"For now I see thy hardness Was softer than mortal ruth, And thy heavenly guile was whiter, My saint, than martyr's truth." She speaks not and she moves not, But a blessed brightness lies On her lips in their silent rapture And her tender closed eyes. Federigo, the son of the Marquis, He rises from his knee: "Aye, you have been good, my father, To them that were good to me. "You have given them honors and titles, But here lies one unknown-- Ah, God reward her in heaven With the peace he gives his own!" FOOTNOTES: [2] The author of this ballad has added a thread of evident love-story to a most romantic incident of the history of Mantua, which occurred in the fifteenth century. He relates the incident so nearly as he found it in the _Cronache Montovane_, that he is ashamed to say how little his invention has been employed in it. The hero of the story, Federigo, became the third Marquis of Mantua, and was a prince greatly beloved and honored by his subjects. [3] "Breve pertugio dentro dalla Muda, La qual per me ha il titol della fame E in che conviene ancor ch'altri si chiuda, M'avea mostrato per lo suo forame Piu lune gia." DANTE, _L'Inferno_. [4] "As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in its flight." THE FIRST CRICKET. Ah me! is it then true that the year has waxed unto waning, And that so soon must remain nothing but lapse and decay,-- Earliest cricket, that out of the midsummer midnight complaining, All the faint summer in me takest with subtle dismay? Though thou bringest no dream of frost to the flowers that slumber, Though no tree for its leaves, doomed of thy voice, maketh moan, Yet with th' unconscious earth's boded evil my soul thou dost cumber, And in the year's lost youth makest me still lose my own. Answerest thou, that when nights of December are blackest and bleakest, And when the fervid grate feigns me a May in my room, And by my hearthstone gay, as now sad in my garden, thou creakest,-- Thou wilt again give me all,--dew and fragrance and bloom? Nay, little poet! full many a cricket I have that is willing, If I but take him down out of his place on my shelf, Me blither lays to sing than the blithest known to thy shrilling, Full of the rapture of life, May, morn, hope, and--himself: Leaving me only the sadder; for never one of my singers Lures back the bee to his feast, calls back the bird to his tree. Hast thou no art can make me believe, while the summer yet lingers, Better than bloom that has been red leaf and sere that must be? THE MULBERRIES. I. On the Rialto Bridge we stand; The street ebbs under and makes no sound; But, with bargains shrieked on every hand, The noisy market rings around.