Scene From 'tasso'

MADDALO, A COURTIER.
MALPIGLIO, A POET.
PIGNA, A MINISTER.
ALBANO, AN USHER.

MADDALO:
No access to the Duke! You have not said
That the Count Maddalo would speak with him?

PIGNA:
Did you inform his Grace that Signor Pigna
Waits with state papers for his signature?

MALPIGLIO:
The Lady Leonora cannot know
That I have written a sonnet to her fame,
In which I ... Venus and Adonis.
You should not take my gold and serve me not.

ALBANO:
In truth I told her, and she smiled and said,
'If I am Venus, thou, coy Poesy,
Art the Adonis whom I love, and he
The Erymanthian boar that wounded him.'
O trust to me, Signor Malpiglio,
Those nods and smiles were favours worth the zechin.

MALPIGLIO:
The words are twisted in some double sense
That I reach not: the smiles fell not on me.

PIGNA:
How are the Duke and Duchess occupied?

ALBANO:
Buried in some strange talk. The Duke was leaning,
His finger on his brow, his lips unclosed.
The Princess sate within the window-seat,
And so her face was hid; but on her knee
Her hands were clasped, veined, and pale as snow,
And quivering--young Tasso, too, was there.

MADDALO:
Thou seest on whom from thine own worshipped heaven
Thou drawest down smiles--they did not rain on thee.

MALPIGLIO:
Would they were parching lightnings for his sake
On whom they fell!

SONG FOR 'TASSO'.

I loved--alas! our life is love;
But when we cease to breathe and move
I do suppose love ceases too.
I thought, but not as now I do,
Keen thoughts and bright of linked lore,
Of all that men had thought before.
And all that Nature shows, and more.

And still I love and still I think,
But strangely, for my heart can drink
The dregs of such despair, and live,
And love;...
And if I think, my thoughts come fast,
I mix the present with the past,
And each seems uglier than the last.

Sometimes I see before me flee
A silver spirit's form, like thee,
O Leonora, and I sit
...still watching it,
Till by the grated casement's ledge
It fades, with such a sigh, as sedge
Breathes o'er the breezy streamlet's edge.