GOOD night? ah! no; the hour is ill Which severs those it should unite;
Let us remain together still, Then it will be good night.
How can I call the lone night good, Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight? Be it not said, thought, understood, Then it will be good night.
To hearts which near each other move From evening close to morning light, That night is good; because, my love, They never say good night.
OH! 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.
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?
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.
This fragment refers to an event, told in Sismondi's Histoire des Republiques Italiennes, which occured during the war when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a province. The opening stanzas are addressed to the conquering city.
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 Mazenghi's sake,
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.
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.
Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast, He hid himself, and hunger, cold, and toil, 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,
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,
He housed himself. There is a point of strand Near Vada'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 mudly weeds, the shallow, sullen sea.
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.
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 seemз uglier than the last.
Till by the grated casement's ledge It fades, with such a sigh, as sedge
Breathes o'er the breezy streamlet's edge.
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