ON THE MARRIAGE OF THE LADY GWENDOLIN TALBOT WITH THE ELDEST SON OF

THE PRINCE BORGHESE.

LADY! to decorate thy marriage-morn,

Rare gems, and flowers, and lofty songs are brought ;
Thou the plain utterance of a Poet's thought,
Thyself at heart a Poet, wilt not scorn:

The name, into whose splendour thou wert born,
Thou art about to change for that which stands
Writ on the proudest work* that mortal hands
Have raised from earth, Religion to adorn.
Take it rejoicing,-take with thee thy dower,
Britain's best blood, and Beauty ever new,
Being of mind; may the cool northern dew
Still rest upon thy leaves, transplanted flower!
Mingling thy English nature, pure and true,
With the bright growth of each Italian hour.

Rome, May 11th, 1835.

*St. Peter's.

ON THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS BORGHESE, AT ROME, NOVEMBER, 1840.

ONCE, and but once again I dare to raise

A voice which thou in spirit still may'st hear,
Now that thy bridal bed becomes a bier,

Now that thou canst not blush at thine own praise!
The ways of God are not as our best ways,

And thus we ask, with a convulsive tear,

Why is this northern blossom low and sere?

Why has it blest the south but these few days?
Another Basilic,* decked otherwise

Than that which hailed thee as a princely bride,
Receives thee and three little ones beside ;
While the young lord of that late glorious home
Stands 'mid these ruins and these agonies,"

Like some lone column of his native Rome!

* S. Maria Maggiore, where the Borghese family are interred.

ROMAN RUINS.

How could Rome live so long, and now be dead?
How came this waste and wilderness of stones?
How shows the orbed monster, so long fed

On martyr-blood, his bare and crumbling bones?
Did the strong Faith, that built eight hundred years
Of world-dominion on a robber's name,
Once animate this corse, and fervent seers
Augur it endless life and shadeless fame ?
Stranger! if thou a docile heart dost bring
Within thee, bear a timely precept hence
That Power, mere Power, is but a barren thing,
Even when it seems most like omnipotence;
The forms must pass,-and past, they leave behind
Little to please, and nought to bless mankind.

;

ANTIQUES.

PLATEN.

FREE! let us free,-throw open the doors, lay open the

presses,

Here in the dark and the dust is it seemly for us to be dwelling?

What

we, and where we have been, oh! remember, and give us your pity.

Once this rare old Vase was the pride of the gardens of

Egypt,

And Cleopatra herself bade her courtiers fill it with

myrtle :

This so daintily carved,—this duplicate layer of Onyx, On thy finger, Antinous, rested, a jewel unvaluedThine, thou beautiful Boy, too soon sped away to thy heaven.

I, God Hermes, stood in the hall of Cæsar Augustus,— Breath of the odorous south from crowns of bay was shed

o'er me;

Now have Ye piled us together and ranged us in cruel confusion,

Each one pressing his fellow, and each of us shading his

brother,

None in a fitting abode, in the life-giving play of the

sunshine!

Wearying even the eyes of gaping and vain "cognoscenti," Here in disorder we lie, like desolate bones in a charnel, Waking, in those that can feel, deep sense of sorrowful yearning

For the magnificent days, when, as all but alive, we were honoured.

Ye too, cull ye no roses, no fresh-blowing braids, to be wreathed

Round the Etrurian vase and brow of the Parian marble? Ye too, have ye no temples, no pleachèd arcades in your gardens,

Where ye can take us, and plant us, all near the unperishing heavens,

After our own sweet wont, to the joy of the pious beholder?