No More Learning

Away! address thy prayers to Heaven.
Before its evening stars are met, 210
Learn if thou there canst be forgiven:
Its mercy may absolve thee yet.
But here, upon the earth beneath,
There is no spot where thou and I
Together for an hour could breathe:
Farewell! I will not see thee die--
But thou, frail thing! shall view his head--
Away! I cannot speak the rest:
Go! woman of the wanton breast;
Not I, but thou his blood dost shed: 220
Go! if that sight thou canst outlive,
And joy thee in the life I give. "

XIII.

And here stern Azo hid his face--
For on his brow the swelling vein
Throbbed as if back upon his brain
The hot blood ebbed and flowed again;
And therefore bowed he for a space,
And passed his shaking hand along
His eye, to veil it from the throng;
While Hugo raised his chained hands, 230
And for a brief delay demands
His father's ear: the silent sire
Forbids not what his words require.
"It is not that I dread the death--
For thou hast seen me by thy side
All redly through the battle ride,
And that--not once a useless brand--
Thy slaves have wrested from my hand
Hath shed more blood in cause of thine,
Than e'er can stain the axe of mine:[419] 240
Thou gav'st, and may'st resume my breath,
A gift for which I thank thee not;
Nor are my mother's wrongs forgot,
Her slighted love and ruined name,
Her offspring's heritage of shame;
But she is in the grave, where he,
Her son--thy rival--soon shall be.
Her broken heart--my severed head--
Shall witness for thee from the dead
How trusty and how tender were 250
Thy youthful love--paternal care.
'Tis true that I have done thee wrong--
But wrong for wrong:--this,--deemed thy bride,
The other victim of thy pride,--
Thou know'st for me was destined long;
Thou saw'st, and coveted'st her charms;
And with thy very crime--my birth,--
Thou taunted'st me--as little worth;
A match ignoble for her arms;
Because, forsooth, I could not claim 260
The lawful heirship of thy name,
Nor sit on Este's lineal throne;
Yet, were a few short summers mine,
My name should more than Este's shine
With honours all my own.
I had a sword--and have a breast
That should have won as haught[420] a crest
As ever waved along the line
Of all these sovereign sires of thine.
Not always knightly spurs are worn 270
The brightest by the better born;
And mine have lanced my courser's flank
Before proud chiefs of princely rank,
When charging to the cheering cry
Of 'Este and of Victory! '
I will not plead the cause of crime,
Nor sue thee to redeem from time
A few brief hours or days that must
At length roll o'er my reckless dust;--
Such maddening moments as my past, 280
They could not, and they did not, last;--
Albeit my birth and name be base,
And thy nobility of race
Disdained to deck a thing like me--
Yet in my lineaments they trace
Some features of my father's face,
And in my spirit--all of thee.
From thee this tamelessness of heart--
From thee--nay, wherefore dost thou start? ---
From thee in all their vigour came 290
My arm of strength, my soul of flame--
Thou didst not give me life alone,
But all that made me more thine own.
See what thy guilty love hath done!
Repaid thee with too like a son!
I am no bastard in my soul,
For that, like thine, abhorred control;
And for my breath, that hasty boon
Thou gav'st and wilt resume so soon,
I valued it no more than thou, 300
When rose thy casque above thy brow,
And we, all side by side, have striven,
And o'er the dead our coursers driven:
The past is nothing--and at last
The future can but be the past;[421]
Yet would I that I then had died:
For though thou work'dst my mother's ill,
And made thy own my destined bride,
I feel thou art my father still:
And harsh as sounds thy hard decree, 310
'Tis not unjust, although from thee.
Begot in sin, to die in shame,
My life begun and ends the same:
As erred the sire, so erred the son,
And thou must punish both in one.
My crime seems worst to human view,
But God must judge between us too! "[422]

XIV.

He ceased--and stood with folded arms,
On which the circling fetters sounded;
And not an ear but felt as wounded, 320
Of all the chiefs that there were ranked,
When those dull chains in meeting clanked:
Till Parisina's fatal charms[423]
Again attracted every eye--
Would she thus hear him doomed to die!
She stood, I said, all pale and still,
The living cause of Hugo's ill:
Her eyes unmoved, but full and wide,
Not once had turned to either side--
Nor once did those sweet eyelids close, 330
Or shade the glance o'er which they rose,
But round their orbs of deepest blue
The circling white dilated grew--
And there with glassy gaze she stood
As ice were in her curdled blood;
But every now and then a tear[424]
So large and slowly gathered slid
From the long dark fringe of that fair lid,
It was a thing to see, not hear! [425]
And those who saw, it did surprise, 340
Such drops could fall from human eyes.
To speak she thought--the imperfect note
Was choked within her swelling throat,
Yet seemed in that low hollow groan
Her whole heart gushing in the tone.
It ceased--again she thought to speak,
Then burst her voice in one long shriek,
And to the earth she fell like stone
Or statue from its base o'erthrown,
More like a thing that ne'er had life,-- 350
A monument of Azo's wife,--
Than her, that living guilty thing,
Whose every passion was a sting,
Which urged to guilt, but could not bear
That guilt's detection and despair.
But yet she lived--and all too soon
Recovered from that death-like swoon--
But scarce to reason--every sense
Had been o'erstrung by pangs intense;
And each frail fibre of her brain 360
(As bowstrings, when relaxed by rain,
The erring arrow launch aside)
Sent forth her thoughts all wild and wide--
The past a blank, the future black,
With glimpses of a dreary track,
Like lightning on the desert path,
When midnight storms are mustering wrath.