XX.

And Azo found another bride,

And goodly sons grew by his side;
But none so lovely and so brave

As him who wither'd in the grave;

Or if they were on his cold

eye

Their growth but glanced unheeded by,
Or noticed with a smother'd sigh.

But never tear his cheek descended,

And never smile his brow unbended;

And o'er that fair broad brow were wrought

The intersected lines of thought;

Those furrows which the burning share

Of Sorrow ploughs untimely there;

Scars of the lacerating mind

Which the Soul's war doth leave behind.

He was past all mirth or woe:

Nothing more remain'd below

But sleepless nights and heavy days,
A mind all dead to scorn or praise,
A heart which shunn'd itself—and yet
That would not yield-nor could forget,
Which when it least appear'd to melt,
Intently thought-intensely felt:

The deepest ice which ever froze
Can only o'er the surface close-
The living stream lies quick below,
And flows and cannot cease to flow.
Still was his seal'd-up bosom haunted
By thoughts which Nature hath implanted ;
Too deeply rooted thence to vanish,
Howe'er our stifled tears we banish;
When, struggling as they rise to start,
We check those waters of the heart,
They are not dried-those tears unshed
But flow back to the fountain head,
And resting in their spring more pure,
For ever in its depth endure,

Unseen, unwept, but uncongeal'd,

And cherish'd most where least reveal'd.
With inward starts of feeling left,

To throb o'er those of life bereft ;
Without the power to fill again
The desert gap which made his pain;
Without the hope to meet them where
United souls shall gladness share,

With all the consciousness that he

Had only pass'd a just decree;

That they had wrought their doom of ill; Yet Azo's age was wretched still.

The tainted branches of the tree,

If lopp'd with care, a strength may give, By which the rest shall bloom and live All greenly fresh and wildly free: But if the lightning, in its wrath, The waving boughs with fury scathe, The massy trunk the ruin feels,

And never more a leaf reveals.

VOL. III.

S

NOTES TO PARISINA.

Note 1, page 231, last line.

As twilight melts beneath the moon away.

The lines contained in Section I. were printed as set to music some time since: but belonged to the poem where they now appear, the greater part of which was composed prior to "Lara," and other compositions since published.

Note 2, page 243, line 12.

That should have won as haught a crest. Haught-haughty-" Away, haught man, thou art in

sulting me."

Shakspeare, Richard II.

Note 3, page 254, last line.

Her life began and closed in woe.

"This turned out a calamitous year for the people of Ferrara, for there occurred a very tragical event in the court of their sovereign. Our annals, both printed and in manuscript, with the exception of the unpolished and negligent work of Sardi, and one other, have given the following relation of it, from which, however, are rejected many details, and especially the narrative of Bandelli, who wrote