Marcian Colonna :: :: University of Virginia Library

Some memory had he of Vitelli's child,
But gathered where he now remembered not;
Perhaps, like a faint dream or vision wild,
(Which, once beheld, may never be forgot,)
She floated in his fancy; and when pain
And fevers hot came thronging round his brain,

Her shape and voice fell like a balm upon
His sad and dark imagination.
A gentle minister she was, when he
Saw forms, 'twas said, which often silently
Passed by his midnight couch, and felt at times
Strange horror for imaginary crimes,
(Committed, or to be,) and in his walk
Of Fate and Death, and phantom things would talk.
Shrieks scared him from his sleep, and figures came
On his alarmed sight, and thro' the glades,
When evening filled the woods with trembling shades,
Followed his footsteps; and a star-like flame
Floated before his eyes palely by day,
And glared by night and would not pass away.
—At last his brother died. Giovanni fell
A victim in a cause he loved too well;
And the Colonna prince, without his heir,
Bethought him of the distant convent, where
A child had been imprison'd, that he might gain
Riches for one he better lov'd:—How vain,

And idle now! Dead was the favoured son,
And sad the father,—but the crime was done.