WHEN I am inclined to be serious, I love to wander up and down before the tomb of CAIUS CESTIUS. The Prot
estant burial-ground is there; and most of the little monuments are erected to the young; young men of promise, cut off when on their travels, full of enthusiasm, full of enjoyment; brides, in the bloom of their beauty, on their first journey; or children borne from home in search of health. This stone was placed by his fellow-travellers, young as himself, who will return to the house of his parents without him; that, by a husband or a father, now in his native country. His heart is buried in that grave.
It is a quiet and sheltered nook, covered in the winter with violets; and the Pyramid, that overshadows it, gives it a classical and singularly solemn air. You feel an interest there, a sympathy you were not prepared for. You are yourself in a foreign land; and they are for the most part your countrymen. They call upon you in your mothertongue in English-in words unknown to a native, known only to yourself; and the tomb of CESTIUS, that old majestic pile, has this also in common with them. It is itself a stranger, among strangers. It has stood there till the language spoken round about it has changed; and the shepherd, born at the foot, can read its inscription no longer. 32
'TIS over; and her lovely cheek is now On her hard pillow — there, alas! to be Nightly, through many and many a dreary hour, Wan, often wet with tears, and (ere at length Her place is empty, and another comes) In anguish, in the ghastliness of death; Hers never more to leave those mournful walls, Even on her bier.
'Tis over; and the rite, With all its pomp and harmony, is now Floating before her. She arose at home, To be the show, the idol of the day; Her vesture gorgeous, and her starry head - No rocket, bursting in the midnight-sky, So dazzling. When to-morrow she awakes, She will awake as though she still was there, Still in her father's house; and, lo! a cell Narrow and dark, naught through the gloom discerned, Naught save the crucifix, the rosary,
And the gray habit lying by to shroud Her beauty and grace.
When on her knees she fell,
Entering the solemn place of consecration, And from the latticed gallery came a chant Of psalms, most saint-like, most angelical, Verse after verse sung out how holily, The strain returning, and still, still returning, Methought it acted like a spell upon her, And she was casting off her earthly dross;
Yet was it sad as sweet, and, ere it closed,
Came like a dirge. When her fair head was shorn, And the long tresses in her hands were laid,
That she might fling them from her, saying, "Thus, Thus I renounce the world and worldly things!" 263 When, as she stood, her bridal ornaments
Were, one by one, removed, even to the last,
That she might say, flinging them from her, "Thus, Thus I renounce the world!" when all was changed, And, as a nun, in homeliest guise she knelt, Distinguished only by the crown she wore, Her crown of lilies as the spouse of Christ, Well might her strength forsake her, and her knees Fail in that hour! Well might the holy man, He, at whose feet she knelt, give as by stealth ('T was in her utmost need; nor, while she lives, 4 Will it go from her, fleeting as it was)
That faint but fatherly smile, that smile of love And pity!
Like a dream the whole is fled; And they, that came in idleness to gaze Upon the victim dressed for sacrifice, Are mingling in the world; thou in thy cell Forgot, TERESA. Yet, among them all, None were so formed to love and to be loved, None to delight, adorn; and on thee now A curtain, blacker than the night, is dropped Forever! In thy gentle bosom sleep Feelings, affections, destined now to die, To wither like the blossom in the bud, Those of a wife, a mother; leaving there A cheerless void, a chill as of the grave,
A languor and a lethargy of soul,
Death-like, and gathering more and more, till Death
What now to thee the treasure of thy youth?
But thou canst not yet reflect
Calmly; so many things, strange and perverse, That meet, recoil, and go but to return, The monstrous birth of one eventful day, Troubling thy spirit from the first at dawn, The rich arraying for the nuptial feast,
To the black pall, the requiem. All in turn Revisit thee, and round thy lowly bed
Hover, uncalled. Thy young and innocent heart, How is it beating? Has it no regrets? Discoverest thou no weakness lurking there? But thine exhausted frame has sunk to rest. Peace to thy slumbers!
THERE is an insect, that, when evening comes, Small though he be and scarce distinguishable,
Like Evening clad in soberest livery,
Unsheathes his wings 266 and through the woods and glades
Scatters a marvellous splendor. On he wheels,
Blazing by fits as from excess of joy,"
Each gush of light a gush of ecstasy ; Nor unaccompanied; thousands that fling A radiance all their own, not of the day,
Thousands as bright as he, from dusk till dawn,
Well may the child put forth his little hands, Singing the nursery-song he learnt so soon; And the young nymph, preparing for the dance 269 By brook or fountain-side, in many a braid Wreathing her golden hair, well may she cry, "Come hither; and the shepherds, gathering round, Shall say, Floretta emulates the Night,
Spangling her head with stars."
This shining race, when in the TUSCULAN groves My path no longer glimmered; oft among Those trees, religious once and always green,' That still dream out their stories of old ROME Over the ALBAN lake; oft met and hailed, Where the precipitate ANIO thunders down, And through the surging mist a poet's house (So some aver, and who would not believe ?) 271 Reveals itself. Yet cannot I forget Him, who rejoiced me in those walks at eve, My earliest, pleasantest; who dwells unseen, And in our northern clime, when all is still, Nightly keeps watch, nightly in bush or brake His lonely lamp rekindling. Unlike theirs, His, if less dazzling, through the darkness knows No intermission; sending forth its ray
Through the green leaves, a ray serene and clear As Virtue's own.
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