No access to the Duke! You have not said That the Count Maddalo would speak with him? PIGNA. Did you inform his Grace that Signor Pigna MALPIGLIO. The Lady Leonora cannot know That I have written a sonnet to her fame, Venus and Adonis. You should not take my gold and serve me not. 1 This fragment, from the Relics of Shelley, was introduced by Mr. Garnett with the following note :—' :-"I have devoted,' Shelley wrote from Milan, April 20, 1818, this summer, and indeed the next year, to the composition of a tragedy on the subject of Tasso's madness; which I find upon inspection is, if properly treated, admirably dramatic and poetical.' Brief and slight as the following fragment is, it is highly interesting, as affording some clue to the manner in which Shelley would have treated a subject which he long meditated, and never, perhaps, finally abandoned. It would appear that the envy of court 5 iers and Tasso's rivals would have been among the principal elements of the action; the piece would conse quently have borne little resemblance to Goethe's Tasso, which it is doubtful whether Shelley ever read. No subject could have been more congenial to the latter. He was probably withheld from attempting it by the appearance of Byron's Lament of Tasso, and his reluctance to enter into appa rent competition with a friend, to whose genius his modesty, confirmed by the unanimous voice of his contemporaries, induced him to assign an unmerited pre-eminence over his own." 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." O trust to me, Signor Malpiglio, Those nods and smiles were favours worth the zechin. MALPIGLIO. The words are twisted in some double sense PIGNA. How are the Duke and Duchess occupied ? ALBANO. Buried in some strange talk. The Duke was leaning, And so her face was hid; but on her knee Her hands were clasped, veinèd, and pale as snow, 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 26 On whom they fell! SONG FOR "TASSO."1 I. I LOVED-alas! our life is love; But when we cease to breathe and move I thought, but not as now I do, Keen thoughts and bright of linked lore, II. And still I love and still I think, And if I think, my thoughts come fast, III. Sometimes I see before me flee A silver spirit's form, like thee, Still watching it, Till by the grated casement's ledge 1 First given by Mrs. Shelley in the Posthumous Poems, 1824, and placed in the collected editions, among poems of 1818. I have not thought it neces sary to preserve the indications of hiatus at the end of the fourth line of stanza II, and the beginning of the fourth line of stanza III. MARENGHL1 I. LET those who pine in pride or in revenge, II. A massy tower yet overhangs the town, A scattered group of ruined dwellings now. Another scene ere wise Etruria knew Its second ruin through internal strife, And tyrants through the breach of discord threw IV. In Pisa's church a cup of sculptured gold 1 Mrs. Shelley gave stanzas VII to XV of this fragment in the Posthumous Poems. The rest was transcribed by Mr. Garnett, from a Note Book in Sir Percy Shelley's possession, and first appeared in Mr. Rossetti's edition. Mrs. Shelley inscribed at the end Naples, 1818. Mr. Rossetti adds December. In Mrs. Shelley's editions the title is given as Mazenghi; and the following note is added: "This fragment refers to an event, told in Sismondi's Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, which occurred during the war when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a province. The opening stanzas are addressed to the conquering city." Mr. Rossetti was the first editor who appears to have taken the trouble to refer to Sismondi and ascertain that the hero's name was Marenghi. The "opening stanza" in Mrs. Shelley's editions is that numbered VII in this edition. At sacrament: more holy ne'er of old 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 A nation amid slaveries, disenchanted VII. O foster-nurse of man's abandoned glory, Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendour; 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 The sculptor's fearless soul-and as he wrought, And more than all, heroic, just, sublime, IX. Yes; and on Pisa's marble walls the twine Of direst weeds hangs garlanded--the snake |