Works

Borgia, thou once wert almost too august
And high for adoration; now thou'rt dust.
All that remains of thee these plaits unfold,
Calm hair, meandering in pellucid gold.

Frowns are on every Muse's face,
Reproaches from their lips are sent,
That mimicry should thus disgrace
The noble Instrument.

A very Harp in all but size!
Needles for strings in apt gradation!...

Inhuman man! curse on thy barb'rous art,
And blasted be thy murder-aiming eye;
May never pity soothe thee with a sigh,
Nor ever pleasure glad thy cruel heart.
...

Not great Vesuvius, in all his ire,
Nor all the centuries, could hide your shame.
There is the little window where you came,
With eyes that woke the demon of desire,...

'Tis well - 'tis well - that clustering shade
Is on thy forehead sweetly laid;
And that light curl that slumbers by
Makes deeper yet thy depth of eye;
And that white rose that decks thy hair...

Sensibility how charming,
Thou, my friend, canst truly tell:
But distress with horrors arming,
Thou host also known too well.

Fairest flower, behold the lily,
Blooming in the sunny ray:...

I glimpsed a woman's muslined form
Sing-songing airily
Against the moon; and still she sang,
And took no heed of me.

Another trice, and I beheld
What first I had not scanned,...

O sovereign of an isle renown'd
For undisputed sway,
Wherever o'er yon gulf profound
Her navies wing their way,


With juster claims she builds at length
Her empire on the sea,...

The years are but half a score,
And the war-whoop sounds no more
With the blast of bugles, where
Straight into a slaughter pen,
With his doomed three hundred men,
Rode the chief with the yellow hair....

Thou flattering work of friendship kind,
Still may thy pages call to mind
The dear, the beauteous donor;
Though sweetly female every part,
Yet such a head, and more the heart,...

So then'the Vandals of our isle,
Sworn foes to sense and law,
Have burnt to dust a nobler pile
Than ever Roman saw!


And Murray sighs o'er Pope and Swift,
And many a treasure more,...

In this belov'd marble view
Above the works and thoughts of Man,
What Nature could but would not do,
And Beauty and Canova can!
Beyond Imagination's power,
Beyond the Bard's defeated art,...

1.
Ghosts of the dead! have I not heard your yelling
Rise on the night-rolling breath of the blast,
When o'er the dark aether the tempest is swelling,
And on eddying whirlwind the thunder-peal passed?
...

Ward of the Law! dread Shadow of a King!
Whose realm had dwindled to one stately room;
Whose universe was gloom immersed in gloom,
Darkness as thick as life o'er life could fling,...

Must noble Hastings immaturely die,
The honour of his ancient family;
Beauty and learning thus together meet,
To bring a winding for a wedding-sheet?
Must Virtue prove Death's harbinger? must she,...

Over his millions Death has lawful power,
But over thee, brave D'Ossoli! none, none.
After a longer struggle, in a fight
Worthy of Italy, to youth restor'd,
Thou, far from home, art sunk beneath the surge...

Fourscore and five times has the gradual year
Risen and fulfilled its days of youth and eld
Since first the child's eyes opening first beheld
Light, who now leaves behind to help us here...

The lamp of day, with ill-presaging glare,
Dim, cloudy, sunk beneath the western wave;
Th' inconstant blast howl'd thro' the darkening air,
And hollow whistled in the rocky cave.
...

(The Priests within the Temple)
She was wrinkled and huge and hideous? She was our Mother.
She was lustful and lewd? but a God; we had none other....

Not to the midnight of the gloomy past,
Do we revert to-day; we look upon
The golden present and the future vast
Whose vistas show us visions of the dawn.

Nor shall the sorrows of departed years...