DANTE! they would call thee stern,
Unsympathetic they,
And to a lighter muse they turn
From thy sweet song away, -
Ah, could they thy soft spirit learn
As I have learned to-day.
Alas! how piteously doth tell
Thy sorrow-throbbing lay,
Where through the murky fumes of hell
The soul-ghosts never stay,
But whirl in time to the spectral knell
That tolls all hope away.
However, mid that dead, damned host,
A snowy pair there flew,
By darker thousands onward forced,
Yet never were they two, -
"A heart's true love is never lost";
Would God that it were true!
"No more we read that day," - thy song
With tears, O poet, is sown, -
But onward whirled their orb along,
And onward whirls my own;
Ah, blest were they mid that fated throng, -
For I am there alone.
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Lectures on English Novelists.
