Change had wrought A cure already in Griselda's thought, Or half a cure. The world in truth is wide, If we but pace it out from side to side, And our worst miseries thus the smaller come. Griselda was ashamed to grieve in Rome, Among the buried griefs of centuries, Her own sweet soul's too pitiful disease. She found amid that dust of human hopes An incantation for all horoscopes, A better patience in that wreck of Time: Her secret woes seemed chastened and sublime There in the amphitheatre of woe. She suffered with the martyrs. These would know, Who offered their chaste lives and virgin blood, How mortal frailty best might be subdued. She saw the incense of her sorrow rise With theirs as an accepted sacrifice Before the face of the Eternal God Of that Eternal City, and she trod The very stones which seemed their griefs to sound Beneath her steps, as consecrated ground. In face of such a suffering hers must be A drop, a tear in the unbounded sea Which girds our lives. Rome was the home of grief, Where all might bring their pain and find relief, The temple of all sorrows: surely yet, Sorrow's self here seemed swallowed up in it. 'Twas thus she comforted her soul. And then, She had found a friend, a phœnix among men, Which made it easier to compound with life, Easier to be a woman and a wife. This was Prince Belgirate. He of all The noble band to whose high fortune fall The name and title proudest upon earth While pride shall live by privilege of birth, The name of Roman, shone conspicuous The head and front of his illustrious house, Which had produced two pontiffs and a saint Before the world had heard of Charles le Quint; A most accomplished nobleman in truth, And wise beyond the manner of his youth, With wit and art and learning, and that sense Of policy which still is most intense Among the fertile brains of Italy, A craft inherited from days gone by. As scholar he was known the pupil apt Of Mezzofanti, in whose learning lapped And prized and tutored as a wondrous child, He had sucked the milk of knowledge undefiled While yet a boy, and brilliantly anon Had pushed his reputation thus begun Through half a score of tongues. In art his place Was as chief patron of the rising race, Which dreamed new conquests on the glorious womb Of ancient beauty laid asleep in Rome. The glories of the past he fain would see Wrought to new life in this new century, By that continuous instinct of her sons, Which had survived Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Huns, To burst upon a wondering world again With full effulgence in the Julian reign.