MADDALO

Thou seest on whom from thine own worshipped heaven

Thou drawest down smiles-they did not rain on thee.

MALPIGLIO

Would they were parching lightnings for his sake

On whom they fell!

SONG

I

I loved-alas! our life is love;

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 linked 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. Composed, 1818.

As winter to fair flowers (though some be poison) So Monarchy succeeds to Freedom's foison.

IV

In Pisa's church a cup of sculptured gold

Was brimming with the blood of feuds forsworn At sacrament; more holy ne'er of old

Etrurians mingled with the shades forlorn Of moon-illumined forests.

V

And reconciling factions wet their lips

With that dread wine, and swear to keep each

spirit

Undarkened by their country's last eclipse.

VI

Was Florence the liberticide? that band

Of free and glorious brothers who had planted, Like a green isle 'mid Æthiopian sand,

A nation amid slaveries, disenchanted Of many impious faiths-wise, just — do they, Does Florence, gorge the sated tyrants' prey?

VII

O foster-nurse of man's abandoned glory,

Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendor; Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story, As ocean its wrecked fanes, severe yet tender. The light-invested angel Poesy

Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee.

VIII

And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught
By loftiest meditations; marble knew
The sculptor's fearless soul, and as he wrought,
The grace of his own power and freedom grew.
And more than all, heroic, just, sublime,
Thou wert among the false

was this thy crime?

IX

Yes; and on Pisa's marble walls the twine
Of direst weeds hangs garlanded; the snake
Inhabits its wrecked palaces; in thine

A beast of subtler venom now doth make
Its lair, and sits amid their glories overthrown,
And thus thy victim's fate is as thine own.

X

The sweetest flowers are ever frail and rare,

And love and freedom blossom but to wither; And good and ill like vines entangled are,

So that their grapes may oft be plucked together.

Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make
Thy heart rejoice for dead Marenghi's sake.

XI

No record of his crime remains in story,

But if the morning bright as evening shone,
It was some high and holy deed, by glory
Pursued into forgetfulness, which won
From the blind crowd he made secure and free
The patriot's meed, toil, death, and infamy.

XII

For when by sound of trumpet was declared
A price upon his life, and there was set
A penalty of blood on all who shared

So much of water with him as might wet His lips, which speech divided not, he went Alone, as you may guess, to banishment.

XIII

Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast,

He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and cold, Month after month endured; it was a feast Whene'er he found those globes of deep-red gold

Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear, Suspended in their emerald atmosphere.

XIV

And in the roofless huts of vast morasses,
Deserted by the fever-stricken serf,
All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses,
And hillocks heaped of moss-inwoven turf,
And where the huge and speckled aloe made,
Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade,

XV

He housed himself. There is a point of strand

Near Vado's tower and town; and on one side The treacherous marsh divides it from the land, Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide, And on the other creeps eternally, Through muddy weeds, the shallow sullen sea.