And calmly can Pietra smile—concealing,
As if forgotten, vengeance, hate, remorse,—
And veil the workings of each darker feeling,
Deep in his soul concentrating its force;
But yet he loves!—Oh! who hath loved, nor known
Affection's power exalt the bosom all its own?
The days roll on, and still Bianca's lot
Seems as a path of Eden. Thou might'st deem
That grief, the mighty chastener, had forgot
To wake her soul from life's enchanted dream;
And if her brow a moment's sadness wear,
It sheds but grace more intellectual there.
A few short years, and all is changed; her fate
Seems with some deep mysterious cloud o'ercast.
Have jealous doubts transformed to wrath and hate
The love whose glow expression's power surpassed?
Lo! on Pietra's brow a sullen gloom
Is gathering day by day, prophetic of her doom!
Oh! can he meet that eye of light serene,
Whence the pure spirit looks in radiance forth,—
And view that bright intelligence of mien,
Formed to express but thoughts of loftiest worth—
Yet deem that vice could desecrate such fame?—
How shall he e'er confide in aught on earth again?
In silence oft, with strange, vindictive gaze,
Transient, yet filled with meaning stern and wild,
Her features, calm in beauty, he surveys;
Then turns away, and fixes on her child
So dark a glance, as thrills a mother's mind
With some vague fear, scarce owned, and undefined.
There stands a lonely dwelling by the wave
Of the blue deep which bathes Italia's shore,
Far from all sounds but rippling seas, that lave
Grey rocks, with foliage richly shadowed o'er,
And sighing winds that murmur through the wood
Fringing the beach of that Hesperian flood.
Fair is that house of solitude, and fair
The green Maremma far around it spread—
A sun-bright waste of beauty; yet an air
Of brooding sadness o'er the scene is shed.
No human footstep tracks the lone domain;
The desert of luxuriance glows in vain.
And silent are the marble halls that rise
'Mid founts, and cypress-walks, and olive-groves:
All sleeps in sunshine 'neath cerulean skies,
And still around the sea-breeze lightly roves;
Yet every trace of man reveals alone
That there life once had flourished—and is gone.
There,—till around them slowly, softly stealing,
The summer air, deceit in every sigh,
Came fraught with death, its power no sign revealing,—
Thy sires, Pietra, dwelt, in days gone by;
And strains of mirth and melody have flowed
Where stands, all voiceless now, the still abode.
Page:Felicia Hemans in The New Monthly Magazine Volume 41 1834.pdf/6
