THE GOLDEN SUPPER.

[This poem is founded upon a story in Boccaccio.

A young lover, Julian, whose cousin and foster-sister, Camilla, has been wedded to his friend and rival, Lionel, endeavours to narrate the story of his own love for her, and the strange sequel of it. He speaks of having been haunted in delirium by visions and the sound of bells, sometimes tolling for a funeral, and at last ringing for a marriage; but he breaks away, overcome, as he approaches the Event, and a witness to it completes the tale.]

E flies the event: he leaves the event

to me:

Poor Julian-how he rush'd away;
the bells,

Those marriage-bells, echoing in ear and heart-
But cast a parting glance at me, you saw,
As who should say "Continue." Well, he had
One golden hour-of triumph shall I say?
Solace at least-before he left his home.

Would you had seen him in that hour of his ! He moved thro' all of it majestically

Restrain'd himself quite to the close-but now

Whether they were his lady's marriage-bells, Or prophets of them in his fantasy,

-

I never ask'd: but Lionel and the girl
Were wedded, and our Julian came again
Back to his mother's house among the pines.
But these, their gloom, the mountains and the Bay,
The whole land weigh'd him down as Ætna does.
The Giant of Mythology: he would go,

Would leave the land for ever, and had gone
Surely, but for a whisper "Go not yet,"
Some warning, and divinely as it seem'd
By that which follow'd-but of this I deem
As of the visions that he told-the event
Glanced back upon them in his after life,
And partly made them-tho' he knew it not.

And thus he stay'd and would not look at herNo not for months: but, when the eleventh moon After their marriage lit the lover's Bay,

Heard yet once more the tolling bell, and said, Would you could toll me out of life, but found

All softly as his mother broke it to him—

A crueller reason than a crazy ear,

For that low knell tolling his lady dead-
Dead-and had lain three days without a pulse :
All that look'd on her had pronounced her dead.
And so they bore her (for in Julian's land
They never nail a dumb head up in elm),

Bore her free-faced to the free airs of heaven,

And laid her in the vault of her own kin.

What did he then? not die: he is here and

hale

Not plunge headforemost from the mountain.

there,

And leave the name of Lover's Leap: not he: He knew the meaning of the whisper now,

Thought that he knew it. "This, I stay'd for this;

O love, I have not seen you for so long.

Now, now, will I go down into the grave,

I will be all alone with all I love,

And kiss her on the lips.

She is his no more:

The dead returns to me, and I go down

To kiss the dead."

The fancy stirr'd him so

He rose and went, and entering the dim vault,
And, making there a sudden light, beheld
All round about him that which all will be.
The light was but a flash, and went again.
Then at the far end of the vault he saw
His lady with the moonlight on her face;
Her breast as in a shadow-prison, bars

Of black and bands of silver, which the moon
Struck from an open grating overhead

High in the wall, and all the rest of her
Drown'd in the gloom and horror of the vault.

"It was my wish," he said, "to pass, to sleep, To rest, to be with her-till the great day Peal'd on us with that music which rights all, And raised us hand in hand." And kneeling there Down in the dreadful dust that once was man, Dust, as he said, that once was loving hearts, Hearts that had beat with such a love as mine

Not such as mine, no, nor for such as her

He softly put his arm about her neck

And kiss'd her more than once, till helpless death And silence made him bold-nay, but I wrong

him,

He reverenced his dear lady even in death; But, placing his true hand upon her heart, "O, you warm heart," he moan'd, "not even death Can chill you all at once:" then starting, thought His dreams had come again. "Do I wake or sleep?

Or am I made immortal, or my love

Mortal once more?" It beat-the heart—it

beat:

Faint-but it beat: at which his own began

To pulse with such a vehemence that it drown'd

The feebler motion underneath his hand.
But when at last his doubts were satisfied,
He raised her softly from the sepulchre,
And, wrapping her all over with the cloak
He came in, and now striding fast, and now

Sitting awhile to rest, but evermore

Holding his golden burthen in his arms,