"A little ebb, within a little hour,
Came to these lovers: on Pietra's breast
Madonna Pia wept the sweetest shower
That ever calmed a stormy joy's unrest.

And then the voice of each, in that calm bower,
Came back, like happy birds, to their loved nest;

And each to each could breathe sweet words anew,

And talk of love as happy lovers do."

And now for the turning point of the story, which is rendered thus: (We quote at length, as a fair specimen of the whole.)

"I pass these raptures - for these raptures passed:
Oh! then the change!- and now the change I tell.
Not vainly was the cypress-shadow cast,

Not without import on the stream it fell:

The debt to vengeful Nemesis amassed

Will have its hour-and she exacts it well:

Though human hearts (let but the goddess wait)

Are their own Nemesis, or soon or late.

"Suns rose and set:- The Sire, the Dame, the Priest,
Had smiled, and prayed, and blessed the nuptial tie.
Moons waxed and waned: The bridal joy and feast
Were numbered with the thousand things gone by:
And in Sienna's marts and squares had ceased
The gaze, the murmur, and the whisper sly;
And fluttering gallants sought no more to please
The wedded wonder of the Siennese.

"Returning from a revel- the most bright
And joyous that Sienna since had known,
Madonna Pia, with a heart more light
Than lightest rose-leaves by the zephyr blown,
As down a terrace stair-way's marble flight
(By many a torch and many a cresset shown)
Lightly she stepped, chanced lightly there to smile,
At some fair thought that crossed her mind the while.

"Perchance some flash of light and reckless mirth
Heard where young careless hearts were flowing o'er;
Some freak of playful Fancy, taking birth
From this or that that others said or wore;
Some transient jest of little blame or worth,
Some pleasant nothing, smiled at just before:
When all is cloudless in the heart's glad sky,
Smiles wander to the lip we scarce know why.
"But hast thou never, gentle listener, read
How, in those olden days, with passion rife,
E'en for a look- or word at random said,
There was the secret cell, the secret knife-
Or poison mixed so subtly, strangely dread,
That the least touch was deadly bane to life?
Look! e'en such venom's concentrated might
Was in Madonna's smile that fatal night!

"For at the moment when Pietra's glance
Fell on that smile (oh! smile so peerless then!)
And for the cause shot round, by evil chance
It fell on one who seemed to smile again.

Better had he who smiled, with pointless lance
Have rushed into a hungry lion's den!
Better for that sweet Lady undefiled

If he had stabbed her, even as she smiled!

"Lo! the first taint of canker in the rose-
Lo! the first gall and wormwood in the draught!
First rankling of a wound no more to close-
First random piercing of an aimless shaft!--
What thoughts within Pietra's breast arose!
His Angel shuddered, and his Demon laughed-
Laughed to behold the busy hand of sin
Already shaping its own hell within!

"Sternly he sullened on their homeward way-
Sternly he sullened to their chamber-door-
Sternly he left Madonna there-a prey
To many a bitter pang unfelt before:
Alone he left her and alone she lay,
Wondering and weeping all this strangeness o'er-
Wondering and weeping-pouring sigh on sigh,
And asking her deaf pillow Why, oh why?'
"Wrong and Remorse her prescient heart foresaw,
For well her country's "yellow plague" she knew;
Though, as a gem without a speck or flaw,
She knew her own clear innocent spirit too:
Sudden a hand her curtain strove to draw -
And, as she sprang to gaze on him who drew,
A stern voice bade her 'rise! and quick prepare
To journey with her Lord- he knew not where.'

"Stern was the bidding-stern the bidder's look:
She gazed upon his face, and read therein
All cruel thoughts and deeds, as in a book;
Little of mercy-much of wrath and sin:
And while his parting steps the chamber shook,
All deadly white she grew, from brow to chin;
And rose, the fearful mystery to learn,

And with dread haste obeyed the bidding stern.

"As down some dusky stream a dying swan

Creeps slow, slow down the marble stairs she crept,
Shivering with icy terror,—and, anon,

From out the portal's gloomy arch-way stept:
There sat Pietra, staring spectral-wan,
And ghastly motionless, as if he slept

On his dark steed: another neighed before her,
And to its saddle menial hands upbore her.

"Why spake he not? this dreadful silence why?
This timeless ride into the starless dark?
Vain questions all, that with imploring eye
Vainly she asked-for there was none to mark;
And like to one who under stormiest sky
Puts forth on ocean in a crazy bark,
She felt, when, almost ere her lips could say

'O God!' the dark steeds sprang away — away!"

This is but prelude to a mournful journal of the transfer to the tower in the middle of the fatal marsh of Maremma, and the

slow wasting of the innocent and lovely victim under the insidious poison of malaria, and the stony silence of the preternatural, inhuman vengeance of the husband, who came every day to see her waste,

"And, while the suppliant wept and prayed apart,

Held him inexorably silent still:

Raising her hot and streaming eyes anon,
The silently-implacable was gone.

"Gone-and no word: and thus, all sternly dumb,
Daily, for months, her prison to and fro
Implacable in silence did he come,
Implacable in silence did he go:

Oh! list, poor victim! list the bittern's hum,
List to the sullen winds without that blow,

List to whate'er drear voice comes o'er the fen-
Pietra's voice thoul't never list again!"

"Oh sternest gaoler that did ever yet

Gaze upon martyred sweetness, vulture-eyed! —
Daily her miserable food he set-

With his own hand, and trusted none beside:-
And daily thus, all wretchedness, they met,
And daily thus they withered and they died;-
For soon, on both, the pestilential air

Of the Maremma worked like poison there.

"Chiefly on her: the oil of her sweet lamp

With speedier ruin wasted: lip and cheek
Hollowed and thinned, and the eternal damp
Breathed from that fenny ocean wide and bleak
Filled her with palsying rheum, and ache and cramp;
Gave to her pallid brow a deathlier streak,
And to her eye that drear and ominous light
Which dimly beacons the long ceaseless night!

"Oh! then, the banquet of avenging ill

The avenger saw and felt was spreading fast!

And Retribution's fiery hand should fill

Her 'cup of trembling' to the brim at last!—

He saw her drooping-withering-sickening still,
And ghostlier looking every day that passed;
And, with a stern vindictive patience, bore
Himself, disease unfeared, unfelt before."

All this is very powerfully told, and there is not wanting a halo of high spiritual beauty about the portrait of the sufferer, to relieve the natural horrors of the sacrifice. The poet employs one little trick of euphony a great deal, and not without a musical effect. It is what would be called, in musical composition, the imitation of passages or phrases. That is, the echoing in the next line of a form of words from the line preceding, or from the first to the last half of the same line; and this sometimes in the direct, sometimes in the inverted or reflected order; which gives a unity and compactness to the stanza, rhythmically considered, like the continual repetition of the same little motive in a good piece of

music. Perhaps he carries it too far for poetry. Here are in

stances:

"I pass these raptures · for these raptures passed:

Oh! then the change!—and now the change I tell."
"But, midway, on the right, like some lone isle
In a lone lake, a lonely tower she saw-
Lonely and dark," &c.

"Their gloomy pathway gloomier shadows cast."

"And from the bleak sky to the bleaker shore."

And so repeatedly. Sometimes the imitation runs all through a stanza, as in the following, which is very graphic:

"Thither she dragged-and saw the fenny grass
Sullenly wave o'er all that sullen lea;

And heard the bittern boon in the morass,
And saw the wild-swan hurrying to the sea;
And dreary gleams, and drearier shadows, pass
O'er lonely wilds that lonelier could not be:
And then she turned, all hopelessness, within,
And felt that all was hopelessly akin.",

This is like Spenser:

"The wretched porter of those wretched stones,
He who thus opened, was a sight to see!
The flesh had pined so from his starting bones
That like a living skeleton was he:

His breath was a mixed thing of gasps and moans,
And old ere middle age he seemed to be:

Blear-eyed he was, and vext with ache and cramp,
Fed evermore by that pernicious swamp."

We have not room to go into any critical invoice of the minor poems which fill out the volumes. They are of every variety, in form and subject, though mostly of the kind called "occasional poems." Among the best are the "Epithalamium," the "Lover's Rhapsody," (so à la Wordsworth,) and "Pale Student." Many are written for music, but they are not simple enough for that; the words should simply hint the theme, if music is to develop it. A tendency to too great copiousness of words is frequently apparent, as, for instance, in the version of Goethe's "Das Blumlein Wunderschön." The sonnets are beautifully moulded, and have the poetic tone; but there is not always meaning enough in them. He justifies the form by prefixing to two separate batches of them Wordsworth's two sonnets, one quoting authorities from Shakspeare to Milton, and the other likening the sonnet to "the prison, unto which we doom ourselves," and which, therefore, "no prison is." There is a disposition to support the right side in some humanitary questions, here and there, as in the condemnation of war in the "Stanzas on Waterloo." We are sorry, however, that the author should have deemed it necessary to add an

apologetic note to prove his patriotic reverence for the "GREAT VICTOR," the Duke of Wellington!

We will end with a specimen of one style of poem, in which our author is perhaps as successful as in any other.

THE SHORTEST DAY.

"Pile

ye the faggot-heap

Autumn is dead!

Winter, the icicled,

Reigns in his stead:

Faster and faster

Come, Ravage and Dearth!

Winter, your master,

Is lord of the earth!

"Spread we the feast

Bid the curtains be drawn

Twilight hath ceased,

And 't is long to the dawn

Hark to the rising gust!

Hark to the rain!

Hark to the sleety shower

Hurled on the pane!

"Heap the hearth's splendour up

Hail to the blaze!

If we must render up

Homage and praise
To the cold frozen one
Nature obeys,

Be thou our comforter,

SHORTEST OF DAYS!

"With a halo of glory,

(As though 't were in scorn
Of Winter the hoary,)
Up-springeth thy morn!
Briefest of brief ones!

Thou yieldest a token
One rod of the Tyrant
Already is broken!

"The team to the shed,

And the flock to the pen

-

They know not the night-wave

Is ebbing again;

But joy, joy, to your pillows,
O children of men!

LIGHT's glorious billows

Are flowing again!

"Dash the torch, and the taper,
And the dim lamp, away-

Through storm and through vapour

Come, life-giving DAY!

Joy's glance, with thy morrow,

More joyous shall be,

And the pale cheek of Sorrow

Grow brighter for thee!