Where the assassin clutched his prey,
And for a meed could coldly slay!

Oft have thy nights been deeplier darkened,
When poison, mingled in thy feasts,
Brought death to the unwary guests;
Oft in thy marble palaces

Have rung the outcries of distress,
Where but rejoicing villains hearkened;
Nor Justice had the hardihood

To stain her sword with princely blood,
To dash Guilt's bulwarks strongly down,
And o'er their wrecks upraise her throne.
There the revenger, patient long,

Lurked in the track of him he hated,
And, hoarding fiendish hopes, awaited
To pay back tenfold wrong for wrong;
Following the slow and stealthy chase,
Unwearied, to the stabbing-place,

With hand prepared but once to pierce,
Wolfish in craft, and as the tiger fierce.
Of such an one I will unfold

A tale of vengeance strange,
Wrought in the wilder years of old,

And of Fortune's piteous change—

A record of the ancient day;

One of ten thousand such that still Survive within that realm, and fill Young bosoms with a loved dismay,

Far upward from the peopled land,
Where mountains huge, on either hand,
Give broadest shelter from the sweep
Of mighty winds that, round each steep,
Scathe the great forests, and roll down
The rocks in many a crushing heap,-
In the most heavenward Alps, where none
But the camozza-hunters lone

Have ever made their brief abode,
Where even they have seldom trode,

In the high wilderness unknown,

There is a deep and narrow dell,

O'er which the sloping greenwood rears The growth of many hundred years, Where never axe was raised to fell

The pine and stubborn oak that spread

Their meeting branches overhead,

And there sweet love can dwell. That leafy fastness, erst, had made A safe and undiscovered shade,

Where-through the sunlight never gleams—
Save when, at summer eve, the beams
Have shed a level mellowed brightness

O'er all the many peaks, whose whiteness In ruddier glow begins to fade.

Athwart the end of that small glade

Thick tangled shrubs have woven a screen, That keeps the opening so unseen, As none but the most searching ken May mark the entrance of the glen; There too leaps down a glad cascade; Foaming fast in silvery gushes, Down its rugged path it rushes To the wood-grown vales below, And o'er its course a lofty tree Outspreads its foliaged canopy,

And weaves its boughs with those that grow Above that dell so flourishingly.

Who enters in that shady ground

Must climb the ancient tree, to where

Those branches mingle high in air

Over the tumbling flood profound,

And thence, from other boughs may light

Upon the farther side unseen;

Where, as for the witch-revels dight,

All round is trackless, still, and green.

Than that a safer lurking place

Ne'er shielded outlaw from the chase
Of watchful foes ;-and yet, ere now,
Those shades were ever undescried.
It was a lover first espied

That little vale, beneath the bough.
His hope is, there, unseen to dwell
Lord of that long untrodden spot,
In woodland fortress, sheltered well;
And his would be a gladsome lot,

Might he but breathe henceforth unsought;
Were his not monkish foes-the fell
Lawgivers who in mockery pray
For those their foul tribunals slay.
Yet little thought hath he of such;

For there her cheek again is bright,

Her eyes rekindle all their light,

Whom late he freed from the dread doom

Of withering in a convent's gloom,

Where Heaven's free gifts are deemed too much;

Amid the hopeless ones, and those

Who never hoped, alike shut in

From all life's good, and half its woes;

The listless beings who begin

To die, long years before their dust

Can cease to feel the deepening rust,

That gnawing to the bosom's core

Saves not from life till all but breath is o'er.

What recks Arnaldo of their ban

Whose holy hate would crush the man

That bids a bride, betrothed above,

Forsake her vow for earthly love?
Was not Lorenza his, before

Her trusting youth was so betrayed
By wiles that lyingly persuade,

And crafty tales long pondered o'er?
Her lover thus she mourned as dead,
While far in foreign fields he bled;

Thus, too believing, wished to die
In Sorrow's drearest sanctuary :
But when that lover came she fled,
With him to share the hunter's shed-

Still true to one she could not wed.

Such was Alviano's guardian care

That traitor to a brother's dust;