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XXVIL

So the two brothers and their murder'd man

Rode past fair Florence, to where Arno's stream Gurgles through straighten'd banks, and still doth

fan

Itself with dancing bulrush, and the bream Keeps head against the freshets. Sick and wan The brothers' faces in the ford did seem,

Lorenzo's flush with love.

They pass'd the water

Into a forest quiet for the slaughter.

XXVIII.

There was Lorenzo slain and buried in,,

There in that forest did his great love cease; Ah! when a soul doth thus its freedom win, It aches in loneliness-is ill at peace As the break-covert bloodhounds of such sin : They dipp'd their swords in the water, and did Their horses homeward, with convulsed spur, [tease Each richer by his being a murderer.

XXIX.

They told their sister how, with sudden speed,
Lorenzo had ta'en ship for foreign lands,
Because of some great urgency and need
In their affairs, requiring trusty hands.
Poor girl! put on thy stifling widow's weed,
And 'scape at once from Hope's accursed bands;
To-day thou wilt not see him, nor to-morrow,
And the next day will be a day of sorrow.

XXX.

She weeps alone for pleasures not to be;
Sorely she wept until the night came on,
And then, instead of love, O misery!

She brooded o'er the luxury alone :
His image in the dusk she seem'd to see,
And to the silence made a gentle moan,
Spreading her perfect arms upon the air,
And on her couch low murmuring,

"Where? Q

where?"

XXXI.

But Selfishness, Love's cousin, held not long
Its fiery vigil in her single breast;
She fretted for the golden hour, and hung
Upon the time with feverish unrest-
Not long; for soon into her heart a throng
Of higher occupants, a richer zest,
Came tragic; passion not to be subdued,
And sorrow for her love in travels rude.

XXXII.

In the mid days of autumn, on their eves
The breath of Winter comes from far away,
And the sick west continually bereaves

Of some gold tinge, and plays a roundelay
Of death among the bushes and the leaves,

To make all bare before he dares to stray From his north cavern. So sweet Isabel By gradual decay from beauty fell,

XXXIII.

Because Lorenzo came not. Oftentimes
She ask'd her brothers, with an eye all pale,
Striving to be itself, what dungeon climes

Could keep him off so long? They spake a tale Time after time, to quiet her. Their crimes

Came on them, like a smoke from Hinnom's vale; And every night in dreams they groan'd aloud, To see their sister in her snowy shroud.

XXXIV.

And she had died in drowsy ignorance,
But for a thing more deadly dark than all;
It came like a fierce potion, drunk by chance,
Which saves a sick man from the feather'd pall
For some few gasping moments; like a lance,
Waking an Indian from his cloudy hall
With cruel pierce, and bringing him again
Sense of the gnawing fire at heart and brain.

XXXV.

It was a vision. In the drowsy gloom,
The dull of midnight, at her couch's foot
Lorenzo stood, and wept: the forest tomb

Had marr'd his glossy hair which once could

shoot

Lustre into the sun, and put cold doom

Upon his lips, and taken the soft lute

From his lorn voice, and past his loamed ears
Had made a miry channel for his tears.

XXXVI.

Strange sound it was, when the pale shadow spake ;
For there was striving, in its piteous tongue,
To speak as when on earth it was awake,
And Isabella on its music hung:

Languor there was in it, and tremulous shake,
As in a palsied Druid's harp unstrung;
And through it moan'd a ghostly under-song,
Like hoarse night-gusts sepulchral briars among.

XXXVII.

Its eyes, though wild, were still all dewy bright
With love, and kept all phantom fear aloof
From the poor girl by magic of their light,
The while it did unthread the horrid woof
Of the late darken'd time-the murderous spite
Of pride and avarice-the dark pine roof
In the forest-and the sodden turfed dell,
Where, without any word, from stabs he fell.

XXXVIII.

Saying moreover, "Isabel, my sweet!

Red whortleberries droop above my head, And a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet; Around me beeches and high chestnuts shed Their leaves and prickly nuts; a sheepfold bleat Comes from beyond the river to my bed: Go, shed one tear upon my heather-bloom, And it shall comfort me within the tomb.

XXXIX.

"I am a shadow now, alas! alas!

Upon the skirts of human nature dwelling Alone: I chant alone the holy mass,

While little sounds of life are round me knelling, And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pass, And many a chapel bell the hour is telling, [me, Paining me through: those sounds grow strange to And thou art distant in Humanity.

XL.

"I know what was, I feel full well what is, And I should rage, if spirits could go mad; Though I forget the taste of earthly bliss,

That paleness warms my grave, as though I had A seraph chosen from the bright abyss

To be my spouse: thy paleness makes me glad : Thy beauty grows upon me, and I feel

A greater love through all my essence steal."

XLI.

The Spirit mourn'd "Adieu!"-dissolved and left
The atom darkness in a slow turmoil;
As when of healthful midnight sleep bereft,
Thinking on rugged hours and fruitless toil,
We put our eyes into a pillowy cleft,

And see the spangly gloom froth up and boil: It made sad Isabella's eyelids ache,

And in the dawn she started

up awake;

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