Make a green space among the silent bowers,
Like a vast fane in a metropolis,

Surrounded by the columns and the towers

All overwrought with branch-like traceries
In which there is religion

and the mute

Persuasion of unkindled melodies,

Odors and gleams and murmurs, which the lute Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast

Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,

Wakening the leaves and waves ere it has passed To such brief unison as on the brain

One tone, which never can recur,

One accent never to return again.

has cast,

The world is full of Woodmen who expel
Love's gentle Dryads from the haunt of life,
And vex the nightingales in every dell.

OTHO

I

THOU wert not, Cassius, and thou couldst not be, Last of the Romans, though thy memory claim

From Brutus his own glory, and on thee

Rests the full splendor of his sacred fame;

Otho. Published, i., ii., by Mrs. Shelley, 18391, iii., by Garnett, 1862. Composed, 1817.

Nor he who dared make the foul tyrant quail
Amid his cowering senate with thy name,
Though thou and he were great; it will avail
To thine own fame that Otho's should not fail.

II

'Twill wrong thee not-thou wouldst, if thou couldst feel,

Abjure such envious fame - great Otho died
Like thee he sanctified his country's steel,
At once the tyrant and tyrannicide,

In his own blood. A deed it was to bring
Tears from all men

pride,

though full of gentle

Such pride as from impetuous love may spring,
That will not be refused its offering.

III

Dark is the realm of grief: but human things Those may not know who cannot weep for them.

MADDALO, a Courtier.

MALPIGLIO, a Poet.

TASSO

PIGNA, a Minister.
ALBANO, an Usher.

MADDALO

No access to the Duke! You have not said

That the Count Maddalo would speak with him?

ii. 5 bring, Boscombe MS. || buy, Mrs. Shelley, 18391.
Tasso. Published by Garnett, 1862. Composed, 1818.

PIGNA

Did you inform his Grace that Signor Pigna
Waits with state papers for his signature?

MALPIGLIO

The Lady Leonora cannot know

That I have written a sonnet to her fame,

In which I

Venus and Adonis.

You should not take my gold and serve me not.

ALBANO

In truth I told her, and she smiled and said, "If I am Venus, thou, coy Poesy,

Art the Adonis whom I love, and he

The Erymanthian boar that wounded him."

Oh, trust to me, Signor Malpiglio,

Those nods and smiles were favors worth the zechin.

MALPIGLIO

The words are twisted in some double sense
That I reach not; the smiles fell not on me.

PIGNA

How are the Duke and Duchess occupied ?

ALBANO

Buried in some strange talk. The Duke was lean

ing,

His finger on his brow, his lips unclosed.
The Princess sate within the window-seat,
And so her face was hid; but on her knee
Her hands were clasped, veinèd, and pale as snow,
And quivering - young Tasso, too, was there.

But when we cease to breathe and move
I do suppose love ceases too.

I thought, but not as now I do,

Keen thoughts and bright of linkèd lore,
Of all that men had thought before,
And all that nature shows, and more.

II

And still I love and still I think,
But strangely, for my heart can drink
The dregs of such despair, and live,
And love;

And if I think, my thoughts come fast,
I mix the present with the past,
And each seems uglier than the last.

Song. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

III

Sometimes I see before me flee
A silver spirit's form, like thee,
O Leonora, and I sit

still watching it,

Till by the grated casement's ledge
It fades, with such a sigh, as sedge
Breathes o'er the breezy streamlet's edge.

MARENGHI

I

LET those who pine in pride or in revenge,
Or think that ill for ill should be repaid,
Or barter wrong for wrong, until the exchange
Ruins the merchants of such thriftless trade,
Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearn
Such bitter faith beside Marenghi's urn.

II

A massy tower yet overhangs the town,
A scattered group of ruined dwellings now.

III

Another scene ere wise Etruria knew

Its second ruin through internal strife,

And tyrants through the breach of discord threw The chain which binds and kills. As death to life,

Marenghi, Rossetti || Mazenghi, Mrs. Shelley, 1824. Published, vii.-xv., by Mrs. Shelley, 1824, i.-xxviii., by Rossetti, 1870. posed, 1818.

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