She then announces her determination to make the sacrifice of his society, in which alone her being seems to find its full completion.
"Alas! dear friend, my soul indeed is fix'd—
Let him depart!—yet cannot I but feel
Ev'n now the sadness of long days to come;
The cold void left me by a lost delight!—
No more shall sunrise from my opening eye
Chase his bright image glorified in dreams;
Glad Hope to see him shall no longer stir
With joyous flutterings my scarce-waken'd soul;
And vainly, vainly, through yon garden bowers,
Amidst the dewy shadows, my first look
Shall seek his form! How blissful was the thought
With him to share each golden evening's peace!
How grew the longing, hour by hour, to read
His spirit yet more deeply! Day by day
How my own being, tuned to happiness,
Gave forth a voice of finer harmony!—
Now is the twilight gloom around me fallen:
The festal day, the sun's magnificence,
All riches of this many-coloured world,
What are they now?—dim, soulless, desolate!
Veiled in the cloud that sinks upon my heart.—
Once was each day a life!—each care was mute,
Ev'n the low boding hush'd within the soul,
And the smooth waters of a gliding stream,
Without the rudder's aid, bore lightly on
Our fairy bark of joy!"
Her companion endeavours, but in vain, to console her.
"Leonora.If the kind words of friendship cannot soothe,
The still sweet influences of this fair world
Shall win thee back unconsciously to peace.
Princess.Yes, beautiful it is! the glowing world!
So many a joy keeps flitting to and fro,
In all its paths, and ever, ever seems
One step, but one, removed—till our fond thirst
For the still fading fountain, step by step,
Lures to the grave! so seldom do we find
What seem'd by Nature moulded for our love,
And for our bliss endow'd—or if we find,
So seldom to our yearning hearts can hold!
That which once freely made itself our own
Bursts from us!—that which eagerly we press'd
We coldly loose! A treasure may be ours,
Only we know it not, or know, perchance,
Unconscious of its worth!"
But the dark clouds are gathering within the spirit of Tasso itself, and the devotedness of affection would in vain avert their lightnings by the sacrifice of all its own pure enjoyments. In the solitary confinement to which the Duke has sentenced him as a punishment for his duel with Antonio, his jealous imagination, like that of the self-torturing Rousseau, pictures the whole world as arrayed in one conspiracy against him, and he doubts even of her truth and gentleness whose watching thoughts are all for his welfare.—The following passages affectingly mark the progress of the dark despondency which finally overwhelms him, though the concluding lines of the last are brightened by a ray of those immortal
