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. 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, 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, 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. Thy spirit, even as mine within me fell, There must have been then here, to calm his brain, 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, The same in woe, though changing all the time. I burned and froze, languished, and prayed in rhyme. Nor could your ire, nor my own grief appease. TORQUATO TASSO. Tr. Richard Henry Wilde. ARQUA PETRARCH'S TOMB THERE is a tomb in Arqua;-reared in air, The bones of Laura's lover; here repair They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died; An honest pride,—and let it be their praise, A feeling more accordant with his strain Than if a pyramid formed his monumental fame. |