even at that fearful moment, maternal love had prevailed over the powerful instinct of self-preservation-she had turned half-round, but stayed herself there, painfully supported in cramped
posture by the elbow of her right arm, while the left still clasped the baby to her bosom, and had stiffened so its last tender office.
[As we have published in the Atheneum almost all the productions of the accomplished poetess, L. E. L. -we have thought that the insertion of her longest and best poem "The Improvisatrice" would be very acceptable to our readers.]—Ed.
I AM a daughter of that land,
Where the poet's lip and the painter's hand
Are most divine,—where earth and sky
Are picture both and poetry
I am of Florence. 'Mid the chill
Of hope and feeling, oh! I still
Am proud to think to where I owe
My birth, though but the dawn of woe!
My childhood passed 'mid radiant things,
Glorious as Hope's imaginings;
Statues but known from shapes of the earth,
By being too lovely for mortal birth;
Paintings whose colours of life were caught
From the fairy tints in the rainbow wrought;
Music whose sighs had a spell like those
That float on the sea at the evening's close;
Language so silvery, that every word
Was like the lute's awakening chord;
Skies half sunshine, and half starlight;
Flowers whose lives were a breath of delight;
Leaves whose green pomp knew no withering;
Fountains bright as the skies of our spring;
And songs whose wild and passionate line
Suited a soul of romance like mine.
My power was but a woman's power;
Yet, in that great and glorious dower
Which Genius gives, 1 had my part:
I poured my full and burning heart
In song, and on the canvass made
My dreams of beauty visible;
I know not which I loved the most-
Pencil or lute, both loved so well.
Oh, yet my pulse throbs to recall,
When first upon the gallery's wall
Picture of mine was placed, to share
Wonder and praise from each one there!
Sad were my shades; methinks they had
Almost a tone of prophecy-
I ever had, from earliest youth,
A feeling what my fate would be.
My first was of a gorgeous hall,
Lighted up for festival;
ATHENEUM VOL. 2. 2d series.
Braided tresses, and cheeks of bloom,
Diamond agraff, and foam-white plume;
Censers of roses, vases of light,
Like what the moon sheds on a summer night.
Youths and maidens with linked hands,
Joined in the graceful sarabands,
Smiled on the canvass; but apart
Was one who leant in silent mood
As revelry to his sick heart
Were worse than veriest solitude.
Pale, dark-eyed, beautiful, and young,
Such as he had shone o'er my slumbers,
When I had only slept to dream
Over again his magic numbers.
Divinest Petrarch! he whose lyre,
Like morning light, half dew, half fire,
To Laura and to love was vowed-
He looked on one, who with the crowd
Mingled, but mixed not; on whose cheek
There was a blush, as if she knew
Whose look was fixed on her's. Her eye,
Of a spring-sky's delicious blue,
Had not the language of that bloom,
But mingling tears, and light, and gloom,
Was raised abstractedly to Heaven:—
No sign was to her lover given.
I painted her with golden tresses,
Such as float on the wind's caresses
When the laburnums wildly fling
Their sunny blossoms to the spring.
A cheek which had the crimson hue
Upon the sun-touched nectarine;
A lip of perfume and of dew;
A brow like twilight's darkened line.
I strove to catch each charm that long
Has lived, thanks to her lover's song!
Each grace he numbered one by one,
That shone in her of Avignon.
I ever thought that poet's fate
Utterly lone and desolate.
It is the spirit's bitterest pain
To love, to be beloved again;
And yet between a gulf which ever
The hearts that burn to meet must sever.
And he was vowed to one sweet star,
Bright yet to him, but bright afar.
O'er some, Love's shadow may but pass
As passes the breath-stain o'er glass;
And pleasures, cares, and pride combined,
Fill
up the blank Love leaves behind.
But there are some whose love is high,
Entire, and sole idolatry;
Who, turning from a heartless world,
Ask some dear thing which may renew
Affection's severed links, and be
As true as they themselves are true.
But Love's bright fount is never pure;
And all his pilgrims must endure
All passion's mighty suffering
Ere they may reach the blessed spring.
And some who waste their lives to find
A prize which they may never win:
Like those who search for Irem's groves,
Which found, they may not enter in.
Where is the sorrow but appears
In Love's long catalogue of tears?
And some there are who leave the path
In agony and fierce disdain ;
But bear upon each cankered breast
The scar that never heals again.
My next was of a minstrel too,
Who proved what woman's hand might do,
When, true to the heart pulse, it woke
The harp. Her head was bending down, As if in weariness, and near,
But unworn, was a laurel crown,
She was not beautiful, if bloom
And smiles form beauty; for, like death,
Her brow was ghastly; and her lip
Was parched, as fever were its breath.
There was a shade upon her dark,
Large, floating eyes, as if each spark
Of minstrel ecstacy was fled,
Yet, leaving them no tears to shed ;
Fixed in their hopelessness of care,
And reckless in their great despair.
She sat beneath a cypress tree,
A little fountain ran beside,
And, in the distance, one dark rock
Threw its long shadow o'er the tide ;
And to the west, where the nightfall
Was darkening day's gemm'd coronal,
Its white shafts crimsoning in the sky,
Arose the sun-god's sanctuary.
I deemed, that of lyre, life, and love
She was a long, last farewell taking ;-
That, from her pale and parched lips,
Her latest, wildest song was breaking.
FAREWELL, my lute!—and would that I
Had never waked thy burning chords!
Poison has been upon thy sigh,
And fever has breathed in thy words.
Yet wherefore, wherefore should I blame
Thy power, thy spell, my gentlest lute ?
I should have been the wretch I am,
Had every chord of thine been mute.
It was my evil star above,
Not my sweet lute, that wrought me wrong; It was not song that taught me love,
But it was love that taught me song.
If song be past, and hope undone,
And pulse, and head, and heart, are flame; It is thy work, thou faithless one!
But, no!-I will not name thy name!
Sun-god, lute, wreath, are vowed to thee!
Long be their light upon my grave-
My glorious grave-yon deep blue sea:
I shall sleep calm beneath its wave!
FLORENCE! with what idolatry
I've lingered in thy radiant halls, Worshipping, till my dizzy eye
Grew dim with gazing on those walls,
Where Time had spared each glorious gift
By Genius unto Memory left!
And when seen by the pale moonlight,
More pure, more perfect, though less bright,
What dreams of song flashed on my brain,
Till each shade seemed to live again ;
And then the beautiful, the grand,
The glorious of my native land,
In every flower that threw its veil
Aside, when wooed by the spring gale;
In every vineyard, where the sun,
His task of summer ripening done,
Shone on their clusters, and a song
Came lightly from the peasant throng ;-
In the dim loveliness of night,
In fountains with their diamond light,
In aged temple, ruined shrine,
And its green wreath of ivy twine ;-
In every change of earth and sky,
Breathed the deep soul of poesy.
As yet I loved not ;--but each wild,
High thought I nourished raised a pyre
For love to light; and lighted once
By love, it would be like the fire
The burning lava floods that dwell
In Etna's cave unquenchable.
One evening in the lovely June,
Over the Arno's water's gliding, I had been watching the fair moon Amid her court of white clouds riding ;
I had been listening to the gale,
Which wafted music from around,
(For scarce a lover, at that hour,
But waked his mandolin's light sound),—
And odour was upon the breeze,
Sweet thefts from rose and lemon trees.
They stole me from my lulling dream,
And said they knew that such an hour
Had ever influence on my soul,
And raised my sweetest minstrel power.
I took my lute,-my eye had been
Wandering round the lovely scene,
Filled with those melancholy tears,
Which come when all most bright appears,
And hold their strange and secret power,
Even on pleasure's golden hour.
I had been looking on the river,
Half-marvelling to think that ever
Wind, wave, or sky, could darken where
All seemed so gentle and so fair:
And mingled with these thoughts there came
A tale, just one that Memory keeps-
Forgotten music, till some chance
Vibrate the chord whereon it sleeps!
A MOORISH ROMANCE.
SOFTLY through the pomegranate groves
Came the gentle song of the doves;
Shone the fruit in the evening light,
Like Indian rubies, blood-red and bright;
Shook the date-trees each tufted head,
As the passing wind their green-nuts shed;
And, like dark columns, amid the sky
The giant palms ascended on high;
And the mosque's gilded minaret
Glistened and glanced as the daylight set.
Over the town a crimson haze
Gathered and hung of the evening's rays;
And far beyond, like molten gold,
The burning sands of the desert rolled.
Far to the left, the sky and sea
Mingled their gray immensity;
And with flapping sail and idle prow
The vessels threw their shades below.
Far down the beach, where a cypress grove
Casts its shade round a little cove,
Darkling and green, with just a space
For the stars to shine on the water's face,
A small bark lay, waiting for night
And its breeze to waft and hide its flight.
Sweet is the burthen and lovely the freight,
For which those furled-up sails await,
To a garden, fair as those
Where the glory of the rose
Blushes, charmed from the decay
That wastes other blooms away:
Gardens of the fairy tale
Told, till the wood-fire grows pale,
By the Arab tribes, when night,
With its dim and lovely light,
And its silence, suiteth. well
With the magic tales they tell.
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