Mix'd, to whose shores our frail and crowded bark

Was destin'd, open'd on our dazzled view.

'Twas noon,. the end of May:- the radiant sun
Was on the bosom of the mighty waters,

And on the tops of the unnumbered promontories,
Towns, hamlets, castles, villas; and St.-Elmo
Shew'd her magnificent summit. To the harbour,
Crowded with ships of many a distant nation,
Our prow in joy exulting cut its way.

The solar beams now with a flame intolerable
Shot right upon our heads and still we had
T'endure the torments long of quarantine,
Mid crowded vessels, filth, and stench, and noise,
Lock'd closely side to side,—the suffering
Was scarce endurable;-and then, to crown it,
My passport was irregular, and I

Was threaten'd with a prison, and had nearly
Incurr'd that order of a despot power.

Now in that beautiful and unrival'd city
Hotels were crowded, and around the beds,
And on the floors where we repos'd, were seen
Scorpions disporting in dire multitudes.

But soon, Chiaia, thy enchanting spot
Receiv'd with Vesuvius on our left,

us,

The Bay before us-and upon the rock

Of laurel to the right where Sannazaro

Dwelt, the still worship'd tomb where Virgil sleeps!
There six sweet months of nature's highest brilliance
We whil'd away, though Carbonari troubles
For a short moment clouded our fair joys

With fear and peril, and at last the storm
Blackening, and seemingly about to burst,
Drove us away to Rome. It was an earthly
Paradise, inasmuch as nature's charms
Could make it one-and ill departed from!
For Rome-the heavy air to me o'ercame
All its attractions. Not a day of health
There could I find, and gladly did I seek,
After four months another change of climate.
Then thee, Ferrara, fam'd for Estè's house,
And Tasso's amorous madness, and ye hills
Of Euganean lustre, that the beams

Of eve on Petrarch's holy age reflected;
And Padua, thee; and most of all immortal
Gem of the Adriatic, wave-clad Venice!

And then a roll of names which but to mention
Awakens all the treasures of the mind
Verona, Bergamo, Vicenza, Milan,
Turin and Chambery, and steep Mont Cenis.

And then again we to thy Lake return'd, O subject of my song, and where an empress Had late resided, took up our abode.

Intensely here my literary labours

I plied, and clos'd the haunted Tale of Huntley
And Alice Berkeley, and Sir Ambrose Grey,
And shriek-filld Hellingsley's spoil-coverd hall:
And here the Tale of Odo's Count went on,
Where innocent and most angelic Bertha
Bore on the scaffold an heroic death.

And now upon the dry and most perplex'd

Question of Wealth of nations, and the means
Of wise and economic circulation,

I meditated deeply, and thus clear'd

To my own mind's conviction the enigma.
And then the Bibliomania, which had long
Infected my researches, came again

To occupy too many of my hours.

And all the while the torments of affairs

Of wretched business, and the wiles of cunning Extortion, wickedness, ingratitude,

Audacious insult, inconceivable

Perversion of the laws, meant for protection,
To instruments of wrong and ravenous rapine!
And during all, a heart by nature timid,
Morbid, and rous'd with dangerous emotion
At slightest cause for care, grief, or regret :
And when they touch'd, losing the happy train
Of those ideas to the Muses suited.

But ever in my utmost agonies

I struggled still the trembling pen to guide,
And call'd the frighten'd Muse to calm my breast.
Yet what will not malignity pervert?
This energy of stout resistance, which
May fairly arrogate the name of virtue,
Has oft-times by the cruelty of censure
Been deem'd a reckless disregard of duties!
As if the virtue were in brooding over
Evils we cannot change! as if to smile,
And live in regions of imagination,
When coarse reality is unendurable

Misery, were a crime to be reproach'd!

"But when" it may be said, "your enchanted ears "Are listening to Elysian waterfalls,

"You will not hearken to the trumpet's call,
"When summon'd back to duty!" It may be,
The Muse's votary is sometimes lost

In this delirium: will he be the less
In the wild depths of unresisted grief?

But now incessant were th'insulting calls
On my most outrag'd spirit! Morns and nights
Scarcely suffic'd for the exhausting tasks,

Necessity and just defence impos'd

On my worn pen. But my afflicted heart,

Ah, far more than my pen, was work'd and worn.

It was an iron winter, most severe

In its extremities of snow and storm.

Right up against the roaring Lake the windows

Of my abode, now far within the city,

Lay. One dark morning in December's depth,
As by the blazing fire on that romance
Most magical above all others of

The great Magician of the North, the Pirate,

My eyes, imagination, heart, intent

I sat, a shriek came down the Lake, the House Trembled and rock'd, and twice from my shook chair Was I near tumbled on the floor: the bells

Through all the house rang, and St. Peter's sounded, And all the church bells thro the town were shaken, And also gave the signal. "Twas an earthquake!Slight-but appalling! Ah! how often since

Have I on the portentous moment dwelt!
In the same room, and by the self-same fire,
After an interval of an hundred months,
When I had dwelt in many a far abode,
And once for eight and twenty months again
My native soil inhabited, some sudden
Convulsion struck upon my vital strings ;*
And eight and forty hours I gasp'd for breath.

Then came the sleepless bed again; the appetite
Gone; and the loss of limbs; and eighteen nights
Of dangerous agony, and strange excitement
Of intellect, beyond its natural power;
Bursts of wild brilliance hitherto unknown
To my weak faculties; unintermitted
Toil of the intellect e'en for nineteen
Successive hours; and still the body torn;
Limbs paralis'd, and all the mortal part
Of earthly mould, sick even to death's door!
Thus it appears, as if the soul can work,
In bold defiance of the body's will:-
And sometimes blazes most, when it is nearest
To its departure. Much I've travel'd since
In mind and heart; and in my own conceit
Have far advanc'd. I cannot count the pages
Of various matter I have written and printed
Since that most perilous crisis,-poetry,
And prose-romance, and politics, and memoirs;

March 1830 see the note at the end of the Poem on Modern Aristocracy. Ge neva, 1831.