Chapter 7

My daughter! with thy name this song begun-- My daughter! with thy name this much shall end-- I see thee not, I hear thee not,--but none Can be so wrapt in thee; thou art the friend To whom the shadows of far years extend: Albeit my brow thou never shouldst behold, My voice shall with thy future visions blend, And reach into thy heart, when mine is cold,-- A token and a tone, even from thy father's mould.

CXVI.

To aid thy mind's development,--to watch Thy dawn of little joys,--to sit and see Almost thy very growth,--to view thee catch Knowledge of objects, wonders yet to thee! To hold thee lightly on a gentle knee, And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss,-- This, it should seem, was not reserved for me Yet this was in my nature:--As it is, I know not what is there, yet something like to this.

CXVII.

Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught, I know that thou wilt love me; though my name Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught With desolation, and a broken claim: Though the grave closed between us,--'twere the same, I know that thou wilt love me: though to drain MY blood from out thy being were an aim, And an attainment,--all would be in vain,-- Still thou wouldst love me, still that more than life retain.

CXVIII.

The child of love,--though born in bitterness, And nurtured in convulsion. Of thy sire These were the elements, and thine no less. As yet such are around thee; but thy fire Shall be more tempered, and thy hope far higher. Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea, And from the mountains where I now respire, Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee, As, with a sigh, I deem thou mightst have been to me!

CANTO THE FOURTH.

I.

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand: I saw from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying glory smiles O'er the far times when many a subject land Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!

II.

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, Rising with her tiara of proud towers At airy distance, with majestic motion, A ruler of the waters and their powers: And such she was; her daughters had their dowers From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers. In purple was she robed, and of her feast Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.

III.

In Venice, Tasso's echoes are no more, And silent rows the songless gondolier; Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, And music meets not always now the ear: Those days are gone--but beauty still is here. States fall, arts fade--but Nature doth not die, Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, The pleasant place of all festivity, The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!

IV.

But unto us she hath a spell beyond Her name in story, and her long array Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond Above the dogeless city's vanished sway; Ours is a trophy which will not decay With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor, And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away-- The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er, For us repeopled were the solitary shore.

V.

The beings of the mind are not of clay; Essentially immortal, they create And multiply in us a brighter ray And more beloved existence: that which Fate Prohibits to dull life, in this our state Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied, First exiles, then replaces what we hate; Watering the heart whose early flowers have died, And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.

VI.

Such is the refuge of our youth and age, The first from Hope, the last from Vacancy; And this worn feeling peoples many a page, And, may be, that which grows beneath mine eye: Yet there are things whose strong reality Outshines our fairy-land; in shape and hues More beautiful than our fantastic sky, And the strange constellations which the Muse O'er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse:

VII.

I saw or dreamed of such,--but let them go-- They came like truth, and disappeared like dreams; And whatsoe'er they were--are now but so; I could replace them if I would: still teems My mind with many a form which aptly seems Such as I sought for, and at moments found; Let these too go--for waking reason deems Such overweening phantasies unsound, And other voices speak, and other sights surround.

VIII.

I've taught me other tongues, and in strange eyes Have made me not a stranger; to the mind Which is itself, no changes bring surprise; Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find A country with--ay, or without mankind; Yet was I born where men are proud to be, Not without cause; and should I leave behind The inviolate island of the sage and free, And seek me out a home by a remoter sea,

IX.

Perhaps I loved it well: and should I lay My ashes in a soil which is not mine, My spirit shall resume it--if we may Unbodied choose a sanctuary. I twine My hopes of being remembered in my line With my land's language: if too fond and far These aspirations in their scope incline,-- If my fame should be, as my fortunes are, Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar.

X.

My name from out the temple where the dead Are honoured by the nations--let it be-- And light the laurels on a loftier head! And be the Spartan's epitaph on me-- 'Sparta hath many a worthier son than he.' Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need; The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree I planted,--they have torn me, and I bleed: I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.

XI.

The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord; And, annual marriage now no more renewed, The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored, Neglected garment of her widowhood! St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood Stand, but in mockery of his withered power, Over the proud place where an Emperor sued, And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour When Venice was a queen with an unequalled dower.

XII.

The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns-- An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt; Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt The sunshine for a while, and downward go Like lauwine loosened from the mountain's belt: Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo! The octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe.

XIII.

Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass, Their gilded collars glittering in the sun; But is not Doria's menace come to pass? Are they not BRIDLED?--Venice, lost and won, Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done, Sinks, like a seaweed, into whence she rose! Better be whelmed beneath the waves, and shun, Even in Destruction's depth, her foreign foes, From whom submission wrings an infamous repose.

XIV.

In youth she was all glory,--a new Tyre,-- Her very byword sprung from victory, The 'Planter of the Lion,' which through fire And blood she bore o'er subject earth and sea; Though making many slaves, herself still free And Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite: Witness Troy's rival, Candia! Vouch it, ye Immortal waves that saw Lepanto's fight! For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight.

XV.

Statues of glass--all shivered--the long file Of her dead doges are declined to dust; But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust; Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust, Have yielded to the stranger: empty halls, Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must Too oft remind her who and what enthrals, Have flung a desolate cloud o'er Venice' lovely walls.

XVI.

When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse, And fettered thousands bore the yoke of war, Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse, Her voice their only ransom from afar: See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car Of the o'ermastered victor stops, the reins Fall from his hands--his idle scimitar Starts from its belt--he rends his captive's chains, And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains.

XVII.

Thus, Venice, if no stronger claim were thine, Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot, Thy choral memory of the bard divine, Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot Is shameful to the nations,--most of all, Albion! to thee: the Ocean Queen should not Abandon Ocean's children; in the fall Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall.

XVIII.

I loved her from my boyhood: she to me Was as a fairy city of the heart, Rising like water-columns from the sea, Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakspeare's art, Had stamped her image in me, and e'en so, Although I found her thus, we did not part, Perchance e'en dearer in her day of woe, Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show.

XIX.

I can repeople with the past--and of The present there is still for eye and thought, And meditation chastened down, enough; And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought; And of the happiest moments which were wrought Within the web of my existence, some From thee, fair Venice! have their colours caught: There are some feelings Time cannot benumb, Nor torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb.

XX.

But from their nature will the tannen grow Loftiest on loftiest and least sheltered rocks, Rooted in barrenness, where nought below Of soil supports them 'gainst the Alpine shocks Of eddying storms; yet springs the trunk, and mocks The howling tempest, till its height and frame Are worthy of the mountains from whose blocks Of bleak, grey granite, into life it came, And grew a giant tree;--the mind may grow the same.

XXI.

Existence may be borne, and the deep root Of life and sufferance make its firm abode In bare and desolate bosoms: mute The camel labours with the heaviest load, And the wolf dies in silence. Not bestowed In vain should such examples be; if they, Things of ignoble or of savage mood, Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay May temper it to bear,--it is but for a day.

XXII.

All suffering doth destroy, or is destroyed, Even by the sufferer; and, in each event, Ends:--Some, with hope replenished and rebuoyed, Return to whence they came--with like intent, And weave their web again; some, bowed and bent, Wax grey and ghastly, withering ere their time, And perish with the reed on which they leant; Some seek devotion, toil, war, good or crime, According as their souls were formed to sink or climb.

XXIII.

But ever and anon of griefs subdued There comes a token like a scorpion's sting, Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued; And slight withal may be the things which bring Back on the heart the weight which it would fling Aside for ever: it may be a sound-- A tone of music--summer's eve--or spring-- A flower--the wind--the ocean--which shall wound, Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound.

XXIV.

And how and why we know not, nor can trace Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind, But feel the shock renewed, nor can efface The blight and blackening which it leaves behind, Which out of things familiar, undesigned, When least we deem of such, calls up to view The spectres whom no exorcism can bind,-- The cold--the changed--perchance the dead--anew, The mourned, the loved, the lost--too many!--yet how few!

XXV.

But my soul wanders; I demand it back To meditate amongst decay, and stand A ruin amidst ruins; there to track Fall'n states and buried greatness, o'er a land Which WAS the mightiest in its old command, And IS the loveliest, and must ever be The master-mould of Nature's heavenly hand, Wherein were cast the heroic and the free, The beautiful, the brave--the lords of earth and sea.

XXVI.

The commonwealth of kings, the men of Rome! And even since, and now, fair Italy! Thou art the garden of the world, the home Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree; Even in thy desert, what is like to thee? Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste More rich than other climes' fertility; Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced.

XXVII.

The moon is up, and yet it is not night-- Sunset divides the sky with her--a sea Of glory streams along the Alpine height Of blue Friuli's mountains; Heaven is free From clouds, but of all colours seems to be-- Melted to one vast Iris of the West, Where the day joins the past eternity; While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest Floats through the azure air--an island of the blest!

XXVIII.

A single star is at her side, and reigns With her o'er half the lovely heaven; but still Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains Rolled o'er the peak of the far Rhaetian hill, As Day and Night contending were, until Nature reclaimed her order:--gently flows The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instil The odorous purple of a new-born rose, Which streams upon her stream, and glassed within it glows,

XXIX.

Filled with the face of heaven, which, from afar, Comes down upon the waters; all its hues, From the rich sunset to the rising star, Their magical variety diffuse: And now they change; a paler shadow strews Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues With a new colour as it gasps away, The last still loveliest, till--'tis gone--and all is grey.

XXX.

There is a tomb in Arqua;--reared in air, Pillared in their sarcophagus, repose The bones of Laura's lover: here repair Many familiar with his well-sung woes, The pilgrims of his genius. He arose To raise a language, and his land reclaim From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes: Watering the tree which bears his lady's name With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame.

XXXI.

They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died; The mountain-village where his latter days Went down the vale of years; and 'tis their pride-- An honest pride--and let it be their praise, To offer to the passing stranger's gaze His mansion and his sepulchre; both plain And venerably simple, such as raise A feeling more accordant with his strain, Than if a pyramid formed his monumental fane.

XXXII.

And the soft quiet hamlet where he dwelt Is one of that complexion which seems made For those who their mortality have felt, And sought a refuge from their hopes decayed In the deep umbrage of a green hill's shade, Which shows a distant prospect far away Of busy cities, now in vain displayed, For they can lure no further; and the ray Of a bright sun can make sufficient holiday.

XXXIII.

Developing the mountains, leaves, and flowers And shining in the brawling brook, where-by, Clear as its current, glide the sauntering hours With a calm languor, which, though to the eye Idlesse it seem, hath its morality, If from society we learn to live, 'Tis solitude should teach us how to die; It hath no flatterers; vanity can give No hollow aid; alone--man with his God must strive:

XXXIV.

Or, it may be, with demons, who impair The strength of better thoughts, and seek their prey In melancholy bosoms, such as were Of moody texture from their earliest day, And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay, Deeming themselves predestined to a doom Which is not of the pangs that pass away; Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb, The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom.

XXXV.

Ferrara! in thy wide and grass-grown streets, Whose symmetry was not for solitude, There seems as 'twere a curse upon the seat's Of former sovereigns, and the antique brood Of Este, which for many an age made good Its strength within thy walls, and was of yore Patron or tyrant, as the changing mood Of petty power impelled, of those who wore The wreath which Dante's brow alone had worn before.

XXXVI.

And Tasso is their glory and their shame. Hark to his strain! and then survey his cell! And see how dearly earned Torquato's fame, And where Alfonso bade his poet dwell. The miserable despot could not quell The insulted mind he sought to quench, and blend With the surrounding maniacs, in the hell Where he had plunged it. Glory without end Scattered the clouds away--and on that name attend

XXXVII.

The tears and praises of all time, while thine Would rot in its oblivion--in the sink Of worthless dust, which from thy boasted line Is shaken into nothing; but the link Thou formest in his fortunes bids us think Of thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn-- Alfonso! how thy ducal pageants shrink From thee! if in another station born, Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou mad'st to mourn:

XXXVIII.

THOU! formed to eat, and be despised, and die, Even as the beasts that perish, save that thou Hadst a more splendid trough, and wider sty: HE! with a glory round his furrowed brow, Which emanated then, and dazzles now In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire, And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre, That whetstone of the teeth--monotony in wire!

XXXIX.

Peace to Torquato's injured shade! 'twas his In life and death to be the mark where Wrong Aimed with their poisoned arrows--but to miss. Oh, victor unsurpassed in modern song! Each year brings forth its millions; but how long The tide of generations shall roll on, And not the whole combined and countless throng Compose a mind like thine? Though all in one Condensed their scattered rays, they would not form a sun.

XL.

Great as thou art, yet paralleled by those Thy countrymen, before thee born to shine, The bards of Hell and Chivalry: first rose The Tuscan father's comedy divine; Then, not unequal to the Florentine, The Southern Scott, the minstrel who called forth A new creation with his magic line, And, like the Ariosto of the North, Sang ladye-love and war, romance and knightly worth.

XLI.

The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust The iron crown of laurel's mimicked leaves; Nor was the ominous element unjust, For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves, And the false semblance but disgraced his brow; Yet still, if fondly Superstition grieves, Know that the lightning sanctifies below Whate'er it strikes;--yon head is doubly sacred now.

XLII.

Italia! O Italia! thou who hast The fatal gift of beauty, which became A funeral dower of present woes and past, On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame, And annals graved in characters of flame. Oh God! that thou wert in thy nakedness Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress;

XLIII.

Then mightst thou more appal; or, less desired, Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored For thy destructive charms; then, still untired, Would not be seen the armed torrents poured Down the deep Alps; nor would the hostile horde Of many-nationed spoilers from the Po Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger's sword Be thy sad weapon of defence, and so, Victor or vanquished, thou the slave of friend or foe.

XLIV.

Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him, The Roman friend of Rome's least mortal mind, The friend of Tully: as my bark did skim The bright blue waters with a fanning wind, Came Megara before me, and behind AEgina lay, Piraeus on the right, And Corinth on the left; I lay reclined Along the prow, and saw all these unite In ruin, even as he had seen the desolate sight;

XLV.

For time hath not rebuilt them, but upreared Barbaric dwellings on their shattered site, Which only make more mourned and more endeared The few last rays of their far-scattered light, And the crushed relics of their vanished might. The Roman saw these tombs in his own age, These sepulchres of cities, which excite Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage.

XLVI.

That page is now before me, and on mine HIS country's ruin added to the mass Of perished states he mourned in their decline, And I in desolation: all that WAS Of then destruction IS; and now, alas! Rome--Rome imperial, bows her to the storm, In the same dust and blackness, and we pass The skeleton of her Titanic form, Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm.

XLVII.

Yet, Italy! through every other land Thy wrongs should ring, and shall, from side to side; Mother of Arts! as once of Arms; thy hand Was then our Guardian, and is still our guide; Parent of our religion! whom the wide Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven! Europe, repentant of her parricide, Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven, Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven.

XLVIII.

But Arno wins us to the fair white walls, Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps A softer feeling for her fairy halls. Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps Her corn, and wine, and oil, and Plenty leaps To laughing life, with her redundant horn. Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps, Was modern Luxury of Commerce born, And buried Learning rose, redeemed to a new morn.

XLIX.

There, too, the goddess loves in stone, and fills The air around with beauty; we inhale The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils Part of its immortality; the veil Of heaven is half undrawn; within the pale We stand, and in that form and face behold What Mind can make, when Nature's self would fail; And to the fond idolaters of old Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould:

L.

We gaze and turn away, and know not where, Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart Reels with its fulness; there--for ever there-- Chained to the chariot of triumphal Art, We stand as captives, and would not depart. Away!--there need no words, nor terms precise, The paltry jargon of the marble mart, Where Pedantry gulls Folly--we have eyes: Blood, pulse, and breast, confirm the Dardan Shepherd's prize.

LI.

Appearedst thou not to Paris in this guise? Or to more deeply blest Anchises? or, In all thy perfect goddess-ship, when lies Before thee thy own vanquished Lord of War? And gazing in thy face as toward a star, Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn, Feeding on thy sweet cheek! while thy lips are With lava kisses melting while they burn, Showered on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn!

LII.

Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love, Their full divinity inadequate That feeling to express, or to improve, The gods become as mortals, and man's fate Has moments like their brightest! but the weight Of earth recoils upon us;--let it go! We can recall such visions, and create From what has been, or might be, things which grow, Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below.

LIII.