THE FALCON OF SER FEDERIGO.

ONE summer morning when the sun was hot,
Weary with labour in his garden plot,
On a rude bench beneath his cottage eaves,
Ser Federigo sat among the leaves

of a huge vine, that, with its arms outspread,
Hung its delicious clusters overhead.
Below him, through the lovely valley, flowed
The river Arno, like a winding road,
And from its banks were lifted high in air
The spires and roofs of Florence called the Fair;

To him

a

His wasted fortunes and his buried love.
For there, in banquet and in tournament,
His wealth had lavished been, his substance spent,
Monna Giovanna, who his rival wed,

marble tomb, that rose above

Yet ever in his fancy reigned supreme,

The ideal

woman of a young man's dream.

Then he withdrew, in poverty and pain,
To this small farm, the last of his domain,
His only comfort and his only care

His only forester and only guest

To prune his vines, and plant the fig and pear;

His falcon, faithful to him, when the rest,
Whose willing hands had found so light of yore
The brazen knocker of his palace door,

Had now no

That entrance gave beneath a roof of thatch..
Companion of his solitary ways,

strength to lift the wooden latch,

On him this melancholy man bestowed
The love with which his nature overflowed.

And so the empty-handed years went round,
Vacant, though voiceful with prophetic sound;
And so, that summer morn, he sat and mused
With folded, patient hands, as he was used,
And dreamily before his half-closed sight
Floated the vision of his lost delight.
Beside him, motionless, the drowsy bird

Dreamed of the chase, and in his slumber heard
The sudden scythe-like sweep of wings, that dare
The headlong plunge through eddying gulfs of air,
Then, starting broad awake upon his perch,
Tinkled his bells, like mass-bells in a church,
And, looking at his master, seemed to say,
"Ser Federigo, shall we hunt to-day ?"

Ser Federigo thought not of the chase;
The tender vision of her lovely face
I will not say he seems to see, he sees
In the leaf-shadows of the trellises,
Herself, yet not herself; a lovely child
With flowing tresses, and eyes wide and wild,
Coming undaunted up the garden walk,
And looking not at him, but at the hawk.
"Beautiful falcon!" said he, "would that I
Might hold thee on my wrist, or see thee fly!”

The voice was hers, and made strange echoes start
Through all the haunted chambers of his heart,
As an Eolian harp through gusty doors
Of some old ruin its wild music pours.
"Who is thy mother, my fair boy ?" he said,
His hand laid softly on that shining head.
"Monna Giovanna.-Will you let me stay
A little while, and with your falcon play?
We live there, just beyond your garden wall,
In the great house behind the poplars tall."

So he spake on; and Federigo heard
As from afar each softly uttered word,
And drifted onward through the golden gleams
And shadows of the misty sea of dreams,
As mariners becalmed through vapours drift,
And feel the sea beneath them sink and lift,
And hear far off the mournful breakers roar,
And voices calling faintly from the shore!
Then, waking from his painful reveries
He took the little boy upon his knees,
And told him stories of his gallant bird,
Till in their friendship he became a third.

Monna Giovanna, widowed in her prime,
Had come with friends to pass the summer time
In her grand villa, half-way up the hill,
O'erlooking Florence, but retired and still;
With iron gates, that opened through long lines
Of sacred ilex and centennial pines,

And terraced gardens, and broad steps of stone,
And sylvan deities, with moss o'ergrown,
And fountains palpitating in the heat,
And all Val d'Arno stretched beneath its feet.
Here in seclusion, as a widow may,
The lovely lady wiled the hours away,
Pacing in sable robes the statued hall,
Herself the stateliest statue among all,
And seeing
Her husband risen and living in her boy,
more and more, with secret joy,
Till the lost sense of life returned again,
delight, but as relief from pain.

Not as

Meanwhile the boy, rejoicing in his strength,
Stormed down the terraces from length to length;
The screaming peacock chased in hot pursuit,
And climbed the garden trellises for fruit.
But his chief pastime was to watch the flight
Of a gerfalcon, soaring into sight,
Beyond the trees that fringed the garden wall,
Then downward stooping at some distant call;
And as he gazed full often wondered he
Who might the master of the falcon be,
Until that happy morning, when he found
Master and falcon in the cottage ground.

And now a

On the great house, as if a passing-bell

shadow and a terror fell

Tolled from the tower, and filled each spacious room
With secret awe, and preternatural gloom
The petted boy grew ill, and day by day
Pined with mysterious malady away.
The mother's heart would not be comforted;
Her darling seemed to her already dead,
And often, sitting by the sufferer's side,
"What can I do to comfort thee ?" she cried.
At first the silent lips made no reply,
But, moved at length by her importunate cry,
"Give me," he answered, with imploring tone,

No answer could the astonished mother make;
How could she ask, e'en for her darling's sake,

Such favour at a luckless lover's hand,
Well knowing that to ask was to command P
Well knowing, what all falconers confessed,
In all the land that falcon was the best,
The master's pride and passion and delight,
And the sole pursuivant of this poor knight.
But yet, for her child's sake, she could no less
Than give assent, to soothe his restlessness,
So promised, and then promising to keep
Her promise sacred, saw him fall asleep.

The morrow was a bright September morn;
The earth was beautiful as if new-born;
There was that nameless splendour everywhere,
That wild exhilaration in the air,

Which makes the passers in the city street
Congratulate each other as they meet.

Two lovely ladies, clothed in cloak and hood,
Passed through the garden gate into the wood,
Under the lustrous leaves, and through the sheen
Of dewy sunshine showering down between.
The one, close-hooded, had the attractive grace
Which sorrow sometimes lends a woman's face;
Her dark eyes moistened with the mists that roll
From the gulf-stream of passion in the soul;
The other with her hood thrown back, her hair
Making a golden glory in the air,

Her cheeks suffused with an auroral blush,

Her young heart singing louder than the thrush;

So walked, that morn, through mingled light and shade,

Each by the other's presence lovelier made,

Monna Giovanna and her bosom friend,

Intent upon their errand and its end.

They found Ser Federigo at his toil,

Like banished Adam, delving in the soil;

And when he looked and these fair women spied,

The garden suddenly was glorified;

His long-lost Eden was restored again,

And the strange river winding through the plain
No longer was the Arno to his eyes,
But the Euphrates watering Paradise!
Monna Giovanna raised her stately head,
And with fair words of salutation said:
"Ser Federigo, we come here as friends,
Hoping in this to make some poor amends
For past unkindness. I who ne'er before
Would even cross the threshold of your door,
I who in happier days such pride maintained,
Refused your banquets, and your gifts disdained,

66

This morning come, a self-invited guest,
To put your generous nature to the test,
And breakfast with you under your own vine."
To which he answered:
Poor desert of mine,
Not your unkindness call it, for if aught
Is good in me of feeling or of thought,
From you it comes, and this last grace outweighs
All sorrows, all regrets of other days."
And after further compliment and talk,
Among the dahlias in the garden walk
He left his guests; and to his cottage turned,
And as he entered for a moment yearned
For the lost splendours of the days of old,
The ruby glass, the silver, and the gold,
And felt how piercing is the sting of pride,
By want embittered and intensified.
He looked about him for some means or way
To keep this unexpected holiday;

Searched every cupboard, and then searched again,
"The Signor did not hunt to-day," she said,
Summoned the maid, who came, but came in vain;
"There's nothing in the house but wine and bread."
Then suddenly the drowsy falcon shook
His little bells with that sagacious look,
as plain as language to the ear,

Which said,

"If anything is wanting, I am here!"
Yes, everything is wanting, gallant bird!
The master seized thee without further word,
Like thine own lure, he whirled thee round; ah me!

The

pomp

The bells, the jesses, the bright scarlet hood,
The flight and the pursuit o'er field and wood,

and flutter of brave falconry,

No longer victor, but the victim thou!

Then on the board a snow-white cloth he spread,
Laid on its wooden dish the loaf of bread,
Brought purple grapes with autumn sunshine hot,

Then in the midst a flask of wine he placed,
And with autumnal flowers the banquet graced.
Ser Federigo, would not these suffice
Without thy falcon stuffed with cloves and spice?

When all was ready, and the courtly dame
With her companion to the cottage came,
Upon Ser Federigo's brain there fell
The wild enchantment of a magic spell;