But she is in the grave, where he,
Her son, thy rival, soon shall be.
Her broken heart-my sever'd head-
Shall witness for thee from the dead
How trusty and how tender were
Thy youthful love—paternal care.

"Tis true that I have done thee wrong

But wrong for wrong:-this deem'd thy bride,

The other victim of thy pride,

Thou know'st for me was destined long.
Thou saw'st, and covetedst her charms-
And with thy very crime-my birth,
Thou tauntedst meas little worth;
A match ignoble for her arms,
Because, forsooth, I could not claim
The lawful heirship of thy name,
Nor sit on Este's lineal throne:

Yet, were a few short summers mine, My name should more than Este's shine With honours all my own.

I had a sword—and have a breast
That should have won as haught1 a crest
As ever waved along the line

Of all these sovereign sires of thine.

Not always knightly spurs are worn
The brightest by the better born;
And mine have lanced my courser's flank
Before proud chiefs of princely rank,
When charging to the cheering cry
Of Este and of Victory!'

I will not plead the cause of crime,
Nor sue thee to redeem from time
A few brief hours or days that must
At length roll o'er my reckless dust;
Such maddening moments as my past,
They could not, and they did not, last.
Albeit my birth and name be base,
And thy nobility, of race
Disdain'd to deck a thing like me-

Yet in my lineaments they trace
Some features of my father's face,
And in my spirit-all of thee.
From thee-this tamelessness of heart—
From thee-nay, wherefore dost thou start?
From thee in all their vigour came
My arm of strength, my soul of flame-
Thou didst not give me life alone,
But all that made me more thine own.
See what thy guilty love hath done!
Repaid thee with too like a son !
I am no bastard in my soul,
For that, like thine, abhorr'd control:
And for my breath, that hasty boon
Thou gav'st and wilt resume so soon,
I valued it no more than thou,
When rose thy casque above thy brow,

1 Haught haughty.—“ Away, haught man, thou art insulting me."-SHAKSPEARE.

2 ["I sent for Marmion,' because it occurred to me, there might be a resemblance between part of Parisina and a similar scene in the second canto of Marmion.' I fear there is, though I never thought of it before, and could hardly wish to imitate that which is inimitable. I wish you would ask Mr. Gifford whether I ought to say any thing upon it. I had completed the story on the passage from Gibbon, which indeed leads to a like scene naturally, without a thought of the kind: but it comes upon me not very Lord B. to Mr. M. Feb. 3. 1816. The scene referred to is the one in which Constance de Beverley appears before the

conclave

And we, all side by side, have striven,
And o'er the dead our coursers driven:
The past is nothing-and at last
The future can but be the past;
Yet would I that I then had died;

For though thou work'dst my mother's ill, And made thy own my destined bride,

I feel thou art my father still;

And, harsh as sounds thy hard decree,
'Tis not unjust, although from thee.
Begot in sin, to die in shame,
My life begun and ends the same:
As err'd the sire, so err'd the son,
And thou must punish both in one.
My crime seems worst to human view,
But God must judge between us too!"

XIV.

He ceased and stood with folded arms,
On which the circling fetters sounded;
And not an ear but felt as wounded,
Of all the chiefs that there were rank'd,
When those dull chains in meeting clank'd:

Till Parisina's fatal charms 2
Again attracted every eye—
Would she thus hear him doom'd to die!
She stood, I said, all pale and still,
The living cause of Hugo's ill:

Her eyes unmoved, but full and wide,
Not once had turn'd to either side-
Nor once did those sweet eyelids close,
Or shade the glance o'er which they rose,
But round their orbs of deepest blue
The circling white dilated grew-
And there with glassy gaze she stood
As ice were in her curdled blood;
But every now and then a tear

So large and slowly gather'd slid From the long dark fringe of that fair lid, It was a thing to see, not hear! And those who saw, it did surprise, Such drops could fall from human eyes. To speak she thought-the imperfect note Was choked within her swelling throat, Yet seem'd in that low hollow groan Her whole heart gushing in the tone. It ceased- again she thought to speak, Then burst her voice in one long shriek, 3 And to the earth she fell like stone Or statue from its base o'erthrown, More like a thing that ne'er had life, A monument of Azo's wife, Than her, that living guilty thing, Whose every passion was a sting, Which urged to guilt, but could not bear That guilt's detection and despair.

But yet she lived-and all too soon
Recover'd from that death-like swoon-
But scarce to reason- -every sense
Had been o'erstrung by pangs intense;
And each frail fibre of her brain
(As bowstrings, when relax'd by rain,
The erring arrow launch aside)
Sent forth her thoughts all wild and wide.
The past a blank, the future black,
With glimpses of a dreary track,
Like lightning on the desert path,

When midnight storms are mustering wrath.
She fear'd-she felt that something ill
Lay on her soul, so deep and chill-
That there was sin and shame she knew;
That some one was to die -but who?
She had forgotten: - did she breathe ?
Could this be still the earth beneath,
The sky above, and men around;
Or were they fiends who now so frown'd
On one, before whose eyes each eye
Till then had smiled in sympathy?
All was confused and undefined
To her all-jarr'd and wandering mind;
A chaos of wild hopes and fears:
And now in laughter, now in tears,
But madly still in each extreme,
She strove with that convulsive dream;
For so it seem'd on her to break :
Oh! vainly must she strive to wake!

XV.

The Convent bells are ringing,
But mournfully and slow;
In the grey square turret swinging,
With a deep sound, to and fro.
Heavily to the heart they go!
Hark! the hymn is singing-

The song for the dead below,

Or the living who shortly shall be so!

For a departing being's soul

The death-hymn peals and the hollow bells knoll :

He is near his mortal goal;

Kneeling at the friar's knee;

Sad to hear-and piteous to sce-
Kneeling on the bare cold ground,
With the block before and the guards around
And the headman with his bare arm ready,
That the blow may be both swift and steady,
Feels if the axe be sharp and true-
Since he set its edge anew:

While the crowd in a speechless circle gather
To see the Son fall by the doom of the Father.

XVI.

It is a lovely hour as yet

Before the summer sun shall set,

Which rose upon that heavy day,
And mock'd it with his steadiest ray;
And his evening beams are shed
Full on Hugo's fated head,
As his last confession pouring
To the monk, his doom deploring

[The grand part of this poem is that which describes the execution of the rival son; and in which, though there is no pomp, either of language or of sentiment, and though every

In penitential holiness,

He bends to hear his accents bless
With absolution such as may
Wipe our mortal stains away.
That high sun on his head did glisten
As he there did bow and listen-
And the rings of chestnut hair
Curl'd half down his neck so bare;
But brighter still the beam was thrown
Upon the axe which near him shone
With a clear and ghastly glitter-

Oh that parting hour was bitter!
Even the stern stood chill'd with awe :
Dark the crime, and just the law-
Yet they shudder'd as they saw.

XVII.

The parting prayers are said and over
Of that false son—and daring lover!
His beads and sins are all recounted,
His hours to their last minute mounted-
His mantling cloak before was stripp'd,
His bright brown locks must now be clipp'd;
'Tis done—all closely are they shorn-
The vest which till this moment worn-
The scarf which Parisina gave—
Must not adorn him to the grave.
Even that must now be thrown aside,
And o'er his eyes the kerchief tied ;
But no-that last indignity
Shall ne'er approach his haughty eye.
All feelings seemingly subdued,

In deep disdain were half renew'd,
When headman's hands prepared to bind
Those eyes which would not brook such blind:
As if they dared not look on death.
"No-yours my forfeit blood and breath-
These hands are chain'd—but let me die
At least with an unshackled eye-

Strike: -and as the word he said,
Upon the block he bow'd his head;
These the last accents Hugo spoke :
"Strike: "-and flashing fell the stroke-
Roll'd the head-and, gushing, sunk
Back the stain'd and heaving trunk,
In the dust, which each deep vein
Slaked with its ensanguined rain;
His eyes and lips a moment quiver,
Convulsed and quick-then fix for ever.
He died, as erring man should die,
Without display, without parade;
Meekly had he bow'd and pray'd,
As not disdaining priestly aid,
Nor desperate of all hope on high.
And while before the prior kneeling,

His heart was wean'd from earthly feeling;

His wrathful sire- his paramour

What were they in such an hour?

No more reproach- no more despair;

No thought but heaven-no word but prayer-
Save the few which from him broke,
When, bared to meet the headman's stroke,
He claim'd to die with eyes unbound,
His sole adieu to those around. 1

thing is conceived and expressed with the utmost simplicity and directness, there is a spirit of pathos and poetry to which it would not be easy to find many parallels.JEFFREY.)

XVIII.

Still as the lips that closed in death,
Each gazer's bosom held his breath:
But yet, afar, from man to man,
A cold electric shiver ran,

As down the deadly blow descended
On him whose life and love thus ended;
And, with a hushing sound compress'd,
A sigh shrunk back on every breast;
But no more thrilling noise rose there,

Beyond the blow that to the block

Pierced through with forced and sullen shock,

Save one: - - what cleaves the silent air
So madly shrill—so passing wild?
That, as a mother's o'er her child,
Done to death by sudden blow,
To the sky these accents go,
Like a soul's in endless woe.
Through Azo's palace-lattice driven,
That horrid voice ascends to heaven,
And every eye is turn'd thereon;
But sound and sight alike are gone!
It was a woman's shriek—and ne'er
In madlier accents rose despair;
And those who heard it, as it past,
In mercy wish'd it were the last.

XIX.

Hugo is fallen; and, from that hour,
No more in palace, hall, or bower,
Was Parisina heard or seen :
Her name as if she ne'er had been-
Was banish'd from each lip and ear,
Like words of wantonness or fear;
And from Prince Azo's voice, by none
Was mention heard of wife or son;
No tomb-no memory had they;
Theirs was unconsecrated clay;
At least the knight's who died that day.
But Parisina's fate lies hid

Like dust beneath the coffin lid :
Whether in convent she abode,

And won to heaven her dreary road,
By blighted and remorseful years
Of scourge, and fast, and sleepless tears;
Or if she fell by bowl or steel,

For that dark love she dared to feel;

Or if, upon the moment smote,

She died by tortures less remote ;
Like him she saw upon the block,
With heart that shared the headman's shock,

In quicken'd brokenness that came,

In pity, o'er her shatter'd frame,

None knew-and none can ever know:

But whatsoe'er its end below,

Her life began and closed in woe!

[In Parisina there is no tumult or stir. It is all sadness, and pity, and terror. There is too much of horror, perhaps, in the circumstances; but the writing is beautiful throughout,

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 fears 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. 1

and the whole wrapped in a rich and redundant veil of poetry, where every thing breathes the pure essence of genius and sensibility. JEFFREY.]

SONNET ON CHILLON.

ETERNAL Spirit of the chainless Mind! 2
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
For there thy habitation is the heart—
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd-

To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, Their country conquers with their martyrdom, And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. Chillon thy prison is a holy place,

And thy sad floor an altar-for 't was trod, Until his very steps have left a trace

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,

When this poem was composed, I was not sufficiently aware of the history of Bonnivard, or I should have endeavoured to dignify the subject by an attempt to celebrate his courage and his virtues. With some account of his life I have been furnished, by the kindness of a citizen of that republic, which is still proud of the memory of a man worthy of the best age of ancient freedom:

"François de Bonnivard, fils de Louis de Bonnivard, originaire de Seysel et Seigneur de Lunes, naquit en 1496, II fit ses études à Turin: en 1510 Jean Aimé de Bonnivard, son oncle, lui résigna le Prieuré de St. Victor, qui aboutis. sait aux murs de Genève, et qui formait un bénéfice considérable.

"Ce grand homme-(Bonnivard mérite ce titre par la force de son âme, la droiture de son cœur, la noblesse de ses intentions, la sagesse de ses conseils, le courage de ses démarches, l'étendue de ses connaissances et la vivacité de son esprit), ce grand homme, qui excitera l'admiration de tous ceux qu'une vertu héroïque peut encore émouvoir, inspirera encore la plus vive reconnaissance dans les cœurs des Ge névois qui aiment Genève. Bonnivard en fut toujours un des plus fermes appuis: pour assurer la liberté de notre Ré. publique, il ne craignit pas de perdre souvent la sienne; il oublia son repos; il méprisa ses richesses; il ne négligea rien pour affermir le bonheur d'une patrie qu'il honora de son choix: dès ce moment il la chérit comme le plus zélé de ses citoyens; i la servit avec l'intrépidité d'un héros, et il écrivit son Histoire avec la naïveté d'un philosophe et la chaleur d'un patriote.

"Il dit dans le commencement de son Histoire de Genève, que dès qu'il cut commencé de lire l'histoire des nations, il se sentit entrainé par son goût pour les Républiques, dont il épousa toujours les intérêts: c'est ce goût pour la liberté qui lui fit sans doute adopter Genève pour sa patrie.

"Bonnivard, encore jeune, s'annonça hautement comme le défenseur de Genève contre le Duc de Savoye et l'Evêque.

ans.

"En 1519, Bonnivard devient le martyr de sa patrie. Le Duc de Savoye étant entré dans Genève avec cinq cent hommes, Bonnivard craint le ressentiment du Duc; il voulut se retirer à Fribourg pour en éviter les suites; mais il fut trahi par deux hommes qui l'accompagnaient, et conduit par ordre du Prince à Grolée, où il resta prisonnier pendant deux Bonnivard était malheureux dans ses voyages: comme ses malheurs n'avaient point ralenti son zèle pour Genève, il était toujours un ennemi redoutable pour ceux qui la mena çaient, et par conséquent il devait étre exposé à leurs coups. Il fut rencontré en 1530 sur le Jura par des voleurs, qui le dépouillèrent, et qui le mirent encore entre les mains du Duc de Savoye: ce Prince le fit enfermer dans le Château de Chillon, où il resta sans être interrogé jusques en 1536; il fut alors delivré par les Bernois, qui s'emparèrent du Pays de Vaud. "Bonnivard, en sortant de sa captivité, eut le plaisir de trouver Genève libre et réformée : la République s'empressa de lui témoigner sa reconnaissance, et de dédommager des maux qu'il avait soufferts; elle le reçut Bourgeois de la ville au mois de Juin, 1536; elle lui donna la maison habitée autrefois par le Vicaire-Général, et elle lui assigna une pension de deux cent écus d'or tant qu'il séjournerait à Genève. Il fut admis dans le Conseil de Deux-Cent en 1537.

"Bonnivard n'a pas fini d'être utile: après avoir travaillé à rendre Genève libre, il réussit à la rendre tolérante. Bon

By Bonnivard !— May none those marks efface! For they appeal from tyranny to God.

The Prisoner of Chillon,3

I.

My hair is grey, but not with years,

Nor grew it white

In a single night, +

As men's have grown from sudden fears:

nivard engagea le Conseil à accorder aux ecclésiastiques et aux paysans un tems suffisant pour examiner les propositions qu'on leur faisait; il réussit par sa douceur: on prèche tou jours le Christianisme avec succès quand on le prèche avec charité.

"Bonnivard fut savant: ses manuscrits, qui sont dans la Bibliothèque publique, prouvent qu'il avait bien lu les auteurs classiques Latins, et qu'il avait approfondi la théologie et l'histoire. Ce grand homme aimait les sciences, et il croyait qu'elles pouvaient faire la gloire de Genève; aussi il ne négligea rien pour les fixer dans cette ville naissante ; en 1551 il donna sa bibliothèque au public; elle fut le commencement de notre bibliothèque publique; et ces livres sont en partie les rares et belles éditions du quinzième siècle qu'on voit dans notre collection. Enfin, pendant la même année, ce bon pa. triote institua la République son héritière, à condition qu'elle employerait ses biens à entretenir le collège dont on projet tait la fondation.

"Il parait que Bonnivard mourut en 1570; mais on ne peut l'assurer, parcequ'il y a une lacune dans le Nécrologe depuis le mois de Juillet, 1570, jusques en 1571."

(Lord Byron wrote this beautiful poem at a small inn, in the little village of Ouchy, near Lausanne, where he happened in June, 1816, to be detained two days by stress of weather; "thereby adding," says Moore," one more deathless associ ation to the already immortalised localities of the Lake."] 2 [In the first draught, the sonnet opens thus Beloved Goddess of the chainless mind!

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art, Thy palace is within the Freeman's heart, Whose soul the love of thee alone can bind; And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd—

To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless glocm, Thy joy is with them still, and uncontined,

Their country conquers with their martyrdom."]

3 ["I will tell you something about Chillon.' A Mr. De Luc, ninety years old, a Swiss, had it read to him, and is pleased with it so my sister writes. He said that he was with Rousseau at Chillon, and that the description is perfectly correct. But this is not all; I recollected something of the name, and find the following passage in The Confessions, vol. iii. p. 247. liv. viii. De tous ces amusemens celui qui me plut davantage fut une promenade autour du Lac, que je fis en bateau avec De Luc père, sa bru, ses deur fils, et ma Therèse. Nous mimes sept jours à cette tournée par le plus beau temps du monde. J'en gardai le vif souvenir des sites, qui m'avaient frappé à l'autre extrémité du Lac, et dont je fis la description quelques années après, dans La Nouvelle Héloise.'' This nonagerian, De Luc, must be one of the deux fils.' He is in England, infirm, but still in faculty. It is odd that he should have lived so long, and not wanting in oddness, that he should have made this voyage with Jean Jacques, and afterwards, at such an interval, read a poem by an Englishman (who made precisely the same cir cumnavigation) upon the same scenery."- Byron Letters, April 9. 1817. Jean André de Luc, F.R.S., died at Windsor, in the July following. He was born in 1726, at Geneva, was the author of many geological works, and corresponded with most of the learned societies of Europe.]

4 Ludovico Sforza, and others. The same is asserted of

My limbs are bow'd, though not with toil, But rusted with a vile repose, 1

For they have been a dungeon's spoil,

And mine has been the fate of those
To whom the goodly earth and air
Are bann'd, and barr'd-forbidden fare;
But this was for my father's faith
I suffer'd chains and courted death;
That father perish'd at the stake
For tenets he would not forsake;
And for the same his lineal race
In darkness found a dwelling-place;
We were seven who now are one,
Six in youth, and one in age,
Finish'd as they had begun,

Proud of persecution's rage;
One in fire, and two in field,
Their belief with blood have seal'd;
Dying as their father died,
For the God their foes denied;
Three were in a dungeon cast,
Of whom this wreck is left the last.

2

II.

There are seven pillars of Gothic mould,
In Chillon's dungeons deep and old,
There are seven columns, massy and grey,
Dim with a dull imprison'd ray,

A sunbeam which hath lost its way,
And through the crevice and the cleft
Of the thick wall is fallen and left;
Creeping o'er the floor so damp,
Like a marsh's meteor lamp :
And in each pillar there is a ring,

And in each ring there is a chain;
That iron is a cankering thing,

For in these limbs its teeth remain,
W th marks that will not wear away,
Till I have done with this new day,
Which now is painful to these eyes,
Which have not seen the sun so rise
For years
I cannot count them o'er,
I lost their long and heavy score,
When my last brother droop'd and died,
And I lay living by his side.

I was the eldest of the three,

And to uphold and cheer the rest I ought to do. and did my bestAnd each did well in his degree.

The youngest, whom my father loved, Because our mother's brow was given To him 1 with eyes as blue as heaven, For him my soul was sorely moved : And truly might it be distress'd

To see such bird in such a nest;
For he was beautiful as day
(When day was beautiful to me
As to young eagles being free) —
A polar day, which will not see
A sunset till its summer's gone,

Its sleepless summer of long light, The snow-clad offspring of the sun :

And thus he was as pure and bright, And in his natural spirit gay, With tears for nought but others' ills, And then they flow'd like mountain rills, Unless he could assuage the woe Which he abhorr'd to view below.

V. The other was as pure of mind, But form'd to combat with his kind; Strong in his frame, and of a mood Which 'gainst the world in war had stood, And perish'd in the foremost rank

With joy :- but not in chains to pine:
His spirit wither'd with their clank,
I saw it silently decline-

And so perchance in sooth did mine:
But yet I forced it on to cheer
Those relics of a home so dear.
He was a hunter of the hills,

Had follow'd there the deer and wolf;
To him this dungeon was a gulf,
And fetter'd feet the worst of ills.

VI.

Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls: A thousand feet in depth below Its massy waters meet and flow; Thus much the fathom-line was sent From Chillon's snow-white battlement, *

Which round about the wave enthrals:

Villeneuve, which last is at one extremity of the Lake of Geneva. On its left are the entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the heights of Meillerie and the range of Alps above Boveret and St. Gingo. Near it, on a hill behind, is a torrent below it, washing its walls, the lake has been fa. thomed to the depth of 800 feet, French measure: within it are a range of dungeons, in which the early reformers, and subsequently prisoners of state, were contined. Across one of the vaults is a beam black with age, on which we were in. formed that the condemned were formerly executed. In the cells are seven pillars, or, rather, eight, one being half merged in the wall; in some of these are rings for the fetters and the fettered in the pavement the steps of Bonnivard have left their traces. He was confined here several years. It is by