As my eyes dwelt on the dingy and bescrawled walls of this dreary cell, to which those of Tasso must have so frequently turned in all the sickness of hope deferred, and bitterness of a deep sense of the injustice under which he was writhing, my feelings became as if for a moment identified with those he must have experienced, and I perpetrated some verses that give a faint picture of his state. How indignantly would the poet spurn this poor endeavor of mine to express his emotions, wanting, as my feeble lines do, the spirit, the eloquence of his glowing pen; and yet, perhaps, he might have pardoned the weak attempt to describe his sufferings, in consideration of the deep sympathy that originated my attempt at a description of them.
I wake once more:-Another hateful day
Dawns on my weary life. O false Hope! say
Is't thus with all men that the visions fade
By thee to youth in colors bright displayed?
Art thou like her who captive made this heart,
Then laughed to see it writhing 'neath the smart
Of deep and cruel Love?-Go, siren, go!
Thou art a fiend-like mocker of my woe!
Yet glorious, glorious! were the dreams thou sent
Of Genius crowned, and Pride, that must relent
To pity, if it might not share my flame
When Fame had shed a halo o'er my name!
Yes, Leonore! by such bright dreams upborne,
How dread my waking fall-beneath thy scorn!
Ah! when Hope whispered of that glorious day
Which should the Poet's aching vigils pay,
When loud applause should, like the clarion's voice,
Bid nations in a new-found star rejoice;
When the rich laurel wreath should twine the brow
Where the hired leech seeks trace of madness now,
Ah! then!-when rose the pageant to my mind
Where Wit and Beauty, Power and Wealth combined,
(For poets are like sibyls, and can view
Unreal things in many a fairer hue
Than ever meets the common mortal sight),
I turned me from the scene so dazzling bright
To seek thy smile, the guerdon that outvied
The richest homages of earth beside!
Dreams! and for ever gone-for Hope has fled,
I bade her go-yon pallet is no bed
For guest so fair, when man's rude frame must thrill
At its hard contact and corroding chill.
Ay!-I am turned to stone-so let it be,
If thou my form as sepulchre wouldst see,
Wherein the purest passion is inurned
That e'er in ill-requited lover burned!
Doth my mind wander? Shield me, Heavenly Power
Forbid my quivering lips in this dark hour
To utter those fantastic thoughts that still
Checquer my grim despair-Rise! stubborn Will,
Control vain Fancy-lest my foes proclaim
Me mad indeed, and yield me up to shame!
Yet madness I would pray for, if it brought
A blessed lethargy that banished thought;
Too torturing thought! as Memory bright displays
On her weird mirror hopes of other days;
Yes, I the wretch could envy, whose wreck'd mind
No cell can disabuse, no chain can bind,
Who deems the grinding chain, the dripping wall,
The gold and purple robe, the regal hall;
Ay! those whose outcries lacerate mine ear,
And fill mine eyes with dews of grief and fear;
As, goaded by the lash to wild despair,
They howl like wild beast hunted from its lair ;
Even theirs are lighter pangs than mine-Woe's me! Their bodies only suffer agony !
While tortures worse than those of rack or scourge, My mind to dread conclusions ceaseless urge!
Was it for this I left Sorrento's shore,
And its blue sea, bright as the sky that's o'er
Its orange groves, its sunny slopes and dells,
Its rocky caves where sparkle tiny wells,
From ocean parted, when the gentle wind
Waved the sea back, and kept the rills behind?
How oft does memory paint that happy coast,
The Eden of our land!-lost to me !-lost!
And I could deem its soft gales o'er me sweep,
Then wake to see this horrid vault-and weep!
My blessed home! there dwells a faithful one,
Who recks not of her brother thus undone ;
Who believes me happy, honored for those lays,
That won from Italy unbounded praise;
Thinks that the Duke is proud his court should boast
A poet more to whom he plays the host,
With Ariosto linking the high name
Of Este to our claims for future fame!
My dear, fair sister, little dreamest thou
What a grim prison holds thy Tasso now;
Shut from the world, debarred the light of day,
Save when aslant shoots in some lonely ray
Of the bright sun through yonder mournful grate,
And smiles its passing pity for my fate!
O! how I joyed in Nature's boundless charms!
Not lover flying to his lady's arms,
Nor sailor yearning as he nears the shore,
To see his birth-place and loved home once more,
Such longings know as mine to wander free
'Mid thy wide treasuries, O Earth!-and see
Again the glory hidden from mine eyes,
To wake thy echoes-mystic melodies;
To feel once-once again thy genial air,
Fan this worn cheek, and stir this matted hair;
To bound in rapture o'er thy emerald turf,
Thy white pearls gather from the foaming surf;
To sleep beneath the rich-not gloomy-shade
Of orange trees, whose odours bland pervade
The fainting sense-to fill my breast with flowers,
Fragrant and bright as fill Sorrento's bowers;
To see the butterfly with jewelled wing
Float in the air-to hear the wild birds sing-
To pluck the grape that from the trellis weaves,
Or golden citron from its glossy leaves;
To feast upon the fig so melting-sweet,
Screened from the noontide's enervating heat
In some cool grot, with ivy mantled o'er,
Where the blue sea is threshold of the door.
O! shall I never more attune my lyre,
('Mid scenes that might this tortured heart inspire), And strive until to verse the power was given
To image Nature as the sea does Heaven,
When o'er the placid bosom of the deep,
Like seraph-armaments the white clouds sweep,
For thus the poet's fancy gives again,
O earth, and sky! your wealth, not shown in vain!
No churls are they your bounties to conceal,
But like the flowers whose glowing breasts reveal
The light their petals drank-from poet's minds
Stream images in you alone he finds.
O! had my happier lot been free to rove
O'er the glad earth-my heart instinct with love,
And inspiration from each bright scene caught,
Of land and sea, and Heaven with stars inwrought,
And I had left-rich Nature-dowered by thee,
Some strains which my best epitaph might be.
But here, close prisoned in a dismal cell,
The helpless victim of a wizard spell-
Branded with madness while this aching brain,
Though tortured, feels the falsehood of the stain ;
Proclaimed a traitor-by my prince abhorred,
Judged, crime unproved, without defending word-
Light, air, forbid me—all appeal denied—
While friends forsake me, and while foes deride;
The muse will visit such a wretch no more,
The light is quenched-the short-lived music o'er,
Faded from earth, its joy, its love, its bloom,
Soon may kind Heaven consign me to the tomb.
The melancholy peculiar to the poetical temperament, was one of the early characteristics of Tasso. Few poets have ever escaped this infirmity of genius, though many have had the strength of mind and prudence to conceal its demonstrations. It may furnish a subject of doubt to the casuist, whether the malady is cause or effect of the possession of the divine gift. Like the pearl, which all unite in admiring, and which is produced by the disease of the oyster in which it is found, may not genius be generated by an over-excited and unhealthy state of the mind, in which the imagination predominating over reason, creates ideas brilliant and beautiful; and then, in the re-action of the mental faculties, sinks into a morbid sadness, or gives way to the violence and irritability which too often mark its course?
This sadness or irritation may by ill-treatment
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