The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4

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"The poem," he says, in the Preface, "may be considered as a metrical
experiment." In _Beppo_, and the two first cantos of _Don Juan_, he had
proved that the _ottava rima_ of the Italians, which Frere had been one
of the first to transplant, might grow and flourish in an alien soil,
and now, by way of a second venture, he proposed to acclimatize the
_terza rima_. He was under the impression that Hayley, whom he had held
up to ridicule as "for ever feeble, and for ever tame," had been the
first and last to try the measure in English; but of Hayley's excellent
translation of the three first cantos of the _Inferno_ (_vide post_, p.
244, note 1), praised but somewhat grudgingly praised by Southey, he had
only seen an extract, and of earlier experiments he was altogether
ignorant. As a matter of fact, many poets had already essayed, but
timidly and without perseverance, to "come to the test in the
metrification" of the _Divine Comedy_. Some twenty-seven lines, "the
sole example in English literature of that period, of the use of _terza
rima_, obviously copied from Dante" (_Complete Works of Chaucer_, by the
Rev. W. Skeat, 1894, i. 76, 261), are imbedded in Chaucer's _Compleint
to his Lady_. In the sixteenth century Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry
Howard, Earl of Surrey ("Description of the restless state of a lover"),
"as novises newly sprung out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto, and
Petrarch" (Puttenham's _Art of Poesie_, 1589, pp. 48-50); and later
again, Daniel ("To the Lady Lucy, Countess of Bedford"), Ben Jonson, and
Milton (_Psalms_ ii., vi.) afford specimens of _terza rima_. There was,
too, one among Byron's contemporaries who had already made trial of the
metre in his _Prince Athanase_ (1817) and _The Woodman and the
Nightingale_ (1818), and who, shortly, in his _Ode to the West Wind_
(October, 1819, published 1820) was to prove that it was not impossible
to write English poetry, if not in genuine _terza rima_, with its
interchange of double rhymes, at least in what has been happily styled
the "Byronic _terza rima_." It may, however, be taken for granted that,
at any rate in June, 1819, these fragments of Shelley's were unknown to
Byron. Long after Byron's day, but long years before his dream was
realized, Mrs. Browning, in her _Casa Guidi Windows_ (1851), in the same
metre, re-echoed the same aspiration (see her _Preface_), "that the
future of Italy shall not be disinherited." (See for some of these
instances of _terza rima_, _Englische Metrik_, von Dr. J. Schipper,
1888, ii. 896. See, too, _The Metre of Dante's Comedy discussed and
exemplified_, by Alfred Forman and Harry Buxton Forman, 1878, p. 7.)

The MS. of the _Prophecy of Dante_, together with the Preface, was
forwarded to Murray, March 14, 1820; but in spite of some impatience on
the part of the author (Letter to Murray, May 8, 1820, _Letters_, 1901,
v. 20), and, after the lapse of some months, a pretty broad hint
(Letter, August 17, 1820, _ibid_., p. 165) that "the time for the Dante
would be good now ... as Italy is on the eve of great things,"
publication was deferred till the following year. _Marino Faliero, Doge
of Venice_, and the _Prophecy of Dante_ were published in the same
volume, April 21, 1821.

The _Prophecy of Dante_ was briefly but favourably noticed by Jeffrey in
his review of _Marino Faliero_ (_Edinb. Rev._, July, 1821, vol. 35, p.
285). "It is a very grand, fervid, turbulent, and somewhat mystical
composition, full of the highest sentiment and the highest poetry; ...
but disfigured by many faults of precipitation, and overclouded with
many obscurities. Its great fault with common readers will be that it
is not sufficiently intelligible.... It is, however, beyond all
question, a work of a man of great genius."

Other notices of _Marino Faliero_ and the _Prophecy of Dante_ appeared
in _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_, April, 1821, vol. 9, pp. 93-103; in
the _Monthly Review_, May, 1821, Enlarged Series, vol. 95, pp. 41-50;
and in the _Eclectic Review_, June 21, New Series, vol. xv. pp.
518-527.

DEDICATION.

Lady! if for the cold and cloudy clime
Where I was born, but where I would not die,
Of the great Poet-Sire of Italy
I dare to build[276] the imitative rhyme,
Harsh Runic[277] copy of the South's sublime,
Thou art the cause; and howsoever I
Fall short of his immortal harmony,
Thy gentle heart will pardon me the crime.
Thou, in the pride of Beauty and of Youth,
Spakest; and for thee to speak and be obeyed
Are one; but only in the sunny South
Such sounds are uttered, and such charms displayed,
So sweet a language from so fair a mouth--[278]
Ah! to what effort would it not persuade?

Ravenna, June 21, 1819.

PREFACE

In the course of a visit to the city of Ravenna in the summer of 1819,
it was suggested to the author that having composed something on the
subject of Tasso's confinement, he should do the same on Dante's
exile,--the tomb of the poet forming one of the principal objects[279]
of interest in that city, both to the native and to the stranger.

"On this hint I spake," and the result has been the following four
cantos, in _terza rima_, now offered to the reader. If they are
understood and approved, it is my purpose to continue the poem in
various other cantos to its natural conclusion in the present age. The
reader is requested to suppose that Dante addresses him in the interval
between the conclusion of the _Divina Commedia_ and his death, and
shortly before the latter event, foretelling the fortunes of Italy in
general in the ensuing centuries. In adopting this plan I have had in my
mind the Cassandra of Lycophron,[280] and the Prophecy of Nereus by
Horace, as well as the Prophecies of Holy Writ. The measure adopted is
the _terza rima_ of Dante, which I am not aware to have seen hitherto
_tried in our language, except it may be by Mr. Hayley_,[281] of whose
translation I never saw but one extract, quoted in the notes to _Caliph
Vathek_; so that--if I do not err--this poem may be considered as a
metrical experiment. The cantos are short, and about the same length of
those of the poet, whose name I have borrowed and most likely taken in
vain.

Amongst the inconveniences of authors in the present day, it is
difficult for any who have a name, good or bad, to escape translation. I
have had the fortune to see the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_[282]
translated into Italian _versi sciolti_,--that is, a poem written in the
_Spenserean stanza_ into _blank verse_, without regard to the natural
divisions of the stanza or the sense. If the present poem, being on a
national topic, should chance to undergo the same fate, I would request
the Italian reader to remember that when I have failed in the imitation
of his great "Padre Alighier,"[283] I have failed in imitating that
which all study and few understand, since to this very day it is not yet
settled what was the meaning of the allegory[284] in the first canto of
the _Inferno_, unless Count Marchetti's ingenious and probable
conjecture may be considered as having decided the question.

He may also pardon my failure the more, as I am not quite sure that he
would be pleased with my success, since the Italians, with a pardonable
nationality, are particularly jealous of all that is left them as a
nation--their literature; and in the present bitterness of the classic
and romantic war, are but ill disposed to permit a foreigner even to
approve or imitate them, without finding some fault with his
ultramontane presumption. I can easily enter into all this, knowing what
would be thought in England of an Italian imitator of Milton, or if a
translation of Monti, Pindemonte, or Arici,[285] should be held up to
the rising generation as a model for their future poetical essays. But I
perceive that I am deviating into an address to the Italian reader,
where my business is with the English one; and be they few or many, I
must take my leave of both.

THE PROPHECY OF DANTE.

CANTO THE FIRST.

Once more in Man's frail world! which I had left
So long that 'twas forgotten; and I feel
The weight of clay again,--too soon bereft
Of the Immortal Vision which could heal
My earthly sorrows, and to God's own skies
Lift me from that deep Gulf without repeal,
Where late my ears rung with the damned cries
Of Souls in hopeless bale; and from that place
Of lesser torment, whence men may arise
Pure from the fire to join the Angelic race; 10
Midst whom my own bright Beatric[=e][286] blessed
My spirit with her light; and to the base
Of the Eternal Triad! first, last, best,[287]
Mysterious, three, sole, infinite, great God!
Soul universal! led the mortal guest,
Unblasted by the Glory, though he trod
From star to star to reach the almighty throne.[bw]
Oh Beatrice! whose sweet limbs the sod
So long hath pressed, and the cold marble stone,
Thou sole pure Seraph of my earliest love, 20
Love so ineffable, and so alone,
That nought on earth could more my bosom move,
And meeting thee in Heaven was but to meet
That without which my Soul, like the arkless dove,
Had wandered still in search of, nor her feet
Relieved her wing till found; without thy light
My Paradise had still been incomplete.[288]
Since my tenth sun gave summer to my sight
Thou wert my Life, the Essence of my thought,
Loved ere I knew the name of Love,[289] and bright 30
Still in these dim old eyes, now overwrought
With the World's war, and years, and banishment,
And tears for thee, by other woes untaught;
For mine is not a nature to be bent
By tyrannous faction, and the brawling crowd,
And though the long, long conflict hath been spent
In vain,--and never more, save when the cloud
Which overhangs the Apennine my mind's eye
Pierces to fancy Florence, once so proud
Of me, can I return, though but to die, 40
Unto my native soil,--they have not yet
Quenched the old exile's spirit, stern and high.
But the Sun, though not overcast, must set
And the night cometh; I am old in days,
And deeds, and contemplation, and have met
Destruction face to face in all his ways.
The World hath left me, what it found me, pure,
And if I have not gathered yet its praise,
I sought it not by any baser lure;
Man wrongs, and Time avenges, and my name 50
May form a monument not all obscure,
Though such was not my Ambition's end or aim,
To add to the vain-glorious list of those
Who dabble in the pettiness of fame,
And make men's fickle breath the wind that blows
Their sail, and deem it glory to be classed
With conquerors, and Virtue's other foes,
In bloody chronicles of ages past.
I would have had my Florence great and free;[290]
Oh Florence! Florence![291] unto me thou wast 60
Like that Jerusalem which the Almighty He
Wept over, "but thou wouldst not;" as the bird
Gathers its young, I would have gathered thee
Beneath a parent pinion, hadst thou heard
My voice; but as the adder, deaf and fierce,
Against the breast that cherished thee was stirred
Thy venom, and my state thou didst amerce,
And doom this body forfeit to the fire.[292]
Alas! how bitter is his country's curse
To him who _for_ that country would expire, 70
But did not merit to expire _by_ her,
And loves her, loves her even in her ire.
The day may come when she will cease to err,
The day may come she would be proud to have
The dust she dooms to scatter, and transfer[bx]
Of him, whom she denied a home, the grave.
But this shall not be granted; let my dust
Lie where it falls; nor shall the soil which gave
Me breath, but in her sudden fury thrust
Me forth to breathe elsewhere, so reassume 80
My indignant bones, because her angry gust
Forsooth is over, and repealed her doom;
No,--she denied me what was mine--my roof,
And shall not have what is not hers--my tomb.
Too long her armed wrath hath kept aloof
The breast which would have bled for her, the heart
That beat, the mind that was temptation proof,
The man who fought, toiled, travelled, and each part
Of a true citizen fulfilled, and saw
For his reward the Guelf's ascendant art 90
Pass his destruction even into a law.
These things are not made for forgetfulness,
Florence shall be forgotten first; too raw
The wound, too deep the wrong, and the distress
Of such endurance too prolonged to make
My pardon greater, her injustice less,
Though late repented; yet--yet for her sake
I feel some fonder yearnings, and for thine,
My own Beatric, I would hardly take
Vengeance upon the land which once was mine, 100
And still is hallowed by thy dust's return,
Which would protect the murderess like a shrine,
And save ten thousand foes by thy sole urn.
Though, like old Marius from Minturnae's marsh
And Carthage ruins, my lone breast may burn
At times with evil feelings hot and harsh,[293]
And sometimes the last pangs of a vile foe
Writhe in a dream before me, and o'erarch
My brow with hopes of triumph,--let them go!
Such are the last infirmities of those 110
Who long have suffered more than mortal woe,
And yet being mortal still, have no repose
But on the pillow of Revenge--Revenge,
Who sleeps to dream of blood, and waking glows
With the oft-baffled, slakeless thirst of change,
When we shall mount again, and they that trod
Be trampled on, while Death and Ate range
O'er humbled heads and severed necks----Great God!
Take these thoughts from me--to thy hands I yield
My many wrongs, and thine Almighty rod 120
Will fall on those who smote me,--be my Shield!
As thou hast been in peril, and in pain,
In turbulent cities, and the tented field--
In toil, and many troubles borne in vain
For Florence,--I appeal from her to Thee!
Thee, whom I late saw in thy loftiest reign,
Even in that glorious Vision, which to see
And live was never granted until now,
And yet thou hast permitted this to me.
Alas! with what a weight upon my brow 130
The sense of earth and earthly things come back,
Corrosive passions, feelings dull and low,
The heart's quick throb upon the mental rack,
Long day, and dreary night; the retrospect
Of half a century bloody and black,
And the frail few years I may yet expect
Hoary and hopeless, but less hard to bear,
For I have been too long and deeply wrecked
On the lone rock of desolate Despair,
To lift my eyes more to the passing sail 140
Which shuns that reef so horrible and bare;
Nor raise my voice--for who would heed my wail?
I am not of this people, nor this age,
And yet my harpings will unfold a tale
Which shall preserve these times when not a page
Of their perturbed annals could attract
An eye to gaze upon their civil rage,[by]
Did not my verse embalm full many an act
Worthless as they who wrought it: 'tis the doom
Of spirits of my order to be racked 150
In life, to wear their hearts out, and consume
Their days in endless strife, and die alone;
Then future thousands crowd around their tomb,
And pilgrims come from climes where they have known
The name of him--who now is but a name,
And wasting homage o'er the sullen stone,
Spread his--by him unheard, unheeded--fame;
And mine at least hath cost me dear: to die
Is nothing; but to wither thus--to tame
My mind down from its own infinity-- 160
To live in narrow ways with little men,
A common sight to every common eye,
A wanderer, while even wolves can find a den,
Ripped from all kindred, from all home, all things
That make communion sweet, and soften pain--
To feel me in the solitude of kings
Without the power that makes them bear a crown--
To envy every dove his nest and wings
Which waft him where the Apennine looks down
On Arno, till he perches, it may be, 170
Within my all inexorable town,
Where yet my boys are, and that fatal She,[294]
Their mother, the cold partner who hath brought
Destruction for a dowry--this to see
And feel, and know without repair, hath taught
A bitter lesson; but it leaves me free:
I have not vilely found, nor basely sought,
They made an Exile--not a Slave of me.

CANTO THE SECOND.

The Spirit of the fervent days of Old,
When words were things that came to pass, and Thought
Flashed o'er the future, bidding men behold
Their children's children's doom already brought
Forth from the abyss of Time which is to be,
The Chaos of events, where lie half-wrought
Shapes that must undergo mortality;
What the great Seers of Israel wore within,
That Spirit was on them, and is on me,
And if, Cassandra-like, amidst the din 10
Of conflict none will hear, or hearing heed
This voice from out the Wilderness, the sin
Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed,
The only guerdon I have ever known.
Hast thou not bled? and hast thou still to bleed,
Italia? Ah! to me such things, foreshown
With dim sepulchral light, bid me forget
In thine irreparable wrongs my own;
We can have but one Country, and even yet
Thou'rt mine--my bones shall be within thy breast, 20
My Soul within thy language, which once set
With our old Roman sway in the wide West;
But I will make another tongue arise
As lofty and more sweet, in which expressed
The hero's ardour, or the lover's sighs,
Shall find alike such sounds for every theme
That every word, as brilliant as thy skies,
Shall realise a Poet's proudest dream,
And make thee Europe's Nightingale of Song;[295]
So that all present speech to thine shall seem 30
The note of meaner birds, and every tongue
Confess its barbarism when compared with thine.[bz]
This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so wrong,
Thy Tuscan bard, the banished Ghibelline.
Woe! woe! the veil of coming centuries
Is rent,--a thousand years which yet supine
Lie like the ocean waves ere winds arise,
Heaving in dark and sullen undulation,
Float from Eternity into these eyes;
The storms yet sleep, the clouds still keep their station, 40
The unborn Earthquake yet is in the womb,
The bloody Chaos yet expects Creation,
But all things are disposing for thy doom;
The Elements await but for the Word,
"Let there be darkness!" and thou grow'st a tomb!
Yes! thou, so beautiful, shalt feel the sword,[296]
Thou, Italy! so fair that Paradise,
Revived in thee, blooms forth to man restored:
Ah! must the sons of Adam lose it twice?
Thou, Italy! whose ever golden fields, 50
Ploughed by the sunbeams solely, would suffice
For the world's granary; thou, whose sky Heaven gilds[ca]
With brighter stars, and robes with deeper blue;
Thou, in whose pleasant places Summer builds
Her palace, in whose cradle Empire grew,
And formed the Eternal City's ornaments
From spoils of Kings whom freemen overthrew;
Birthplace of heroes, sanctuary of Saints,
Where earthly first, then heavenly glory made[cb]
Her home; thou, all which fondest Fancy paints, 60
And finds her prior vision but portrayed
In feeble colours, when the eye--from the Alp
Of horrid snow, and rock, and shaggy shade
Of desert-loving pine, whose emerald scalp
Nods to the storm--dilates and dotes o'er thee,
And wistfully implores, as 'twere, for help
To see thy sunny fields, my Italy,
Nearer and nearer yet, and dearer still
The more approached, and dearest were they free,
Thou--Thou must wither to each tyrant's will: 70
The Goth hath been,--the German, Frank, and Hun[297]
Are yet to come,--and on the imperial hill
Ruin, already proud of the deeds done
By the old barbarians, there awaits the new,
Throned on the Palatine, while lost and won
Rome at her feet lies bleeding; and the hue
Of human sacrifice and Roman slaughter
Troubles the clotted air, of late so blue,
And deepens into red the saffron water
Of Tiber, thick with dead; the helpless priest, 80
And still more helpless nor less holy daughter,
Vowed to their God, have shrieking fled, and ceased
Their ministry: the nations take their prey,
Iberian, Almain, Lombard, and the beast
And bird, wolf, vulture, more humane than they
Are; these but gorge the flesh, and lap the gore
Of the departed, and then go their way;
But those, the human savages, explore
All paths of torture, and insatiate yet,
With Ugolino hunger prowl for more. 90
Nine moons shall rise o'er scenes like this and set;[298]
The chiefless army of the dead, which late
Beneath the traitor Prince's banner met,
Hath left its leader's ashes at the gate;
Had but the royal Rebel lived, perchance
Thou hadst been spared, but his involved thy fate.
Oh! Rome, the Spoiler or the spoil of France,
From Brennus to the Bourbon, never, never
Shall foreign standard to thy walls advance,
But Tiber shall become a mournful river. 100
Oh! when the strangers pass the Alps and Po,
Crush them, ye Rocks! Floods whelm them, and for ever!
Why sleep the idle Avalanches so,
To topple on the lonely pilgrim's head?
Why doth Eridanus but overflow
The peasant's harvest from his turbid bed?
Were not each barbarous horde a nobler prey?
Over Cambyses' host[299] the desert spread
Her sandy ocean, and the Sea-waves' sway
Rolled over Pharaoh and his thousands,--why,[cc] 110
Mountains and waters, do ye not as they?
And you, ye Men! Romans, who dare not die,
Sons of the conquerors who overthrew
Those who overthrew proud Xerxes, where yet lie
The dead whose tomb Oblivion never knew,
Are the Alps weaker than Thermopylae?
Their passes more alluring to the view
Of an invader? is it they, or ye,
That to each host the mountain-gate unbar,
And leave the march in peace, the passage free? 120
Why, Nature's self detains the Victor's car,
And makes your land impregnable, if earth
Could be so; but alone she will not war,
Yet aids the warrior worthy of his birth
In a soil where the mothers bring forth men:
Not so with those whose souls are little worth;
For them no fortress can avail,--the den
Of the poor reptile which preserves its sting
Is more secure than walls of adamant, when
The hearts of those within are quivering. 130
Are ye not brave? Yes, yet the Ausonian soil
Hath hearts, and hands, and arms, and hosts to bring
Against Oppression; but how vain the toil,
While still Division sows the seeds of woe
And weakness, till the Stranger reaps the spoil.[300]
Oh! my own beauteous land! so long laid low,
So long the grave of thy own children's hopes,
When there is but required a single blow
To break the chain, yet--yet the Avenger stops,
And Doubt and Discord step 'twixt thine and thee, 140
And join their strength to that which with thee copes;
What is there wanting then to set thee free,
And show thy beauty in its fullest light?
To make the Alps impassable; and we,
Her Sons, may do this with one deed--Unite.

CANTO THE THIRD.

From out the mass of never-dying ill,[cd]
The Plague, the Prince, the Stranger, and the Sword,
Vials of wrath but emptied to refill
And flow again, I cannot all record
That crowds on my prophetic eye: the Earth
And Ocean written o'er would not afford
Space for the annal, yet it shall go forth;
Yes, all, though not by human pen, is graven,
There where the farthest suns and stars have birth,
Spread like a banner at the gate of Heaven, 10
The bloody scroll of our millennial wrongs
Waves, and the echo of our groans is driven
Athwart the sound of archangelic songs,
And Italy, the martyred nation's gore,
Will not in vain arise to where belongs[ce]
Omnipotence and Mercy evermore:
Like to a harpstring stricken by the wind,
The sound of her lament shall, rising o'er
The Seraph voices, touch the Almighty Mind.
Meantime I, humblest of thy sons, and of 20
Earth's dust by immortality refined
To Sense and Suffering, though the vain may scoff,
And tyrants threat, and meeker victims bow
Before the storm because its breath is rough,
To thee, my Country! whom before, as now,
I loved and love, devote the mournful lyre
And melancholy gift high Powers allow
To read the future: and if now my fire
Is not as once it shone o'er thee, forgive!
I but foretell thy fortunes--then expire; 30
Think not that I would look on them and live.
A Spirit forces me to see and speak,
And for my guerdon grants _not_ to survive;
My Heart shall be poured over thee and break:
Yet for a moment, ere I must resume
Thy sable web of Sorrow, let me take
Over the gleams that flash athwart thy gloom
A softer glimpse; some stars shine through thy night,
And many meteors, and above thy tomb
Leans sculptured Beauty, which Death cannot blight: 40
And from thine ashes boundless Spirits rise
To give thee honour, and the earth delight;
Thy soil shall still be pregnant with the wise,
The gay, the learned, the generous, and the brave,
Native to thee as Summer to thy skies,
Conquerors on foreign shores, and the far wave,[301]
Discoverers of new worlds, which take their name;[302]
For _thee_ alone they have no arm to save,
And all thy recompense is in their fame,
A noble one to them, but not to thee-- 50
Shall they be glorious, and thou still the same?
Oh! more than these illustrious far shall be
The Being--and even yet he may be born--
The mortal Saviour who shall set thee free,
And see thy diadem, so changed and worn
By fresh barbarians, on thy brow replaced;
And the sweet Sun replenishing thy morn,
Thy moral morn, too long with clouds defaced,
And noxious vapours from Avernus risen,
Such as all they must breathe who are debased 60
By Servitude, and have the mind in prison.[303]
Yet through this centuried eclipse of woe[cf]
Some voices shall be heard, and Earth shall listen;
Poets shall follow in the path I show,
And make it broader: the same brilliant sky
Which cheers the birds to song shall bid them glow,[cg]
And raise their notes as natural and high;
Tuneful shall be their numbers; they shall sing
Many of Love, and some of Liberty,
But few shall soar upon that Eagle's wing, 70
And look in the Sun's face, with Eagle's gaze,
All free and fearless as the feathered King,
But fly more near the earth; how many a phrase
Sublime shall lavished be on some small prince
In all the prodigality of Praise!
And language, eloquently false, evince[ch]
The harlotry of Genius, which, like Beauty,[ci]
Too oft forgets its own self-reverence,
And looks on prostitution as a duty.[304]
He who once enters in a Tyrant's hall[cj][305] 80
As guest is slave--his thoughts become a booty,
And the first day which sees the chain enthral
A captive, sees his half of Manhood gone[306]--
The Soul's emasculation saddens all
His spirit; thus the Bard too near the throne
Quails from his inspiration, bound to _please_,--
How servile is the task to please alone!
To smooth the verse to suit his Sovereign's ease
And royal leisure, nor too much prolong
Aught save his eulogy, and find, and seize, 90
Or force, or forge fit argument of Song!
Thus trammelled, thus condemned to Flattery's trebles,
He toils through all, still trembling to be wrong:
For fear some noble thoughts, like heavenly rebels,
Should rise up in high treason to his brain,
He sings, as the Athenian spoke, with pebbles
In's mouth, lest Truth should stammer through his strain.
But out of the long file of sonneteers
There shall be some who will not sing in vain,
And he, their Prince, shall rank among my peers,[307]
And Love shall be his torment; but his grief
Shall make an immortality of tears,
And Italy shall hail him as the Chief
Of Poet-lovers, and his higher song
Of Freedom wreathe him with as green a leaf.
But in a farther age shall rise along
The banks of Po two greater still than he;
The World which smiled on him shall do them wrong
Till they are ashes, and repose with me.
The first will make an epoch with his lyre, 110
And fill the earth with feats of Chivalry:[308]
His Fancy like a rainbow, and his Fire,
Like that of Heaven, immortal, and his Thought
Borne onward with a wing that cannot tire;
Pleasure shall, like a butterfly new caught,
Flutter her lovely pinions o'er his theme,
And Art itself seem into Nature wrought
By the transparency of his bright dream.--
The second, of a tenderer, sadder mood,
Shall pour his soul out o'er Jerusalem; 120
He, too, shall sing of Arms, and Christian blood
Shed where Christ bled for man; and his high harp
Shall, by the willow over Jordan's flood,
Revive a song of Sion, and the sharp
Conflict, and final triumph of the brave
And pious, and the strife of Hell to warp
Their hearts from their great purpose, until wave
The red-cross banners where the first red Cross
Was crimsoned from His veins who died to save,[ck]
Shall be his sacred argument; the loss 130
Of years, of favour, freedom, even of fame
Contested for a time, while the smooth gloss
Of Courts would slide o'er his forgotten name
And call Captivity a kindness--meant
To shield him from insanity or shame--
Such shall be his meek guerdon! who was sent
To be Christ's Laureate--they reward him well!
Florence dooms me but death or banishment,
Ferrara him a pittance and a cell,[309]
Harder to bear and less deserved, for I 140
Had stung the factions which I strove to quell;
But this meek man who with a lover's eye
Will look on Earth and Heaven, and who will deign
To embalm with his celestial flattery,
As poor a thing as e'er was spawned to reign,[310]
What will _he_ do to merit such a doom?
Perhaps he'll _love_,--and is not Love in vain
Torture enough without a living tomb?
Yet it will be so--he and his compeer,
The Bard of Chivalry, will both consume[311] 150
In penury and pain too many a year,
And, dying in despondency, bequeath
To the kind World, which scarce will yield a tear,
A heritage enriching all who breathe
With the wealth of a genuine Poet's soul,
And to their country a redoubled wreath,
Unmatched by time; not Hellas can unroll
Through her Olympiads two such names, though one[312]
Of hers be mighty;--and is this the whole
Of such men's destiny beneath the Sun?[313] 160
Must all the finer thoughts, the thrilling sense,
The electric blood with which their arteries run,[cl]
Their body's self turned soul with the intense
Feeling of that which is, and fancy of
That which should be, to such a recompense
Conduct? shall their bright plumage on the rough
Storm be still scattered? Yes, and it must be;
For, formed of far too penetrable stuff,
These birds of Paradise[314] but long to flee
Back to their native mansion, soon they find 170
Earth's mist with their pure pinions not agree,
And die or are degraded; for the mind
Succumbs to long infection, and despair,
And vulture Passions flying close behind,
Await the moment to assail and tear;[315]
And when, at length, the winged wanderers stoop,
Then is the Prey-birds' triumph, then they share
The spoil, o'erpowered at length by one fell swoop.
Yet some have been untouched who learned to bear,
Some whom no Power could ever force to droop, 180
Who could resist themselves even, hardest care!
And task most hopeless; but some such have been,
And if my name amongst the number were,
That Destiny austere, and yet serene,
Were prouder than more dazzling fame unblessed;
The Alp's snow summit nearer heaven is seen
Than the Volcano's fierce eruptive crest,
Whose splendour from the black abyss is flung,
While the scorched mountain, from whose burning breast
A temporary torturing flame is wrung, 190
Shines for a night of terror, then repels
Its fire back to the Hell from whence it sprung,
The Hell which in its entrails ever dwells.