They spread themselves into the loveliness
Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers
Hang like moist clouds:—­or, where high branches kiss,

Make a green space among the silent bowers, 55
Like a vast fane in a metropolis,
Surrounded by the columns and the towers

All overwrought with branch-like traceries
In which there is religion—­and the mute
Persuasion of unkindled melodies, 60

Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute
Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast
Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,

Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed
To such brief unison as on the brain 65
One tone, which never can recur, has cast,
One accent never to return again.

...

The world is full of Woodmen who expel
Love’s gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,
And vex the nightingales in every dell. 70

NOTE: 
8 —­or as a tuberose cj.  A.C.  Bradley.

***

MARENGHI. (This fragment refers to an event told in Sismondi’s “Histoire des Republiques Italiennes”, which occurred during the war when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a province.—­[MRS. SHELLEY’S NOTE, 1824.])

[Published in part (stanzas 7-15.) by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824; stanzas 1-28 by W.M.  Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870.  The Boscombe manuscript—­evidently a first draft—­from which (through Dr. Garnett) Rossetti derived the text of 1870 is now at the Bodleian, and has recently been collated by Mr. C.D.  Locock, to whom the enlarged and amended text here printed is owing.  The substitution, in title and text, of “Marenghi” for “Mazenghi” (1824) is due to Rossetti.  Here as elsewhere in the footnotes B. = the Bodleian manuscript.]

1. 
Let those who pine in pride or in revenge,
Or think that ill for ill should be repaid,
Who barter wrong for wrong, until the exchange
Ruins the merchants of such thriftless trade,
Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearn 5
Such bitter faith beside Marenghi’s urn.

2. 
A massy tower yet overhangs the town,
A scattered group of ruined dwellings now...

...

3. 
Another scene are wise Etruria knew
Its second ruin through internal strife 10
And tyrants through the breach of discord threw
The chain which binds and kills.  As death to life,
As winter to fair flowers (though some be poison)
So Monarchy succeeds to Freedom’s foison.

4. 
In Pisa’s church a cup of sculptured gold 15
Was brimming with the blood of feuds forsworn: 
A Sacrament more holy ne’er of old
Etrurians mingled mid the shades forlorn
Of moon-illumined forests, when...