Poems Lyrical and Dramatic :: :: University of Virginia Library

------ “then he left me
And gave himself to others” ------ [OMITTED]
“Such depths he fell that all device was short
Of his preserving save that he should view
The children of perdition.”
—Carey's Dante, Purgatory, Canto XXX.

I.

To-day I called thy face up from the grave,
The grave of grief where I had buried it,
And with old threads of memory newly knit
The features sweet that made my soul a slave.

The noble courtesy that never gave
Too little or too much, the smiles that flit
O'er marble brows like a fair poem writ,
The clear Greek face a sculptor's hand might grave.

185

Then swift I felt a keen and piercing pain;
As he who, bitten of the serpent's fang,
A moment stood, and straight to ashes fell;

Or like those others 'neath the scalding rain
And sleet of fire the Tuscan poet sang,
Lying upon the “burning marl” of Hell.

II.

There too the poet marked a fiery snake
Transfix a spirit with a sudden stroke:
Flat lay the worm, while the wound spouted smoke,
And each eyed each, as gazing ne'er would slake.

Then 'gan each several limb of him to quake,
And a most hideous change in each awoke,
And slowly o'er their vital members broke,
As changes o'er a ghastly vision break,

For the snake rose up, as the man fell down,
Branched into legs and blossomed forth with ears:
The man that was fled hissing in a trice.

186

Tuscan, my heart confirms thy truth's renown,
That kissing serpents changed to one appears,
Like virtue with long gazing upon vice.