The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface.
• Julian and Maddalo; a Conversation.
• The Witch of Atlas.
• Letter to —
• The Triumph of Life.
• Fragments From an Unfinished Drama.
• Prince Athanase: a Fragment.
• Ode to Naples. *
• Marianne’s Dream.
• Mont Blanc. Lines Written In the Vale of Chamouni.
• Miscellaneous Poems.
• On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci, In the Florentine Gallery.
• Song.
• To Constantia, Singing.
• The Fugitives.
• A Lament.
• The Pine Forest of the Cascine, Near Pisa.
• To Night.
• Evening. Ponte a Mare, Pisa.
• Arethusa.
• The Question.
• Lines to an Indian Air.
• Stanzas Written In Dejection, Near Naples.
• Autumn: a Dirge.
• Hymn of Apollo.
• Hymn of Pan.
• The Boat On the Serchio.
• The Zucca. *
• The Two Spirits. an Allegory.
• A Fragment.
• A Bridal Song.
• The Sunset.
• Song, On a Faded Violet.
• Lines to a Critic.
• Good Night.
• To-morrow.
• Death.
• A Lament.
• Love’s Philosophy.
• To E*** V***
• To —
• Lines.
• To William Shelley.
• An Allegory.
• Mutability.
• From the Arabic. an Imitation.
• To —
• Music.
• Lines.
• Death.
• To —
• Passage of the Apennines.
• To Mary —
• The Past.
• Song of a Spirit.
• Liberty.
• To —
• The Isle.
• To —
• Time.
• Lines.
• A Song.
• The World’s Wanderers.
• A Dirge.
• Lines.
• Dirge For the Year.
• Sonnet I.
• Sonnet II. Political Greatness.
• Sonnet III.
• Sonnet IV.
• Fragments.
• Ginevra. *
• Charles the First. Fragments.
• Prince Athanase. Part II.
• Mazenghi. *
• The Woodman and the Nightingale.
• To the Moon.
• Song For Tasso.
• The Waning Moon.
• Epitaph.
• Alastor; Or the Spirit of Solitude.
• Translations.
• Hymn to Mercury. Translated From the Greek of Homer
• The Cyclops; a Satyric Drama.
• Translation From Moschus.
• Scenes From the “magico Prodigioso” of Calderon.
• Scenes From the Faust of GoËthe.

MAZENGHI.*

• • Oh! foster-nurse of man’s abandoned glory,
  • Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendour;
  • Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story,
  • As ocean its wrecked fanes, severe yet tender:—
  • The light-invested angel Poesy
  • Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee.
• • And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught
  • By loftiest meditations; marble knew
  • The sculptor’s fearless soul—and as he wrought,
  • The grace of his own power and freedom grew.
  • And more than all, heroic, just, sublime
  • Thou wert among the false—was this thy crime?
• • Yes; and on Pisa’s marble walls the twine
  • Of direst weeds hangs garlanded—the snake
  • Inhabits its wrecked palaces;—in thine
  • A beast of subtler venom now doth make
  • Its lair, and sits amid their glories overthrown,
  • And thus thy victim’s fate is as thine own.
• • The sweetest flowers are ever frail and rare,
  • And love and freedom blossom but to wither;
  • And good and ill like vines entangled are,
  • So that their grapes may oft be plucked together;—
  • Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make
  • Thy heart rejoice for dead Mazenghi’s sake.
• • No record of his crime remains in story,
  • But if the morning bright as evening shone,
  • It was some high and holy deed, by glory
  • Pursued into forgetfulness, which won
  • From the blind crowd he made secure and free
  • The patriot’s meed, toil, death, and infamy.
• • For when by sound of trumpet was declared
  • A price upon his life, and there was set
  • A penalty of blood on all who shared
  • So much of water with him as might wet
  • His lips, which speech divided not—he went
  • Alone, as you may guess, to banishment.
• • Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast,
  • He hid himself, and hunger, cold, and toil,
  • Month after month endured; it was a feast
  • Whene’er he found those globes of deep red gold
  • Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,
  • Suspended in their emerald atmosphere.
• • And in the roofless huts of vast morasses,
  • Deserted by the fever-stricken serf,
  • All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses,
  • And hillocks heaped of moss-inwoven turf,
  • And where the huge and speckled aloe made,
  • Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade,
• • He housed himself. There is a point of strand
  • Near Vada’s tower and town; and on one side
  • The treacherous marsh divides it from the land,
  • Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide,
  • And on the other creeps eternally,
  • Through muddy weeds, the shallow, sullen sea.

Naples, 1818.

[* ]This fragment refers to an event, told in Sismodi’s Histoire des Republiques Italiennes, which occurred during the war when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a province. The opening stanzas are addressed to the conquering city.