 | Fra Cipolla, and other poems |  |
The place behold! it was a thorny wood,
Close by a moor, where sullen waters stood:
There lurked the boar unheeded through the year,
Nor dwelling rose nor church-bell sounded near,
Nor woodman wandered in the paths, nor piled
His charcoal hearths, long blackening in the wild;
Grim looked the shatter'd trees with damp defiled.
E'en as that king, condemn'd seven years to crawl
And gaze with beasts at Babel's lofty wall,
Who scorned the world might fitly there converse
With baser things, pride's everlasting curse;
And with dark shadows all encompass'd sit,
And feed with dreams his melancholy wit,
Still rooted like a mandrake in the place,
Till witches might believe him of the race
Of Hecate, watching with malignant mien
Her favourite bounds, and, save by them, unseen.
But there was nothing then save trees and fern,
And wavering shades that restless beasts discern,
And start and tremble, and towards the plain
Scour with swift feet, and stand and gaze again,
As if their blood, long since at altars shed,
Still feared by kind some spirit of the dead,
And shrunk before the thirsty Manes dread.
Close by a moor, where sullen waters stood:
There lurked the boar unheeded through the year,
Nor dwelling rose nor church-bell sounded near,
Nor woodman wandered in the paths, nor piled
His charcoal hearths, long blackening in the wild;
Grim looked the shatter'd trees with damp defiled.
E'en as that king, condemn'd seven years to crawl
And gaze with beasts at Babel's lofty wall,
Who scorned the world might fitly there converse
With baser things, pride's everlasting curse;
And with dark shadows all encompass'd sit,
And feed with dreams his melancholy wit,
Still rooted like a mandrake in the place,
Till witches might believe him of the race
Of Hecate, watching with malignant mien
Her favourite bounds, and, save by them, unseen.
61
And wavering shades that restless beasts discern,
And start and tremble, and towards the plain
Scour with swift feet, and stand and gaze again,
As if their blood, long since at altars shed,
Still feared by kind some spirit of the dead,
And shrunk before the thirsty Manes dread.
| Fra Cipolla, and other poems | |