tressed Ghibelline,
Through lands that reek with slaughter,
Treason, and shame, and sin;

By desert, by sea, by city,
High hill-cope and temple-dome,
Through pestilence, hunger, and horror,
Upon the road to Rome;

While every land behind them
Forgets them as they go,
And in Mantua they are remembered
As is the last year's snow;

But the Marchioness goes to her chamber
Day after day to weep,--
For the changeless heart of a mother
The love of a son must keep.

The Marchioness weeps in her chamber
Over tidings that come to her
Of the exiles she seeks, by letter
And by lips of messenger,

Broken hints of their sojourn and absence,
Comfortless, vague, and slight,--
Like feathers wafted backwards
From passage birds in flight.[4]

The tale of a drunken sailor,
In whose ship they went to sea;
A traveller's evening story
At a village hostelry,

Of certain comrades sent him
By our Lady, of her grace,
To save his life from robbers
In a lonely desert place;

Word from the monks of a convent
Of gentle comrades that lay
One stormy night at their convent,
And passed with the storm at day;

The long parley of a peasant
That sold them wine and food,
The gossip of a shepherd
That guided them through a wood;

A boatman's talk at the ferry
Of a river where they crossed,
And as if they had sunk in the current
All trace of them was lost;

And so is an end of tidings
But never an end of tears,
Of secret and friendless sorrow
Through blank and silent years.

V.

To the Marchioness in her chamber
Sends word a messenger,
Newly come from the land of Naples,
Praying for speech with her.

The messenger stands before her,
A minstrel slender and wan:
"In a village of my country
Lies a Mantuan gentleman,

"Sick of a smouldering fever,
Of sorrow and poverty;
And no one in all that country
Knows his title or degree.

"But six true Mantuan peasants,
Or nobles, as some men say,
Watch by the sick man's bedside,
And toil for him, night and day,

"Hewing, digging, reaping, sowing,
Bearing burdens, and far and nigh
Begging for him on the highway
Of the strangers that pass by;

"And they look whenever you meet them
Like broken-hearted men,
And I heard that the sick man would not
If he could, be well a