Scene From 'tasso'

MADDALO, A COURTIER.

MALPIGLIO, A POET.

PIGNA, A MINISTER.

ALBANO, AN USHER.

MADDALO:

No access to the Duke! You have not said

That the Count Maddalo would speak with him?

PIGNA:

Did you inform his Grace that Signor Pigna

Waits with state papers for his signature?

MALPIGLIO:

The Lady Leonora cannot know

That I have written a sonnet to her fame,

In which I ... Venus and Adonis.

You should not take my gold and serve me not.

ALBANO:

In truth I told her, and she smiled and said,

'If I am Venus, thou, coy Poesy,

Art the Adonis whom I love, and he

The Erymanthian boar that wounded him.'

O trust to me, Signor Malpiglio,

Those nods and smiles were favours worth the zechin.

MALPIGLIO:

The words are twisted in some double sense

That I reach not: the smiles fell not on me.

PIGNA:

How are the Duke and Duchess occupied?

ALBANO:

Buried in some strange talk. The Duke was leaning,

His finger on his brow, his lips unclosed.

The Princess sate within the window-seat,

And so her face was hid; but on her knee

Her hands were clasped, veined, and pale as snow,

And quivering--young Tasso, too, was there.

MADDALO:

Thou seest on whom from thine own worshipped heaven

Thou drawest down smiles--they did not rain on thee.

MALPIGLIO:

Would they were parching lightnings for his sake

On whom they fell!

SONG FOR 'TASSO'.

I loved--alas! our life is love;

But when we cease to breathe and move

I do suppose love ceases too.

I thought, but not as now I do,

Keen thoughts and bright of linked lore,

Of all that men had thought before.

And all that Nature shows, and more.

And still I love and still I think,

But strangely, for my heart can drink

The dregs of such despair, and live,

And love;...

And if I think, my thoughts come fast,

I mix the present with the past,

And each seems uglier than the last.

Sometimes I see before me flee

A silver spirit's form, like thee,

O Leonora, and I sit

...still watching it,

Till by the grated casement's ledge

It fades, with such a sigh, as sedge

Breathes o'er the breezy streamlet's edge.