XXXVIII.

How Contemplation, on her seraph wings

Alighted, sits on thy all lordly brow,

That tablet of profound imaginings!

Yet doth thy face a gentleness avow,

And in their wisdom who so meek as thou?

For Truth, unsphered by thee from heaven, began

Her task, by teaching thee thyself to know;

There liv'st thou still the semblance of the man,

Still guide and light to us through Life's too fleeting

span.

XXXIX.

With arms entwined, their souls met in their eyes,

Into one being circumfused, one heart,

Stand Love and Psyche, pure as their own skies;

She seeks not yet to draw the veil apart :

The child of innocence, she knows not art:
Oh! could the immortal soul thus happy rest,

Nor seek to plunge into itself the dart!

What else is knowledge?-how might it be blest, Its paradise, this earth, by all it loves, caressed!

XL.

The Dancing Fawn-he cannot hide his joy,
The pulses of delight within him bounding!

His foot pressed lightly on that music-toy,

Now soft, now full, the answering cymbal rounding; How is his rapture at each note redounding!

His arms are tossed in motion, like the tree,

When the Wind through its joyous boughs is sounding!

His face, his eyes brimful, o'erflow with glee,

His is the very life of rapture's ecstacy!

XLI.

Cast in a low dark cavern on the ground,

The severed head of the Medusa lies!

Not dead-but life is gushing from the wound;

In their sunk sockets roll her dying eyes:

And from her pallid lips, half opened, rise
Like pestilential damps, her steaming breath,
Wrung from her last expiring agonies!

Her pale brow wears the livid hues of death:

Her snakes, their folds uncoiling, writhe in rage be

neath;

XLII.

And on each other madly now would wreak
Their malice, like their vengeance, impotent:
Some lap their parent's blood, or vainly seek
To turn on her the furies in them pent;

Bats, and obscure birds, waiting their descent,
Flit o'er, till motionless is stretched their prey;
Till that embodied curse its life hath spent!
Like fiends that on the heart their fangs essay,
Which its own dealt remorse in life thus gnaws away!

XLIII.

Lo-girt with Mountain solitudes, the Stream Dashed at his feet, the leopard's-skin his dress, Roused from his rock by an inspiring dream,— The embodied " Voice within the Wilderness!" How those intense, full-opened eyes express The troubled joy that mingles with his fears! His parting lips the mighty truths confess : The startled mind his thrilling warning hears, "Prepare-make straight the way-a God-a God

appears!"

XLIV.

And in that form is beautifully moulded

The beauty of Religion unconcealed:

And the eternity of truth unfolded,

In his enduring Boyhood is revealed;

Who would not thus, thou glorious Spirit! healed

From mortal sin, prove, standing there, as thou,
The grandeur of thy innocence, than wield

Powers before which the banded world should bow; Crowns which, compared with thine, were dross upon

the brow!

XLV.

Yet pass not, watching by Lorenzo's tomb,
Thy Day and Night, sublimest Angelo !
Eldest of Powers, ye almost see the gloom

Of crowning darkness round her forehead grow:
She sleeps, and must not be awaked!-but lo!

The Titan Day his robe aside hath hurled,

On his supporting arm uprising slow;

Beneath his eyes clouds part like banners furled,

While, frowning, he looks down upon the prostrate

world!

XLVI.

Altar of human dust! whose memories

Shall be immortal when thyself art not,

Even to thy name the answering heart replies,
Grey Santa Crocé! last but unforgot:

Far above all, to thee my soul hath brought
The veneration which thy shrine inspires;
Mecca of Italy! by pilgrims sought;

Thou guardian of the ashes of Life's fires,

The guiding Lights of earth as are yon starry choirs.

XLVII.

Behold the tomb where Galileo's spirit

Found that repose in life to him denied:

Nature gave, as his birth-right, to inherit

The starry infinite;-how human pride

Hears from that tomb an awful voice and guide!

A little dust is all that now remains

Of mind which with eternity allied;

Hate galled him living with her bigot chains,

The crown of thorns was his, the sages, patriots gains.