Marcian Colonna :: :: University of Virginia Library

At home he met neglect, and fear abroad,
And so life grew, early, a heavy load.
Studious he was, and on the poet's page
Had pored beyond the feeling of his age,
And war, and high exploit, and knightly worth,
And fiery love, and dark and starry themes
Fed, with distemper'd food, the aching dreams
That haunted all his hours, and gave birth
To thirst of enterprize and wishes vain
Which died as they arose,—in pride and pain.

For he was doomed by a father's will to wear
The sullen cowl, and was forbid to share
The splendour of an elder brother's fate;
And therefore came distrust and bitter hate,
And envy, like the serpent's twining coil,
Ran 'round his heart and fixed its station there,
And thro' his veins did lurking fevers boil
Until they burst in madness;—then his mind
Became, at last, as is that languid wind

That floats across the calm blue sea, and falls
And rises o'er the Coliseum's walls,
And he like that great ruin.—In this hour
Of misery, when the soul had lost its power,
When memory slept, and that blank idiot air,
More hideous than death—to which despair
Is nothing, nor remorse—came smiling o'er
His features, they (his cautious parents) bore
The youth unto Laverna. By the shore
Of the blue dashing Mediterranean seas
They travell'd, and at times when the swift breeze
Came playing 'round his brows, a sadness crept
Silently o'er his eye, and then he sighed
Like one who thought, and when the soft wind died
He listened to its gentle fall, and wept.
They noted not the change, but bore him on
Unto his convent prison, and their gold
Stamped with the weight of truth the tale they told;
And there they left him to his fate,—alone.