TWO SONGS FROM VICTOR HUGO'S "BURGRAVES"

I

THROUGH the long winter the rough wind tears;
With their white garment the hills look wan.
Love on who cares?

Who cares? Love on.

My mother is dead; God's patience wears;
It seems my chaplain will not have done.
Love on: who cares?

Who cares? Love on.

The Devil, hobbling up the stairs,
Comes for me with his ugly throng.
Love on who cares?

Who cares? Love on.

II

IN the time of the civil broils

Our swords are stubborn things.

A fig for all the cities!

A fig for all the kings!

The Burgrave prospereth:

Men fear him more and more.
Barons, a fig for his Holiness!
A fig for the Emperor !

Right well we hold our own

With the brand and the iron rod.

A fig for Satan, Burgraves!
Burgraves, a fig for God!

CAPITOLO :

A. M. SALVINI TO FRANCESCO REDI, 16—

KNOW then, dear Redi, (sith thy gentle heart
Would read my riddle and my mystery,)—
That I am thinking from men's thoughts apart;
And that I learn deeper theology

While my soul travails over Dante's page,

Than with long study in the schools might be.

Many and many things, holy and sage,

To the dim mind his mighty words unveil,
Thralling it with a welcome vassalage:

Nor doth his glorious lamp flicker or fail
By reason of that vapoury shrouding strange,
Which in like argument may much prevail.

Through old and trodden paths he scorned to range;
He took the leap of Chaos;-high, and low,
And to the middle region's state of change.

Bright things, and dubious things, and things of woe, Thence to the mind he spake with pictured speech, Making the tongue cry out, They must be so!" The how and wherefore will be told of each; And that his soul might take its flight and roam, Beatrice gave him wings of boundless reach.

O hallowed breast, the Muses' chosen home, Blest be the working of thy steadfast aim,

And blest thy fancy through all time to come, Which whispers now, and now with words of flame Like sudden thunder makes the heart to pause; Whence laurel to thy brow and myrtle came.

For in love-speaking, so to love's sweet laws Thy verse is subject, that no truer truth

From passion's store the stricken spirit draws.
But pent in Hell's huge coil, for pity and ruth
Thy voice is slow and broken and profound,
To the harsh echoes singing sorrowful sooth;

And thy steps stumble in the weary bound
Of that dim maze where nothing is that shines
Stalking the desolate circles round and round.
Then through the prisoned air which sobs and pines
With Purgatorial grief, up dost thou soar

To Paradise, on the sun's dazzling lines.

There all the wonders thou dost reckon o'er
Of that great Joy that never waxeth old,-
A mighty hearing seldom heard before.
To us by thee pleasures and woes are told,
What path to fly from, in whose steps to tread,
That from man's mind the veil may be unrolled.
But oh thine angry tones, awful and dread,
What time God puts the thunder in thy mouth,
Upon His foes the righteous wrath to shed!
Then, then thy thoughts are of a mighty growth;-
Then does the terror of His holy curse
Hurtle from East to West, from North to South ;-
Then heavy sorrow 'ginn'st thou to rehearse ;—
Then Priests and Princes tremble and are pale,

More than with ague shaken at thy verse.
Though in thy praise all human praises fail,
Even of the few who love thee and who bless,-

The scoffing of the herd shall not prevail.

Thy words are weights, under whose mighty stress
Tyrants and evil men shall shrink and quail;
True seeds of an undying perfectness.

TWO LYRICS

FROM NICCOLÒ TOMMASEO

I. THE YOUNG GIRL

EVEN as a child that weeps,
Lulled by the love it keeps,
My grief lies back and sleeps.

Yes, it is Love bears up

My soul on his spread wings, Which the days would else chafe out With their infinite harassings. To quicken it, he brings

The inward look and mild

That thy face wears, my child.

As in a gilded room

Shines 'mid the braveries

Some wild-flower, by the bloom
Of its delicate quietness
Recalling the forest-trees

In whose shadow it was,

And the water and the green grass :

Even so, 'mid the stale loves

The city prisoneth,

Thou touchest me gratefully,

Like Nature's wholesome breath:

Thy heart nor hardeneth

In pride, nor putteth on
Obeisance not its own.

Not thine the skill to shut

The love up in thine heart,
Neither to seem more tender,
Less tender than thou art.
Thou dost not hold apart
In silence when thy joys
Most long to find a voice.

Let the proud river-course,

That shakes its mane and champs,

Run between marble shores

By the light of many lamps,

While all the ooze and the damps

Of the city's choked-up ways
Make it their draining-place.

Rather the little stream

For me; which, hardly heard,
Unto the flower, its friend,
Whispers as with a word.
The timid journeying bird
Of the pure drink that flows
Takes but one drop, and goes.

II-A FAREWELL

I SOOTHED and pitied thee: and for thy lips,—
A smile, a word (sure guide

To love that's ill to hide !)

Was all I had thereof.

Even as an orphan boy, whom, sore distress'd,
A gentle woman meets beside the road

pure abode !

And takes him home with her, so to thy breast
Thou didst take home my image
'Twas but a virgin's dream.
Respect and piety

And friendliness on thee:

But it is poor in love.

This heart bestow'd

No, I am not for thee. Thou art too new,
I am too old, to the old beaten way.
The griefs are not the same which grieve us two:
Thy thought and mine lie far apart to-day.
Less than I wish, more than I hope, alway

Are heart and soul in thee.
Thou art too much for me,
Sister, and not enough.

A better and a fresher heart than mine

Perchance may meet thee ere thy youth be told; Or, cheated by the longing that is thine,

Waiting for life perchance thou shalt wax old. Perchance the time may come when I may hold It had been best for me

To have had thy ministry

On the steep path and rough.

I'm better skill'd to frolic on a bed

Than any man that goes upon two feet; And so, when I and certain moneys meet, You'll fancy with what joys I shall be fed. Meanwhile (alas!) I can but long instead

To be within her arms held close and sweet To whom without reserve and past retreat My soul and body and heart are subjected. For often, when my mind is all distraught With this whereof I make my boast, I pass

The day in deaths which never seem enough; And all my blood within is boiling hot, Yet I've less strength than running water has; And this shall last as long as I'm in love.

FROM THE ROMAN DE LA ROSE

TENDER as dew her cheeks' warm life;

She was as simple as a wife,

She was as white as lilies are.

Her face was sweet and smooth and fair:
Slender and very straight she was,
And on her cheeks no paint might pass.

Her fair hair was so long that it

Shook, when she walked, about her feet:
Eyes, nose, and mouth, were perfect art,
Exceeding pain is at my heart
When I remember me of her.

POEMS BY FRANCESCO AND GAETANO POLIDORI

Il Losario: Poema Eroico Romanesco, di Ser FRANCESCO POLIDORI. Messo in luce, coll aggiunta di Tre Canti, da GAETANO POLIDORI, suo nipote. Firenze e Londra. [Losario a Poetic Romance. By Ser FRANCESCO POLIDORI. : Now first published, with the addition of Three Cantos, by his nephew, GAETANO POLIDORI. Florence and London.]

It is so rarely that the reviewer nowadays has to cope with anything even remotely resembling an epic, that when such a work does happen to fall in his way he is apt to consider the perusal of it as an achievement almost worthy to form the subject of a poem of equal pretensions. Nor is it in all moods that he would so much as attempt the task; for indeed we fear it might almost be said of Homer himself that only when that great man is found nodding could he count safely upon the used-up" energies of a modern critic as being in perfectly sympathetic relation with him.

The poem whose title and genealogy head our present article is not, however, a direct descendant from the great epic stock, but rather belonging to that illegitimate line which claims Ariosto for its ancestora bastard, for the matter of that, with a dash of the Falconbridge humour in him, and not at all disposed to yield the hereditary lion's skin to any that has not strength to keep it. Or perhaps, on some accounts, the author of Losario would have preferred to trace the pedigree of his work through Tasso's branch of the heroic family, which, if more legitimate, has yet always seemed to us to be less akin to the parent stock in vigour than is the misbegotten fire of Ariosto; and, indeed, almost liable now and then to that irreverent imputation of being "got betwixt sleep and wake." Au reste, we can assure the reader that, whatever may have been the balance of our author's predilections, his poem of Losario is a perfect cornucopia of marvellous adventure; where kings' sons are dethroned and reinstated; where usurpers, in the hour of triumph, find themselves cloven to the chine; where the unjustifiable lives of dragons are held on the most perilous tenure; where the gods themselves are the "medium" of prophecy; and where the valour of the hero is unsurpassed, except perhaps by that of his lady-the love here being not only platonic, but generally having Mars for a Cupid.

Before proceeding to give a translated extract from the poem, we need merely premise regarding its author, Ser Francesco Polidori (the Ser being a legal title), that he was born in the year 1720, at Pontedera,