Ginevra

Wild, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as oneWho staggers forth into the air and sunFrom the dark chamber of a mortal fever,Bewildered, and incapable, and everFancying strange comments in her dizzy brainOf usual shapes, till the familiar trainOf objects and of persons passed like thingsStrange as a dreamer's mad imaginings,Ginevra from the nuptial altar went;The vows to which her lips had sworn assentRung in her brain still with a jarring din,Deafening the lost intelligence within.

And so she moved under the bridal veil,Which made the paleness of her cheek more pale,And deepened the faint crimson of her mouth,And darkened her dark locks, as moonlight doth,--And of the gold and jewels glittering thereShe scarce felt conscious,--but the weary glareLay like a chaos of unwelcome light,Vexing the sense with gorgeous undelight,A moonbeam in the shadow of a cloudWas less heavenly fair--her face was bowed,And as she passed, the diamonds in her hairWere mirrored in the polished marble stairWhich led from the cathedral to the street;And ever as she went her light fair feetErased these images.

The bride-maidens who round her thronging came,Some with a sense of self-rebuke and shame,Envying the unenviable; and othersMaking the joy which should have been another'sTheir own by gentle sympathy; and someSighing to think of an unhappy home:Some few admiring what can ever lureMaidens to leave the heaven serene and pureOf parents' smiles for life's great cheat; a thingBitter to taste, sweet in imagining.

But they are all dispersed--and, lo! she standsLooking in idle grief on her white hands,Alone within the garden now her own;And through the sunny air, with jangling tone,The music of the merry marriage-bells,Killing the azure silence, sinks and swells;--Absorbed like one within a dream who dreamsThat he is dreaming, until slumber seemsA mockery of itself--when suddenlyAntonio stood before her, pale as she.With agony, with sorrow, and with pride,He lifted his wan eyes upon the bride,And said--'Is this thy faith?' and then as oneWhose sleeping face is stricken by the sunWith light like a harsh voice, which bids him riseAnd look upon his day of life with eyesWhich weep in vain that they can dream no more,Ginevra saw her lover, and forboreTo shriek or faint, and checked the stifling bloodRushing upon her heart, and unsubduedSaid--'Friend, if earthly violence or ill,Suspicion, doubt, or the tyrannic willOf parents, chance or custom, time or change,Or circumstance, or terror, or revenge,Or wildered looks, or words, or evil speech,With all their stings and venom can impeachOur love,--we love not:--if the grave which hidesThe victim from the tyrant, and dividesThe cheek that whitens from the eyes that dartImperious inquisition to the heartThat is another's, could dissever ours,We love not.'--'What! do not the silent hoursBeckon thee to Gherardi's bridal bed?Is not that ring'--a pledge, he would have said,Of broken vows, but she with patient lookThe golden circle from her finger took,And said--'Accept this token of my faith,The pledge of vows to be absolved by death;And I am dead or shall be soon--my knellWill mix its music with that merry bell,Does it not sound as if they sweetly said"We toll a corpse out of the marriage-bed"?The flowers upon my bridal chamber strewnWill serve unfaded for my bier--so soonThat even the dying violet will not dieBefore Ginevra.' The strong fantasyHad made her accents weaker and more weak,And quenched the crimson life upon her cheek,And glazed her eyes, and spread an atmosphereRound her, which chilled the burning noon with fear,Making her but an image of the thoughtWhich, like a prophet or a shadow, broughtNews of the terrors of the coming time.Like an accuser branded with the crimeHe would have cast on a beloved friend,Whose dying eyes reproach not to the endThe pale betrayer--he then with vain repentanceWould share, he cannot now avert, the sentence--Antonio stood and would have spoken, whenThe compound voice of women and of menWas heard approaching; he retired, while sheWas led amid the admiring companyBack to the palace,--and her maidens soonChanged her attire for the afternoon,And left her at her own request to keepAn hour of quiet rest:--like one asleepWith open eyes and folded hands she lay,Pale in the light of the declining day.

Meanwhile the day sinks fast, the sun is set,And in the lighted hall the guests are met;The beautiful looked lovelier in the lightOf love, and admiration, and delightReflected from a thousand hearts and eyes,Kindling a momentary Paradise.This crowd is safer than the silent wood,Where love's own doubts disturb the solitude;On frozen hearts the fiery rain of wineFalls, and the dew of music more divineTempers the deep emotions of the timeTo spirits cradled in a sunny clime:--How many meet, who never yet have met,To part too soon, but never to forget.How many saw the beauty, power and witOf looks and words which ne'er enchanted yet;But life's familiar veil was now withdrawn,As the world leaps before an earthquake's dawn,And unprophetic of the coming hours,The matin winds from the expanded flowersScatter their hoarded incense, and awakenThe earth, until the dewy sleep is shakenFrom every living heart which it possesses,Through seas and winds, cities and wildernesses,As if the future and the past were allTreasured i' the instant;--so Gherardi's hallLaughed in the mirth of its lord's festival,Till some one asked--'Where is the Bride?' And thenA bridesmaid went,--and ere she came againA silence fell upon the guests--a pauseOf expectation, as when beauty awesAll hearts with its approach, though unbeheld;Then wonder, and then fear that wonder quelled;--For whispers passed from mouth to ear which drewThe colour from the hearer's cheeks, and flewLouder and swifter round the company;And then Gherardi entered with an eyeOf ostentatious trouble, and a crowdSurrounded him, and some were weeping loud.

They found Ginevra dead! if it be deathTo lie without motion, or pulse, or breath,With waxen cheeks, and limbs cold, stiff, and white,And open eyes, whose fixed and glassy lightMocked at the speculation they had owned.If it be death, when there is felt aroundA smell of clay, a pale and icy glare,And silence, and a sense that lifts the hairFrom the scalp to the ankles, as it wereCorruption from the spirit passing forth,And giving all it shrouded to the earth,And leaving as swift lightning in its flightAshes, and smoke, and darkness: in our nightOf thought we know thus much of death,--no moreThan the unborn dream of our life beforeTheir barks are wrecked on its inhospitable shore.The marriage feast and its solemnityWas turned to funeral pomp--the company,With heavy hearts and looks, broke up; nor theyWho loved the dead went weeping on their wayAlone, but sorrow mixed with sad surpriseLoosened the springs of pity in all eyes,On which that form, whose fate they weep in vain,Will never, thought they, kindle smiles again.The lamps which, half extinguished in their haste,Gleamed few and faint o'er the abandoned feast,Showed as it were within the vaulted roomA cloud of sorrow hanging, as if gloomHad passed out of men's minds into the air.Some few yet stood around Gherardi there,Friends and relations of the dead,--and he,A loveless man, accepted torpidlyThe consolation that he wanted not;Awe in the place of grief within him wrought.Their whispers made the solemn silence seemMore still--some wept,...Some melted into tears without a sob,And some with hearts that might be heard to throbLeaned on the table and at intervalsShuddered to hear through the deserted hallsAnd corridors the thrilling shrieks which cameUpon the breeze of night, that shook the flameOf every torch and taper as it sweptFrom out the chamber where the women kept;--Their tears fell on the dear companion coldOf pleasures now departed; then was knolledThe bell of death, and soon the priests arrived,And finding Death their penitent had shrived,Returned like ravens from a corpse whereonA vulture has just feasted to the bone.And then the mourning women came.--