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THE

LAMENT OF TASSO.

AT Ferrara (in the library) are preserved the original MSS. of Tasso's Gierusalemme and of Guarini's Pastor Fido, with letters of Tasso, one from Titian to Ariosto; and the inkstand and chair, the tomb and the house of the latter. But as misfortune has a greater interest for posterity, and little or none for the cotemporary, the cell where Tasso was confined in the hospital of St. Anna attracts a more fixed attention than the residence or the monument of Ariosto-at least it had this effect on me. There are two inscriptions, one on the outer gate, the second over the cell itself, inviting, unnecessarily, the wonder and the indignation of the spectator. Ferrara is much decayed, and depopulated; the castle still exists entire; and I saw the court where Parisina and Hugo were beheaded, according to the annal of Gibbon.

THE

LAMENT OF TASSO.

I.

LONG years!-It tries the thrilling frame to bear

And eagle-spirit of a Child of Song

Long years of outrage, calumny, and wrong;
Imputed madness, prisoned solitude,

And the mind's canker in its savage mood,

When the impatient thirst of light and air

Parches the heart; and the abhorred grate, Marring the sunbeams with its hideous shade, Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain With a hot sense of heaviness and pain;

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