hall preserve these times when not a page
Of their perturbed annals could attract
An eye to gaze upon their civil rage,[by]
Did not my verse embalm full many an act
Worthless as they who wrought it: 'tis the doom
Of spirits of my order to be racked 150
In life, to wear their hearts out, and consume
Their days in endless strife, and die alone;
Then future thousands crowd around their tomb,
And pilgrims come from climes where they have known
The name of him--who now is but a name,
And wasting homage o'er the sullen stone,
Spread his--by him unheard, unheeded--fame;
And mine at least hath cost me dear: to die
Is nothing; but to wither thus--to tame
My mind down from its own infinity-- 160
To live in narrow ways with little men,
A common sight to every common eye,
A wanderer, while even wolves can find a den,
Ripped from all kindred, from all home, all things
That make communion sweet, and soften pain--
To feel me in the solitude of kings
Without the power that makes them bear a crown--
To envy every dove his nest and wings
Which waft him where the Apennine looks down
On Arno, till he perches, it may be, 170
Within my all inexorable town,
Where yet my boys are, and that fatal She,[294]
Their mother, the cold partner who hath brought
Destruction for a dowry--this to see
And feel, and know without repair, hath taught
A bitter lesson; but it leaves me free:
I have not vilely found, nor basely sought,
They made an Exile--not a Slave of me.

CANTO THE SECOND.

The Spirit of the fervent days of Old,
When words were things that came to pass, and Thought
Flashed o'er the future, bidding men behold
Their children's children's doom already brought
Forth from the abyss of Time which is to be,
The Chaos of events, where lie half-wrought
Shapes that must undergo mortality;
What the great Seers of Israel wore within,
That Spirit was on them, and is on me,
And if, Cassandra-like, amidst the din 10
Of conflict none will hear, or hearing heed
This voice from out the Wilderness, the sin
Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed,
The only gu