:
Nor ever did more love and joy embark,
Than now were wafted in that slender ark.

XV.

Again their own shore rises on the view,
No more polluted with a hostile hue;
[lie: No sullen ship lay bristling o'er the foam,

A floating dungeon :-all was hope and home!
A thousand proas darted o'er the bay,
With sounding shells, and heralded their way;
The chiefs came down, around the people
pour'd,

While yet a doubt sprung where its course might|
But no! it came not; fast and far away
The shadow lessen'd as it clear'd the bay.
She gazed, and flung the sea-foam from her eyes,
To watch as for a rainbow in the skies.
On the horizon verged the distant deck,
And welcomed Torquil as a son restored;
Diminish'd, dwindled to a very speck-
The women thronged, embracing and embraced
Then vanish'd. All was ocean, all was joy! By Neuba, asking where they had been chased,
Down plunged she through the cave to rouse And how escaped? The tale was told; and then
her boy;
[all One acclamation rent the sky again;
Told all she had seen, and all she hoped, and And from that hour a new tradition gave
That happy love could augur or recall;
Their sanctuary the name of 'Neuha's Cave.'
Sprung forth again, with Torquil following free A hundred fires, far flickering from the height,
His bounding nereid over the broad sea; Blazed o'er the general revel of the night,
Swam round the rock, to where a shallow cleftThe feast in honour of the guest, return'd
Hid the canoe that Neuha there had left
To peace and pleasure, perilously earn'd;
Drifting along the tide, without an oar, [shore; A night succeeded by such happy days
That eve the strangers chased them from the As only the yet infant world displays.

THE LAMENT OF TASSO.

1817.

ADVERTISEMENT.

AT Ferrara, in the Library, are preserved the original MSS. of Tasso's Gierusalemme and of Guarini's Pastor Fido, with letters of Tasso, one from Titian to Ariosto, and the inkstand and chair, the tomb and the house, of the latter. But as misfortune has a greater interest for posterity, and little or none for the contemporary, the cell where Tasso was confined in the hospital of St Anna attracts a more fixed attention than the residence or the monument of Ariosto-at least it had this effect on me. There are two inscriptions, one on the outer gate, the second over the cell itself, inviting unnecessarily the wonder and the indignation of the spectator. Ferrara is much decayed and depopulated: the castle still exists entire; and I saw the court where Parisina and Hugo were Leheaded, according to the annal of Gibbon.

I.

Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain

LONG years! It tries the thrilling frame to With a hot sense of heaviness and pain;
bear,

And eagle-spirit of a child of Song--
Long years of outrage, calumny, and wrong;
Imputed madness, prison'd solitude,
And the mind's canker in its savage mood,
When the impatient thirst of light and air
Parches the heart; and the abhorred grate,
Marring the sunbeams with its hideous shade,

And bare, at once, Captivity display'd
Stands scoffing through the never-open'd gate,
Which nothing through its bars admits, save day,
And tasteless food, which I have eat alone
Till its unsocial bitterness is gone;
And I can banquet like a beast of prey,
Sullen and lonely, couching in the cave
Which is my lair, and-it may be-my grave.

And in that sweet severity there was
A something which all softness did surpass-
I know not how-thy genius master'd mine-
My star stood still before thee :-if it were
Presumptuous thus to love without design,
That sad fatality hath cost me dear;
But thou art dearest still, and I should be
Fit for this cell, which wrongs me-but for thee.
The very love which lock'd me to my chain
Hath lighten'd half its weight; and for the rest,
Though heavy, lent me vigour to sustain,
And look to thee with undivided breast,
And foil the ingenuity of Pain.

VI.

[vade

It is no marvel-from my very birth
My soul was drunk with love,-which did per-
And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth;
Of objects all inanimate I made
Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers,
And rocks, whereby they grew, a paradise,
Where I did lay me down within the shade
Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours,
Though I was chid for wandering; and the Wise
Shook their white aged heads o'er me, and said
Of such materials wretched men were made,
And such a truant boy would end in woe,
And that the only lesson was a blow ;-
And then they smote me, and I did not weep,
But cursed them in my heart, and to my haunt
Return'd and wept alone, and dream'd again
The visions which arise without a sleep.
And with my years my soul began to pant
With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain;
And the whole heart exhaled into One Want,
But undefined and wandering, till the day

I found the thing I sought-and that was thee;
And then I lost my being, all to be

With pilfering pranks and petty pains, below
The feeling of the healthful and the free;
But much to One, who long hath suffer'd so,
Sickness of heart, and narrowness of place,
And all that may be borne or can debase.
I thought mine enemies had been but Mar,
But Spirits may be leagued with them;-all
Earth

Abandons-Heaven forgets me in the dearth
[Of such defence the Powers of Evil can,
It may be, tempt me further-and prevail
Against the outworn creature they assail.
Why in this furnace is my spirit proved
Like steel in tempering fire? because I loved?
Because I loved what not to love, and see,
Was more or less than mortal, and than me.

IX.

I once was quick in feeling-that is o'er :
My scars are callous, or I should have dash'd
My brain against these bars, as the sun flash'd
In mockery through them :-if I bear and bore
The much I have recounted, and the more
Which hath no words-'tis that I would not die,
And sanction with self-slaughter the dull lie
Which snared me here, and with the brand of
shame

Stamp Madness deep into my memory,
And woo Compassion to a blighted name,
Sealing the sentence which my foes proclaim.
No-it shall be immortal !—and I make
A future temple of my present cell,
Which nations yet shall visit for my sake.
While thou, Ferrara! when no longer dwell
The ducal chiefs within thee, shalt fall down,
And crumbling piecemeal view thy hearthless
halls,

A poet's wreath shall be thy only crown-
Absorb'd in thine-the world was pass'd away-A poet's dungeon thy most far renown,
Thou didst annihilate the earth to me!

VII.

I loved all Solitude, but little thought
To spend I know not what of life, remote
From all communion with existence, save
The maniac and his tyrant :-had I been
Their fellow, many years ere this had seen
My mind like theirs corrupted to its grave.
But who hath seen me writhe, or heard me rave?
Perchance in such a cell we suffer more
Than the wreck'd sailor on his desert shore:
The world is all before him-mine is here,
Scarce twice the space they must accord my bier.
What though he perish, he may lift his eye,
And with a dying glance upbraid the sky-
I will not raise my own in such reproof,
Although 'tis clouded by my dungeon roof.

VIII.

Yet do I feel at times my mind decline,
But with a sense of its decay ;—I see
Unwonted lights along my prison shine,
And a strange demon, who is vexing me

While strangers wonder o'er thy unpeopled

walls!

And thou, Leonora ! thou-who wert ashamed
That such as I could love-who blush'd to hear
To less than monarchs that thou couldst be dear,
Go! tell thy brother that my heart, untamed
By grief, years, weariness-and it may be
A taint of that he would impute to me-
From long infection of a den like this.
Where the mind rots congenial with the abyss.
Adores thee still;—and add-that when the

towers

And battlements which guard his joyous hours
Of banquet, dance, and revel are forgot,
Or left untended in a dull repose,

This, this, shall be a consecrated spot!
But Thou-when all that Birth and Beauty
throws

Of magic round thee is extinct-shalt have
One half the laurel which o'ershades my grave.
No power in death can tear our names apart,
As none in life could rend thee from my heart.
Yes, Leonora ! it shall be our fate
To be entwined for ever-but too late!

LADY! if for the cold and cloudy clime,
Where I was born, but where I would not die,
Of the great Poet-Sire of Italy

I dare to build the imitative rhyme,
Harsh Runic copy of the South's sublime,
THOU art the cause; and howsoever I
Fall short of his immortal harmony,

Thy gentle heart will pardon me the crime.
Thou, in the pride of Beauty and of Youth,

Spakest; and for thee to speak and be obey'd

Are one; but only in the sunny South

Such sounds are utter'd, and such charms displa,'d,

So sweet a language from so fair a mouth—

Ah! to what effort would it not persuade?

RAVENNA, June 21, 1819.

PREFACE.

In the course of a visit to the city of Ravenna in the summer of 1819, it was suggested to the author that, having composed something on the subject of Tasso's confinement, he should do the same on Dante's exile,-the tomb of the poet forming one of the principal objects of interest in that city, both to the native and to the stranger.

On this hint I spake,' and the result has been the following four cantos, in terza rima, now offered to the reader. If they are understood and approved, it is my purpose to continue the poem, in various other cantos, to its natural conclusion in the present age. The reader is requested to suppose that Dante addresses him in the interval between the conclusion of the Divina Commedia and his death, and shortly before the latter event, foretelling the fortunes of Italy in general in the ensuing centuries. In adopting this plan I have had in my mind the Cassandra of Lycophron, and the Prophecy of Nereus by Horace, as well as the Prophecies of Holy Writ. The measure adopted is the terza rima of Dante, which I am not aware to have seen hitherto tried in our language, except it may be by Mr Hayley, of whose translation I never saw but one extract, quoted in the notes to Caliph Vathek; so that-if I do not err-this poem may be considered as a metrical experiment. The cantos are short, and about the same length of those of the poet, whose name I have borrowed, and most probably taken in vain.

If

Amongst the inconveniences of authors in the present day, it is difficult for any who have a wame, good or bad, to escape translation. I have had the fortune to see the fourth canto of 'Childe Harold' translated into Italian versi sciolti,—that is, a poem written in the Spenserean stanza into blank verse, without regard to the natural divisions of the stanza or of the sense. the present poem, being on a national topic, should chance to undergo the same fate, I would request the Italian reader to remember that when I have failed in the imitation of his great 'Padre Alighier,' I have failed in imitating that which all study and few understand, since to this very day it is not yet settled what was the meaning of the allegory in the first canto of the Inferno, unless Count Marchetti's ingenious and probable conjecture may be considered as having decided the question.

He may also pardon my failure the more, as I am not quite sure that he would be pleased with my success, since the Italians, with a pardonable nationality, are particularly jealous of all that is left them as a nation,-their literature; and in the present bitterness of the classic and

romantic war, are but ill disposed to permit a foreigner even to approve or imitate them, without finding some fault with his ultramontane presumption. I can easily enter into all this, knowing what would be thought in England of an Italian imitator of Milton, or if a translation of Monti, or Pindemonte, or Arici, should be held up to the rising generation as a model for their future poetical essays. But I perceive that I am deviating into an address to the Italian reader, when iny business is with the English one; and be they few or many, I must take my leave of both.

CANTO THE FIRST.

ONCE more in man's frail world! which I had In vain, and never more, save when the cloud left