IX

I once was quick in feeling-that is o'er;
My scars are callous, or I should have dash'd
My brain against these bars, as the sun flash'd
In mockery through them. If I bear and bore
The much I have recounted, and the more

Which hath no words, 't is that I would not die
And sanction with self-slaughter the dull lie
Which suared me here, and with the brand of shame.
Stamped Madness deep into my memory,
And woo Compassion to a blighted name,
Sealing the sentence which my foes proclaim.
No it shall be immortal! and I make

A future temple of my present cell,

Which nations yet shall visit for my sake.
While thou, Ferrara! when no longer dwell
The ducal chiefs within thee, shalt fall down,
And crumbling piecemeal view thy hearthless halls, -
A poet's wreath shall be thine only crown,
A poet's dungeon thy most far renown,
While strangers wonder o'er thy unpeopled walls!
And thou, Leonora! thou-who wert ashamed
That such as I could love, who blush'd to hear
To less than monarchs that thou couldst be dear-
Go! tell thy brother, that my heart, untamed
By grief, years, weariness and it may be

A taint of that he would impute to me-
From long infection of a den like this,

Where the mind rots congenial with the abyss,

Adores thee still; - and add, that when the towers
And battlements which guard his joyous hours
Of banquet, dance, and revel, are forgot,
Or left untended in a dull repose,

This this shall be a consecrated spot!

But Thou- when all that Birth and Beauty throws
Of magic round thee is extinct-shalt have
One half the laurel which o'ershades my grave.

No

power in death can tear our names apart, As none in life could rend thee from my heart. Yes, Leonora ! it shall be our fate

To be entwined for ever but too late!

TO JOHN MURRAY

VENICE, April 14, 1817.

To-day, or rather yesterday, for it is past midnight, I have been up to the battlements of the highest tower in Venice, and seen it and its view, in all the glory of a clear Italian sky. I also went over the Manfrini Palace, famous for its pictures. Amongst them, there is a portrait of Ariosto by Titian, surpassing all my anticipation of the power of painting or human expression: it is the poetry of portrait, and the portrait of poetry. There was also one of some learned lady, centuries old, whose name I forget, but whose features must always be remembered. I never saw greater beauty, or sweetness, or wisdom: it is the kind of face to go mad for, because it cannot walk out of its frame. There is also a famous dead Christ and live apostles, for which Buonaparte offered in vain five thousand

"THE
HE THREE FATES formerly attributed to Michel
Angelo. In the Pitti Gallery, Florence.

louis; and of which, though it is a capo d'opera of Titian, as I am no connoisseur, I say little, and thought less, except of one figure in it. There are ten thousand others, and some very fine Giorgiones amongst them, etc., etc. There is an original Laura and Petrarch, very hideous both. Petrarch has not only the dress, but the features and air of an old woman, and Laura looks by no means like a young one, or a pretty one. What struck me most in the general collection was the extreme resemblance of the style of the female faces in the mass of pictures, so many centuries or generations old, to those you see and meet every day amongst the existing Italians. The queen of Cyprus 1 and Giorgione's wife,2 particularly the latter, are Venetians as it were of yesterday; the same eyes and expression, — and, to my mind, there is none finer.

You must recollect, however, that I know nothing of painting; and that I detest it, unless it reminds me of something I have seen, or think it possible to see, for which [reason] I spit upon and abhor all the Saints and subjects of one-half the impostures I see in the churches and palaces; and when in Flanders, I never was so disgusted in my life as with Rubens and his eternal wives and infernal glare of colours, as they appeared to me; and in Spain I did not think much of Murillo and Velasquez. Depend upon it, of all the arts, it is the most artificial and unnatural, and that by which the nonsense of mankind is the most imposed upon. I never yet saw the picture –

1 Catharine Cornaro, on whose abdication, in 1489, the island of Cyprus was acquired by Venice.

2 An error: Giorgione was unmarried.