Chapter VIII

To the Marchioness comes a courtier:
"I am prayed to bring you word
That the minstrel keeps his promise
Who brought you news of my lord;

"And he waits without the circle
To kiss your highness' hand;
And he asks no gold for guerdon,
But before he leaves the land

"He craves of your love once proffered
That you suffer him for reward,
In this crowning hour of his glory,
To look on your son, my lord."

Through the silken press of the courtiers
The minstrel faltered in.
His claspèd hands were bloodless,
His face was white and thin;

And he bent his knee to the lady,
But of her love and grace
To her heart she raised him and kissed him
Upon his gentle face.

Turned to her son the bridegroom,
Turned to his high-born wife,
"I give you here for your brother
Who gave back my son to life.

"For this youth brought me news from Naples
How thou layest sick and poor,
By true comrades kept, and forsaken
By a false paramour.

"Wherefore I charge you love him
For a brother that is my son."
The comrades turned to the bridegroom
In silence every one.

But the bridegroom looked on the minstrel
With a visage blank and changed,
As his whom the sight of a spectre
From his reason hath estranged;

And the smiling courtiers near them
On a sudden were still as death;
And, subtly-stricken, the people
Hearkened and held their breath

With an awe uncomprehended
For an unseen agony:--
Who is this that lies a-dying,
With her head on the prince's knee?

A light of anguish and wonder
Is in the prince's eye,
"O, speak, sweet saint, and forgive me,
Or I cannot let thee die!

"For now I see thy hardness
Was softer than mortal ruth,
And thy heavenly guile was whiter,
My saint, than martyr's truth."

She speaks not and she moves not,
But a blessed brightness lies
On her lips in their silent rapture
And her tender closèd eyes.

Federigo, the son of the Marquis,
He rises from his knee:
"Aye, you have been good, my father,
To them that were good to me.

"You have given them honors and titles,
But here lies one unknown--
Ah, God reward her in heaven
With the peace he gives his own!"

FOOTNOTES:

[2] The author of this ballad has added a thread of evident love-story
to a most romantic incident of the history of Mantua, which
occurred in the fifteenth century. He relates the incident so
nearly as he found it in the _Cronache Montovane_, that he is
ashamed to say how little his invention has been employed in it.
The hero of the story, Federigo, became the third Marquis of
Mantua, and was a prince greatly beloved and honored by his
subjects.

[3] "Breve pertugio dentro dalla Muda,
La qual per me ha il titol della fame
E in che conviene ancor ch'altri si chiuda,
M'avea mostrato per lo suo forame
Piu lune gia."

DANTE, _L'Inferno_.

[4] "As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in its flight."

THE FIRST CRICKET.

Ah me! is it then true that the year has waxed unto waning,
And that so soon must remain nothing but lapse and decay,--
Earliest cricket, that out of the midsummer midnight complaining,
All the faint summer in me takest with subtle dismay?

Though thou bringest no dream of frost to the flowers that slumber,
Though no tree for its leaves, doomed of thy voice, maketh moan,
Yet with th' unconscious earth's boded evil my soul thou dost
cumber,
And in the year's lost youth makest me still lose my own.

Answerest thou, that when nights of December are blackest and
bleakest,
And when the fervid grate feigns me a May in my room,
And by my hearthstone gay, as now sad in my garden, thou creakest,--
Thou wilt again give me all,--dew and fragrance and bloom?

Nay, little poet! full many a cricket I have that is willing,
If I but take him down out of his place on my shelf,
Me blither lays to sing than the blithest known to thy shrilling,
Full of the rapture of life, May, morn, hope, and--himself:

Leaving me only the sadder; for never one of my singers
Lures back the bee to his feast, calls back the bird to his tree.
Hast thou no art can make me believe, while the summer yet lingers,
Better than bloom that has been red leaf and sere that must be?

THE MULBERRIES.

I.

On the Rialto Bridge we stand;
The street ebbs under and makes no sound;
But, with bargains shrieked on every hand,
The noisy market rings around.

"_Mulberries, fine mulberries, here!_"
A tuneful voice,--and light, light measure;
Though I hardly should count these mulberries dear,
If I paid three times the price for my pleasure.

Brown hands splashed with mulberry blood,
The basket wreathed with mulberry leaves
Hiding the berries beneath them;--good!
Let us take whatever the young rogue gives.

For you know, old friend, I haven't eaten
A mulberry since the ignorant joy
Of anything sweet in the mouth could sweeten
All this bitter world for a boy.