Ginevra

Wild, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one

Who staggers forth into the air and sun

From the dark chamber of a mortal fever,

Bewildered, and incapable, and ever

Fancying strange comments in her dizzy brain

Of usual shapes, till the familiar train

Of objects and of persons passed like things

Strange as a dreamer's mad imaginings,

Ginevra from the nuptial altar went;

The vows to which her lips had sworn assent

Rung 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 there

She scarce felt conscious,--but the weary glare

Lay like a chaos of unwelcome light,

Vexing the sense with gorgeous undelight,

A moonbeam in the shadow of a cloud

Was less heavenly fair--her face was bowed,

And as she passed, the diamonds in her hair

Were mirrored in the polished marble stair

Which led from the cathedral to the street;

And ever as she went her light fair feet

Erased these images.

The bride-maidens who round her thronging came,

Some with a sense of self-rebuke and shame,

Envying the unenviable; and others

Making the joy which should have been another's

Their own by gentle sympathy; and some

Sighing to think of an unhappy home:

Some few admiring what can ever lure

Maidens to leave the heaven serene and pure

Of parents' smiles for life's great cheat; a thing

Bitter to taste, sweet in imagining.

But they are all dispersed--and, lo! she stands

Looking 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 dreams

That he is dreaming, until slumber seems

A mockery of itself--when suddenly

Antonio 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 one

Whose sleeping face is stricken by the sun

With light like a harsh voice, which bids him rise

And look upon his day of life with eyes

Which weep in vain that they can dream no more,

Ginevra saw her lover, and forbore

To shriek or faint, and checked the stifling blood

Rushing upon her heart, and unsubdued

Said--'Friend, if earthly violence or ill,

Suspicion, doubt, or the tyrannic will

Of 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 impeach

Our love,--we love not:--if the grave which hides

The victim from the tyrant, and divides

The cheek that whitens from the eyes that dart

Imperious inquisition to the heart

That is another's, could dissever ours,

We love not.'--'What! do not the silent hours

Beckon thee to Gherardi's bridal bed?

Is not that ring'--a pledge, he would have said,

Of broken vows, but she with patient look

The 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 knell

Will 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 strewn

Will serve unfaded for my bier--so soon

That even the dying violet will not die

Before Ginevra.' The strong fantasy

Had made her accents weaker and more weak,

And quenched the crimson life upon her cheek,

And glazed her eyes, and spread an atmosphere

Round her, which chilled the burning noon with fear,

Making her but an image of the thought

Which, like a prophet or a shadow, brought

News of the terrors of the coming time.

Like an accuser branded with the crime

He would have cast on a beloved friend,

Whose dying eyes reproach not to the end

The pale betrayer--he then with vain repentance

Would share, he cannot now avert, the sentence--

Antonio stood and would have spoken, when

The compound voice of women and of men

Was heard approaching; he retired, while she

Was led amid the admiring company

Back to the palace,--and her maidens soon

Changed her attire for the afternoon,

And left her at her own request to keep

An hour of quiet rest:--like one asleep

With 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 light

Of love, and admiration, and delight

Reflected 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 wine

Falls, and the dew of music more divine

Tempers the deep emotions of the time

To 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 wit

Of 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 flowers

Scatter their hoarded incense, and awaken

The earth, until the dewy sleep is shaken

From every living heart which it possesses,

Through seas and winds, cities and wildernesses,

As if the future and the past were all

Treasured i' the instant;--so Gherardi's hall

Laughed in the mirth of its lord's festival,

Till some one asked--'Where is the Bride?' And then

A bridesmaid went,--and ere she came again

A silence fell upon the guests--a pause

Of expectation, as when beauty awes

All hearts with its approach, though unbeheld;

Then wonder, and then fear that wonder quelled;--

For whispers passed from mouth to ear which drew

The colour from the hearer's cheeks, and flew

Louder and swifter round the company;

And then Gherardi entered with an eye

Of ostentatious trouble, and a crowd

Surrounded him, and some were weeping loud.

They found Ginevra dead! if it be death

To lie without motion, or pulse, or breath,

With waxen cheeks, and limbs cold, stiff, and white,

And open eyes, whose fixed and glassy light

Mocked at the speculation they had owned.

If it be death, when there is felt around

A smell of clay, a pale and icy glare,

And silence, and a sense that lifts the hair

From the scalp to the ankles, as it were

Corruption from the spirit passing forth,

And giving all it shrouded to the earth,

And leaving as swift lightning in its flight

Ashes, and smoke, and darkness: in our night

Of thought we know thus much of death,--no more

Than the unborn dream of our life before

Their barks are wrecked on its inhospitable shore.

The marriage feast and its solemnity

Was turned to funeral pomp--the company,

With heavy hearts and looks, broke up; nor they

Who loved the dead went weeping on their way

Alone, but sorrow mixed with sad surprise

Loosened 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 room

A cloud of sorrow hanging, as if gloom

Had 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 torpidly

The consolation that he wanted not;

Awe in the place of grief within him wrought.

Their whispers made the solemn silence seem

More still--some wept,...

Some melted into tears without a sob,

And some with hearts that might be heard to throb

Leaned on the table and at intervals

Shuddered to hear through the deserted halls

And corridors the thrilling shrieks which came

Upon the breeze of night, that shook the flame

Of every torch and taper as it swept

From out the chamber where the women kept;--

Their tears fell on the dear companion cold

Of pleasures now departed; then was knolled

The bell of death, and soon the priests arrived,

And finding Death their penitent had shrived,

Returned like ravens from a corpse whereon

A vulture has just feasted to the bone.

And then the mourning women came.--

...