sacrifice,—seems ever present to her soul, and speaks characteristically in these lines, with which she replies to a wish of Tasso's for the return of the golden age:—
"When earth has men to reverence female hearts,
To know the treasure of rich Truth and Love,
Set deep within a high-soul'd woman's breast;—
When the remembrance of our summer prime
Keeps brightly in man's heart a holy place;—
When the keen glance that pierces through so much
Looks also tenderly through that dim veil
By Time or Sickness hung 'round drooping forms;—
When the possession, stilling every wish,
Draws not Desire away to other wealth;—
A brighter day-spring then for us may dawn
Then may we solemnize our golden age.'
A character thus meditative, affectionate, and self-secluding, would naturally be peculiarly sensitive to the secret intimations of coming sorrow: forebodings of evil arise in her mind from the antipathy so apparent between Tasso and Antonio; and after learning that the cold, keen irony of the latter has irritated the poet almost to frenzy, she thus, to her friend Leonora de Sanvitale, reproaches herself for not having listened to the monitory whispers of her soul:—
"Alas! that we so slowly learn to heed
The secret signs and omens of the breast!
An oracle speaks low within our hearts,
Low, still, yet clear, its prophet voice forewarns
What to pursue, what shun.
*****
Yes, my whole soul misgave me silently
When he and Tasso met."
She admits to her friend the necessity for his departure from Ferrara, but thus reverts, with fondly clinging remembrance, to the time when he first became known to her:—
"Oh! mark'd and singled was the hour when first
He met mine eye!—Sickness and grief just then
Had pass'd away; from long, long suffering freed,
I lifted up my brow, and silently
Gazed upon life again.—The sunny day,
The sweet looks of my kindred, made a light
Of gladness round me, and my freshen'd heart
Drank the rich healing balm of hope once more.
Then onward, through the glowing world I dared
To send my glance, and many a kind bright shape
There beckon'd from afar. Then first the youth,
Led by a sister's hand, before me stood,
And my soul clung to him e'en then, O friend!
To cling for ever more.
Leonora.Lament it not,
My princess!—to have known heaven's gifted ones
Is to have gather'd into the full soul
Inalienable wealth!
Princess. Oh! precious things—
The richly graced, the exquisite, are things
To fear, to love with trembling!—beautiful
Is the pure flame when on thy hearth it shines,
When in the friendly torch it gives thee light,
How gracious and how calm!—but, once unchained,
Lo! Ruin sweeps along its fatal path!"
