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! (1)

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 Roll'd o'er the peak of the far Rhætian hill, As Day and Night contending were, until Nature reclaim'd 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 glass'd within it

glows,

does not rest in beholding, nor is satisfied with describing, what is before him. It has a power and being, blending itself with the poet's very life. Though Byron had, with his real eyes, perhaps, seen more of Nature than ever was before permitted to any great poet, yet he never before seemed to open his whole heart to her genial impulses. But in this he is changed; and in this and the fourth Cantos of Childe Harold, he will stand a comparison with the best descriptive poets, in this age of descriptive poetry. PROFESSOR WILSON.]

(1) The above description may seem fantastical or exaggerated to those who have never seen an Oriental or an Italian sky, yet it is but a literal and hardly sufficient delineation of an August evening (the eighteenth), as contemplated in one of many rides along the banks of the Brenta, near La Mira.

XXIX.

Fill'd 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 gray.

xxx.

There is a tomb in Arqua;-rear'd in air,
Pillar'd in their sarcophagus, repose

The bones of Laura's lover: here repair OTHE

3700

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 (1) With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame.

XXXI.

They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died ; (2) 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 form'd his monumental fane.

(1, 2) See "Historical Notes," Nos. VIII. and IX.

ΧΧΧΙΙ.

And the soft quiet hamlet where he dwelt (1) Is one of that complexion which seems made For those who their mortality have felt, And sought a refuge from their hopes decay'd In the deep umbrage of a green hill's shade, Which shows a distant prospect far away Of busy cities, now in vain display'd, For they can lure no further; and the ray Of a bright sun can make sufficient holiday.

ΧΧΧΙΙΙ.

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:

He built his house, whence as by stealth he caught
Among the hills, a glimpse of busy life

That soothed, not stirr'd."

"I have built, among the Euganean hills, a small house, decent and proper; in which I hope to pass the rest of my days, thinking always of my dead or absent friends." Among those still living was Boccaccio, who is thus mentioned by him in his will: - "To Don Giovanni of Certaldo, for a winter gown at his evening studies, I leave fifty golden florins; truly, little enough for so great a man." When the Venetians overran the country, Petrarch prepared for flight. "Write your Name over your door," said one of his friends, " and you will be safe." "I am not sure of that," replied Petrarch, and fled with his books to Padua, His books he left to the republic of Venice, laying, as it were, a foundation for the library of St. Mark; but they exist no longer. His legacy to Francis Carrara, a Madonna painted by Giotto, is still preserved in the Cathedral of Padua,- ROGERS.]

XXXIV.

Or, it may be, with demons, who impair (1) 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!(2) in thy wide and grass-grown streets, Whose symmetry was not for solitude, There seems as 'twere 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 impell'd, of those who wore The wreath which Dante's brow alone had worn before.

(1) The struggle is to the full as likely to be with demons as with our better thoughts. Satan chose the wilderness for the temptation of our Saviour. And our unsullied John Locke preferred the presence of a child to complete solitude.

(2) [In April, 1817, Lord Byron visited Ferrara, went over the castle, cell, &c., and wrote, a few days after, the Lament of Tasso. "One of the Ferrarese asked me," he says, in a letter to a friend, " if I knew 'Lord Byron,' an acquaintance of his, now at Naples. I told him 'No!' which was true both ways, for I knew not the impostor; and, in the other, no one knows himself. He stared, when told that I was the real Simon Pure! Another asked me, if I had not translated Tasso. You see what Fame is! how accurate! how boundless! I don't know how others feel, but I am always the lighter and the better looked on when I have got rid of mine. It sits on me like armour on the Lord Mayor's champion; and I got rid of all the husk of literature, and the attendant babble, by answering that I had not translated Tasso, but a namesake had; and, by the blessing of Heaven, I looked so little like a poet, that every body believed me." -B. Letters.]

XXXVI.

And Tasso is their glory and their shame.
Hark to his strain! and then survey his cell !
And see how dearly earn'd 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
Scatter'd 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 madest to mourn:

XXXVIII.

Thou! form'd 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 furrow'd brow, Which emanated then, and dazzles now, In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire, And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow (1) No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre, That whetstone of the teeth-monotony in wire!

(1) See "Historical Notes," at the end of this canto, No. X.