Marcian Colonna :: :: University of Virginia Library

And Julia saw the youth she loved again:
But he was now the great Colonna's heir,
And she whom he had left so young and fair,
A few short years ago, was grown, with pain
Of thoughts unutter'd (a heart-eating care,)
Pale as a statue. When he met her first
He gazed and gasped as tho' his heart would burst.
Her figure came before him like a dream
Revealed at morning, and a sunny gleam
Broke in upon his soul and lit his eye
With something of a tender prophecy.
And was she then the shape he oft had seen,
By day and night,—she who had such strange power
Over the terrors of his wildest hour?
And was it not a phantom that had been
Wandering about him? Oh with what deep fear
He listened now, to mark if he could hear
The voice that lulled him,—but she never spoke;
For in her heart her own young love awoke
From its long slumber, and chained down her tongue,

And she sate mute before him: he, the while,
Stood feasting on her melancholy smile,
Till o'er his eyes a dizzy vapour hung
And he rushed forth into the freshning air,
Which kissed and played about his temples bare,
And he grew calm. Not unobserved he fled,
For she who mourned him once as lost and dead,
Saw with a glance, as none but women see,
His secret passion, and home silently
She went rejoicing, 'till Vitelli asked
‘Wherefore her spirit fell,’—and then she tasked
Her fancy for excuse wherewith to hide
Her thoughts and turn his curious gaze aside.