FERRARA

THE PRISON OF TASSO

FERRARA! in thy wide and grass-grown streets, Whose symmetry was not for solitude, There seems as 't were a curse upon the seats 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.

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 at

tend

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:

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!

Peace to Torquato's injured shade! 't was his In life and death to be the mark where Wrong Aimed with her poisoned arrows-but to miss. O 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.

LORD BYRON.

TASSO'S DUNGEON

HOW MIGHT the goaded sufferer in his cell,
With nothing upon which his eyes might fall,
Except this vacant court, that dreary wall,-
How might he live? I asked. Here doomed to
dwell,

I marvel how at all he could repel

Thoughts which to madness and despair would call.
Enter this vault; the bare sight will appall

Thy spirit, even as mine within me fell,
Until I learned that wall not always there

Had stood,—'t was something that this iron grate
Had once looked out upon a garden fair.

There must have been then here, to calm his brain, Green leaves, and flowers, and sunshine;-and a

weight

Fell from me, and my heart revived again.

RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH.

TO THE DUKE ALPHONSO, ASKING TO BE LIBERATED

A NEW Ixion upon fortune's wheel,
Whether I sink profound, or rise sublime,
One never-ceasing martyrdom I feel,

The same in woe, though changing all the time.
I wept above, where sunbeams sport and climb
The vines, and through their foliage sighs the
breeze,

I burned and froze, languished, and prayed in rhyme.

Nor could your ire, nor my own grief appease.
Now in my prison, deep and dim, have grown
My torments greater still and keener far,
As if all sharpened on the dungeon-stone:
Magnanimous Alphonso! burst the bar,
Changing my fate, and not my cell alone,
And let my fortune wheel me where you are!

TORQUATO TASSO.

Tr. Richard Henry Wilde.

ARQUA

PETRARCH'S TOMB

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.

They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died;
The mountain-village where his latter days
Went down the vale of years; and 't is 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 fame.