CLXXXIII.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,—

Calm or convulsed, in breeze or gale or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving-boundless, endless, and sublime,
The image of eternity, the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

CLXXXIV.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wanton'd with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; 86 and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here.

CLXXXV.

My task is done,87 my song hath ceased, my theme
Has died into an echo; it is fit

The spell should break of this protracted dream.
The torch shall be extinguish'd which hath lit
My midnight lamp-and what is writ, is writ;
Would it were worthier! but I am not now
That which I have been-and my visions flit
Less palpably before me-and the glow

Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.

CLXXXVL

Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been-
A sound which makes us linger;-yet-farewell!
Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell
A thought which once was his, if on ye swell
A single recollection, not in vain

He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell;
Farewell! with him alone may rest the pain,
If such there were-with you, the moral of his strain.

NOTES TO CANTO THE FOURTH.

1.-Stanza i,, line 1.

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;

The communication between the ducal palace and the prisons of Venice is by a gloomy bridge, or covered gallery, high above the water, and divided by a stone wall into a passage and a cell. The state dungeons, called pozzi, or wells, were sunk in the thick walls of the palace: and the prisoner, when taken out to die, was conducted across the gallery to the other side, and being then led back into the other compartment, or cell, upon the bridge, was there strangled. The low portal through which the criminal was taken into this cell is now walled up; but the passage is still open, and is still known by the name of the Bridge of Sighs." The pozzi are under the flooring of the chamber at the foot of the bridge. They were formerly twelve; but on the first arrival of the French, the Venetians hastily blocked or broke up the deeper of these dungeons. You may still, however, descend by a trap-door, and crawl down through holes, half choked by rubbish, to the depth of two stories below the first range. If you are in want of consolation for the extinction of patrician power, perhaps you may find it there; scarcely a ray of light glimmers into the narrow gallery which leads to the cells, and the places of confinement themselves are totally dark. A small hole in the wall admitted the damp air of the passages, and served for the introduction of the prisoner's food. A wooden pallet, raised a foot from the ground, was the only furniture. The conductors tell you that a light was not allowed. The cells are about five paces in length, two and a half in width, and seven feet in height. They are directly beneath one another, and respiration is somewhat difficult in the lower holes. Only one prisoner was found when the republicans descended into these hideous recesses, and he is said to have been confined sixteen years. But the inmates of the dungeons beneath had left traces of their repentance, or of their despair, which are still visible, and may, perhaps, owe something to recent ingenuity. Some of the detained appear to have offended against, and others to have belonged to, the sacred body, not only from their signatures, but from the churches and belfries which they have scratched upon the walls. The reader may not object to see a specimen

of the records prompted by so terrific a solitude. As nearly as they could be copied by more than one pencil, three of them are as follows:-

The copyist has followed, not corrected, the solecisms; some of which are, however, not quite so decided, since the letters were evidently scratched in the dark. It only need be observed, that bestemmia and mangiar may be read in the first inscription, which was probably written by a prisoner contined for some act of impiety committed at a funeral; that Cortellarius is the name of a parish on terra firma, near the sea; and that the last initials evidently are put for Viva la santa Chiesa Kattolica Romana.

2.-Stanza ii., line 1.

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,

Sabellicus, describing the appearance of Venice, has made use of the above image, which would not be poetical were it not true.-"Quo fit ut qui superne urbem contempletur, turritam telluris imaginem medio Oceano figuratam se putet inspicere."

3. Stanza iii., line 1.

In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,

The well-known song of the gondoliers, of alternate stanzas from Tasso's "Jerusalem," has died with the independence of Venice. Editions of the poem, with the original in one column, and the Venetian variations on the other, as sung by the boatmen, were once common, and are still to be found. The following extract will serve to show the difference between the Tuscan epic and the "Canta alla Barcariola:"