XXV.

Their Silence-how unearthly to the mind!
'Their living motion-how almighty! Powers
Of Darkness and of Light! ye here are joined
Above the original Chaos, that devours

All things in its wild womb: how awful lowers

Yon Canopy above! and how are heard,

Pealed from yon hollow depths, 'midst sulphurous

showers,

Voices and thunderings; the Life-pulse stirred

Of the still slumbering Fires whose waking is deferred. XXVI.

And, standing here, the moral contemplate

Of chained Prometheus, here, ye feel it true;

No time can change, nor fortune which is fate,
The unshaken mind; the hopes that from it grew,
And aspirations, may be seared: the hue
Of its young feelings withered, yet resigned
To every stroke, it can its strength renew
From its own innate energies, and find

Ties of a nobler stamp allying with mankind.

XXVII.

Yet I would throw one ray of human light,

One record, like a votive wreath, above
This tomb of Desolation; 'tis a trite,
Worn, olden subject—a mere tale of love:
A thing that hath occurred, by fiction wove
Into a thousand shapes, the end the same;
The heart that vainly with its passion strove;

The illusion cherished still, that fanned the flame : The love's abounding hope that only life can tame.

XXVIII.

She would'st thou name this rose, from beauty's

wreath

So early nipped?—Francesca 'twas:—she grew

In yonder Resina that lies beneath;

But she was one of those abstracted few,

On whose soft form and graces Nature threw

A nameless spell; a charm that seemed to steep

That flower for ever in its morning dew!

Which, like the breath of heaven, seems to keep

A watch above its shrine-whose loss the Angels weep.

XXIX.

But the Italian sun which overwrought

Her tenderest spirit, filled it with a tone,
An energy of feeling and of thought,

To colder climes and colder hearts unknown,
Which sought a being like herself to own

Her slumbering sympathies; and to impart

Feelings and thoughts that with her growth had grown;

A child of nature she, who knew not art:

Her dower, that wealth misprized-the world of woman's

heart!

XXX.

And there was one who wanted but the scope

To be a youthful hero; one who shared,
With the Italian's passion, the proud hope
To see his country what she was; prepared

With patriot energies her own to guard:

One who had staked all life, but to reveal

For one short hour the heights his valour dared:

Love taught her not her rapture to conceal,

That sense of waking bliss cold hearts would vainly feel.

XXXI.

Yet, were it weariness, or wish for change,

Or sigh for freedom, or that restlessness

Whose wayward impulses from love estrange,
He first the imperfect nature did confess;

Then came restraint which dared not truth confess :
Coldness when met, till, like a blight, remorse

Sate on the grave of buried happiness!

Ah! wherefore from its fount retrace the course

Of love that flowed so freshly from its morning source?

XXXII.

She sate on the sea-shore: it was a wild

And lowering day: the waves broke round her feet;

Their wild monotony her ear beguiled:

Until the bells that stole on her retreat

Came with a gladder sound her ear to greet;

Listlessly to the church she turned aside;

The crowd were thronged around the Altar-seat:

How is the eye of love its certain guide!

She saw him kneeling there-and with another bride.

XXXIII.

A moment-darkness swam before her sight

'Twas but a moment: then was all too clear,
Illumined by the lightning-flashing light
Of the mind falling maddened from its sphere!
When future-present-past-at once appear:
And that last wild resolve-ere it give way-
Is ta'en-which ends its earthly trials here:
None marked her gesture as she knelt to pray :

Who heeds the grief-wrung brow when all around are

gay?

XXXIV.

But with the night she came not back to him
Her grey-haired sire, who feebly then went forth

To meet the wanderer: she, who to his dim
And aged eyes was all his joy on earth:

She, who threw round his solitary hearth

The light in which he lived: he found her not;

Then proved the peasants round their natural worth, The feeling which warms breasts the roughest

wrought;

The midnight passed away, but she was vainly sought.