Shall vengeance burst, ere yet a warning fear "Yes, desperate band! if right my hopes divine, * # # ♦ * * "Lo! where my victim comes!—of noble birth, Of cultured genius, and exalted worth, With her,* his best beloved, in all her charms, Pride of his heart, and treasure of his arms! From foaming waves, from raging winds they fly, Spared for revenge, reserved for agony! Oh ! dark the fate that calls them from their home, On this rude shore, my savage reign, to roam, And sternly saves them from a billowy tomb, For woes more exquisite, more dreadful doom! —Yes! he shall see the offspring, loved in vain, Pierced with keen famine, die in lingering pain; Shall see fierce Canres every garment tear From her, the soft, the idolized, the fair; Shall see those limbs of Nature's finest mould, Bare to the sultry sun, or midnight-cold, And, in long wanderings o'er a desert land Those tender feet imprint the scorching sand, • Don Emmanuel de Sonza and his wife, Leonora de;S$. "Yet more, yet deeper woe, shall those behold, Who live through toils unequall'd and untold I On the wild shore, beneath the burning sky, The hapless pair, exhausted, sink to die! Bedew the rock with tears of pain intense, Of bitterest anguish, thrilling every sense, Till in one last embrace, with mortal throes, Their struggling spirits mount from anguish to repose \" As the dark phantom sternly thus portray'd Our future ills, in Horror's deepest shade,— "Who then art thou?" I cried, "dread being, tell Each sense thus bending in amazement's spell?" —With fearful shriek, far echoing o'er the tide, Writhing his lips and eyes, he thus replied— "Behold the genius of that secret shore, Where the wind rages, and the billows roar; That stormy Cape, for ages mine alone, To Pompey, Strabo, Pliny, all unknown! Far to the southern pole my throne extends, That hidden rock, which Afric's region ends. Behold that spirit, whose avenging might, Whose fiercest wrath your daring deeds excite." * * * * # Thus having said, with strange, terrific cries, The giant-spectre vanish'd from our eyes; In sable clouds dissolved—while far around, Dark ocean's heaving realms his parting yells resound! A DIRGE. Weep for the early lost!— E'en when life promised most, Did the young mother's eye, In sunshine could reply? —Then look for clouds to dim the fairest morn! Oh! strong is faith, if wo like this be borne. For there is hush'd on earth By the once-joyous hearth. But there is power with faith! Power, e'en though nature, o'er the untimely grave. Must weep, when God resumes the gem He gave; For sorrow comes of Death, And with a yearning heart we linger on, But glory from the dust, With an immortal trust! 1823. THE MAREMMA. ["nello Della PiETRAhad espoused a lady of noble family at Sienna, named Madonna Pia. Her beauty was the admiration of Tuscany, and excited in the heart of her husband a jealousy, which, exasperated by false reports and groundless suspicions, at length drove hira to the desperate resolution of Othello. It is difficult to decide whether the lady was quite innocent, but so Dante represents her. Her husband brought her into the Maremma, which, then as now, was a district destructive of health. He never told his unfortunate wife the reason of her banishment to so dangerous a country. He did not deign to utter complaint or accusation. He lived with her alone, in cold silence, without answering her questions, or listening to her remonstrances. He patiently waited till the pestilential air should destroy the health of this young lady. In a few months she died. Some chronicles, indeed, tell us that Nello used the dagger to hasten her death. It is certain that he survived her, plunged in sadness and perpetual silence. Dante had, in this incident, all the materials of an ample and very poetical narrative. But he bestows on it only four verses. He meets in Purgatory three spirits. One was a captain who fell fighting on the same side with him in the battle of Campaldino; the second, a gentleman assassinated by the treachery of the House of Este; the third, was a woman unknown to the poet, and who, after the others had spoken, turned towards him with these words:— *Recorditi di me; che son la Pia, Purgatorio, cant. —Edinburgh Review, No. lviii.] VOL. III. I |