And pilgrims come from climes where they have known
The name of him-who now is but a name,
And wasting homage o'er the sullen stone,
Spread his-by him unheard, unheeded-fame;
And mine at least hath cost me dear: to die
Is nothing; but to wither thus-to tame
My mind down from its own infinity—
To live in narrow ways with little men,

A common sight to every common eye,
A wanderer, while even wolves can find a den,

Ripp'd from all kindred, from all home, all things
That make communion sweet, and soften pain-
To feel me in the solitude of kings

Without the power that makes them bear a crown—
To envy every dove his nest and wings
Which waft him where the Apennine looks down
On Arno, till he perches, it may be,

Within my all inexorable town,

Where yet my boys are, and that fatal she,"

Their mother, the cold partner who hath brought
Destruction for a dowry-this to see

And feel, and know without repair, hath taught
A bitter lesson; but it leaves me free:
I have not vilely found, nor basely sought,
They made an Exile-not a slave of me.

8 This lady, whose name was Gemma, sprung from one of the most powerful Guelph families, named Donati. Corso Donati was the principal adversary of the Ghibellines. She is described as being "Admodum morosa, ut de Xantippe Socratis philosophi conjuge scriptum esse legimus," according to Giannozzo Manetti. But Lionardo Aretino is scandalised with Boccace, in his life of Dante, for saying that literary men should not marry. "Qui il Boccaccio non ha pazienza, e dice, le mogli esser contrarie agli studj ; e non si ricorda che Socrate, il più nobile filosofo che mai fosse, ebbe moglie e figliuoli e uffici della Repubblica nella sua Città; e Aristotele che, &c., &c., ebbe due mogli in varj tempi, ed ebbe figliuoli, e ricchezze assai.-E Marco Tullio-e Catone-e Varronee Seneca-ebbero moglie," &c. &c. It is odd that honest Lionardo's examples, with the exception of Seneca, and, for anything I know, of Aristotle, are not the most felicitous. Tully's Terentia, and Socrates' Xantippe, by no means contributed to their husbands' happiness, whatever they might do to their philosophy-Cato gave away his wife-of Varro's we know nothing-and of Seneca's, only that she was disposed to die with him, but recovered and lived several years afterwards. But says Lionardo, "L'uomo è animale civile, secondo piace a tutti i filosofi." And thence concludes that the greatest proof of the animal's civism is "la prima congiunzione, dalla quale multiplicata nasce la Città."

CANTO THE SECOND.

THE Spirit of the fervent days of Old,

When words were things that came to pass, and thought Flash'd o'er the future, bidding men behold

Their children's children's doom already brought

Forth from the abyss of time which is to be,
The chaos of events, where lie half-wrought
Shapes that must undergo mortality;

What the great Seers of Israel wore within,
That spirit was on them, and is on me,
And if, Cassandra-like, amidst the din

Of conflict none will hear, or hearing heed
This voice from out the Wilderness, the sin
Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed,
The only guerdon I have ever known.

Hast thou not bled? and hast thou still to bleed,
Italia? Ah! to me such things, foreshown
With dim sepulchral light, bid me forget
In thine irreparable wrongs my own;

We can have but one country, and even yet

Thou'rt mine-my bones shall be within thy breast,
My soul within thy language, which once set
With our old Roman sway in the wide West;
But I will make another tongue arise

As lofty and more sweet, in which express'd
The hero's ardour, or the lover's sighs,

Shall find alike such sounds for every theme
That every word, as brilliant as thy skies,
Shall realise a poet's proudest dream,

And make thee Europe's nightingale of song;
So that all present speech to thine shall seem

The note of meaner birds, and every tongue

Confess its barbarism when compared with thine.
This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so wrong,
Thy Tuscan bard, the banish'd Ghibelline.

Woe! woe! the veil of coming centuries
Is rent, a thousand years which yet supine
Lie like the ocean waves ere winds arise,
Heaving in dark and sullen undulation,
Float from eternity into these eyes;

The storms yet sleep, the clouds still keep their station,
The unborn earthquake yet is in the womb,

The bloody chaos yet expects creation, But all things are disposing for thy doom; The elements await but for the word,

"Let there be darkness!" and thou grow'st a tomb! Yes! thou, so beautiful, shalt feel the sword,

Thou, Italy! so fair that Paradise,

Revived in thee, blooms forth to man restored: Ah! must the sons of Adam lose it twice?

Thou, Italy; whose ever golden fields,

Plough'd by the sunbeams solely, would suffice For the world's granary; thou, whose sky heaven gilds With brighter stars, and robes with deeper blue; Thou, in whose pleasant places Summer builds Iler palace, in whose cradle Empire grew, And form'd the Eternal City's ornaments From spoils of kings whom freemen overthrew ; Birthplace of heroes, sanctuary of saints,

Where earthly first, then heavenly glory made
Her home; thou, all which fondest fancy paints,
And finds her prior vision but portray'd

In feeble colours, when the eye-from the Alp
Of horrid snow, and rock, and shaggy shade

Of desert-loving pine, whose emerald scalp
Nods to the storm-dilates and dotes o'er thee,
And wistfully implores, as 'twere, for help
To see thy sunny fields, my Italy,

Nearer and nearer yet, and dearer still

The more approach'd, and dearest were they free, Thou-thou must wither to each tyrant's will:

The Goth hath been,-the German, Frank, and Hun
Are yet to come,-and on the imperial hill
Ruin, already proud of the deeds done

By the old barbarians, there awaits the new,
Throned on the Palatine, while lost and won
Rome at her feet lies bleeding; and the hue
Of human sacrifice and Roman slaughter
Troubles the clotted air, of late so blue,
And deepens into red the saffron water

Of Tiber, thick with dead; the helpless priest,
And still more helpless nor less holy daughter,
Vow'd to their God, have shrieking fled, and ceased
Their ministry: the nations take their prey,
Iberian, Almain, Lombard, and the beast
And bird, wolf, vulture, more humane than they
Are; these but gorge the flesh, and lap the gore
Of the departed, and then go their way;
But those, the human savages, explore

All paths of torture, and insatiate yet,
With Ugolino hunger prowl for more.

Nine moons shall rise o'er scenes like this and set ;'
The chiefless army of the dead, which late
Beneath the traitor Prince's banner met,
IIath left its leader's ashes at the gate;

Had but the royal Rebel lived, perchance

Thou hadst been spared, but his involved thy fate.
Oh! Rome, the spoiler or the spoil of France,
From Brennus to the Bourbon, never, never
Shall foreign standard to thy walls advance,

But Tiber shall become a mournful river.

Oh! when the strangers pass the Alps and Po,

Crush them, ye rocks! floods whelm them, and for ever!

Why sleep the idle avalanches so,

To topple on the lonely pilgrim's head?

Why doth Eridanus but overflow

The peasant's harvest from his turbid bed?

Were not each barbarous horde a nobler prey?

Over Cambyses' host the desert spread

1 See "Sacco di Roma," generally attributed to Guicciardini. There is another written by a Jacopo Buonaparte.

Her sandy ocean, and the sea-waves' sway
Roll'd over Pharaoh and his thousands,-why,
Mountains and waters, do ye not as they?
And you, ye men! Romans, who dare not die,
Sons of the conquerors who overthrew

Those who overthrew proud Xerxes, where yet lie
The dead whose tomb Oblivion never knew,

Are the Alps weaker than Thermopyla?
Their passes more alluring to the view
Of an invader? is it they, or ye,

That to each host the mountain-gate unbar,
And leave the march in peace, the passage free?
Why, Nature's self detains the victor's car,
And makes your land impregnable, if earth
Could be so; but alone she will not war,
Yet aids the warrior worthy of his birth

In a soil where the mothers bring forth men
Not so with those whose souls are little worth;

For them no fortress can avail,-the den

Of the poor reptile which preserves its sting
Is more secure than walls of adamant, when

The hearts of those within are quivering.

Are ye not brave? Yes, yet the Ausonian soil
Hath hearts, and hands, and arms, and hosts to bring
Against Oppression; but how vain the toil,

While still Division sows the seeds of woe
And weakness, till the stranger reaps the spoil.
Oh! my own beauteous land! so long laid low,
So long the grave of thy own children's hopes,
When there is but required a single blow
To break the chain yet,-yet the Avenger stops,

And Doubt and Discord step 'twixt thine and thee,
And join their strength to that which with thee copes;

What is there wanting then to set thee free,

And show thy beauty in its fullest light?
To make the Alps impassable; and we,
Her sons, may do this with one deed-Unite.