News of the terrors of the coming time.
Like an accuser branded with the crime

He would have cast on a beloved friend,
Whose dying eyes reproach not to the end
The pale betrayer
he then with vain repent-

ance

Would share, he cannot now avert, the sen

tence

Antonio stood and would have spoken, when
The compound voice of women and of men
Was heard approaching; he retired, while she
Was led amid the admiring company

Back to the palace, — and her maidens soon
Changed her attire for the afternoon,
And left her at her own request to keep
An hour of quiet and rest: - like one asleep
With open eyes and folded hands she lay,
Pale in the light of the declining day.

Meanwhile the day sinks fast, the sun is set, And in the lighted hall the guests are met; The beautiful looked lovelier in the light Of love, and admiration, and delight

Reflected from a thousand hearts and eyes
Kindling a momentary Paradise.

This crowd is safer than the silent wood,
Where love's own doubts disturb the solitude;
On frozen hearts the fiery rain of wine

Falls, and the dew of music more divine
Tempers the deep emotions of the time
To spirits cradled in a sunny
clime:-

How many meet, who never yet have met,
To part too soon, but never to forget.
How many saw the beauty, power, and wit
Of looks and words which ne'er enchanted yet;
But life's familiar veil was now withdrawn,
As the world leaps before an earthquake's dawn,
And unprophetic of the coming hours,
The matin winds from the expanded flowers
Scatter their hoarded incense, and awaken
The earth, until the dewy sleep is shaken
From every living heart which it possesses,
Through seas and winds, cities and wilder-

nesses,

As if the future and the past were all

Treasured i' the instant; - so Gherardi's hall

A bridesmaid went, and ere she came again
A silence fell upon the guests—a pause
Of expectation, as when beauty awes

All hearts with its approach, though unbeheld; Then wonder, and then fear that wonder quelled;

For whispers past from mouth to ear which drew
The colour from the hearer's cheeks, and flew
Louder and swifter round the company;
And then Gherardi entered with an eye
Of ostentatious trouble, and a crowd
Surrounded him, and some were weeping loud.

They found Ginevra dead! if it be death To lie without motion, or pulse, or breath, With waxen cheeks, and limbs cold, stiff, and

white,

And open eyes, whose fixed and glassy light Mocked at the speculation they had owned. If it be death, when there is felt around

A smell of clay, a pale and icy glare,
And silence, and a sense that lifts the hair
From the scalp to the ankles, as it were
Corruption from the spirit passing forth,
And giving all it shrouded to the earth,
And leaving as swift lightning in its flight
Ashes, and smoke, and darkness: in our

night

Of thought we know thus much of death,

no more

Than the unborn dream of our life before

Their barks are wrecked on its inhospitable

shore.

The marriage feast and its solemnity

Was turned to funeral pomp- the company, With heavy hearts and looks, broke up; nor they

Who loved the dead went weeping on their way
Alone, but sorrow mixed with sad surprise
Loosened the springs of pity in all eyes,
On which that form, whose fate they weep in

vain,

Will never, thought they, kindle smiles again.

The lamps which half extinguished in their

haste

Gleamed few and faint o'er the abandoned feast,
Showed as it were within the vaulted room
A cloud of sorrow hanging, as if gloom
Had past out of men's minds into the air.
Some few yet stood around Gherardi there,
Friends and relations of the dead, and he,
A loveless man, accepted torpidly

The consolation that he wanted not,

Awe in the place of grief within him wrought. Their whispers made the solemn silence seem More still some wept,

Some melted into tears without a sob,

And some with hearts that might be heard to throb

Leant on the table, and at intervals

Shuddered to hear through the deserted halls And corridors the thrilling shrieks which came Upon the breeze of night, that shook the flame Of every torch and taper as it swept

From out the chamber where the women kept;