Twice down the dismal path (the dove his guide) 96 The fairy nursling bore his helpless load; A chamois-hunter, in the vale descried, Aided the convoy to the house of God. Dark--wroth--convulsed, the earth-bound spirit lay; Calm from the bier beside it, smiled the clay! O Song--for Lydian elegy too stern, 97 Song, cradled in the Celt's rough battle-shield; Rather from thee should man, the soldier, learn To hide the wounds--heroic while conceal'd; From foes without the mean the palm may win, What tries the noble is the war within! Let the King's woe its muse in Silence claim, 98 When sense return'd, and solitary life Sate in the Shadow!--shade or sun the same, Toil hath brief respite; man is made for strife, Woman for rest!--rest, bright with dreams, is given, Child of the heathen, in the Christian heaven! And to the Christian prince's plighted bride, 99 The simple monks the Christian's grave accord, With lifted cross and swinging censer, glide To passing bells--the hermits of the Lord; And at that hour, in her own native vale, Her own soft race their mystic loss bewail. Methinks I see the Tuscan Genius yet, 100 Lured, lingering by the clay it loved so well, And listening to the two-fold dirge that met In upper air;--here Nazarene anthems swell Triumphal paeans!--there, the Alps behind, Etrurian Naeniae,[12] load the lagging wind. Pauses the startled genius to compare 101 The notes that mourn the life, at best so brief, With those that welcome to empyreal air The bright escaper from a world of grief? Marvelling what creed, beyond the happy vale, Can teach the soul the loathed Styx to hail! THE ETRURIAN NAENIAE. Where art thou, pale and melancholy ghost? No funeral rites appease thy tombless clay; Unburied, glidest thou by the dismal coast, O exile from the day? There, where the voice of love is heard no more, Where the dull wave moans back the eternal wail, Dost thou recall the summer suns of yore, Thine own melodious vale? Thy Lares stand on thy deserted floors, And miss their last sweet daughter's holy face; What hand shall wreathe with flowers the threshold doors? What child renew the race? Thine are the nuptials of the dreary shades, Of all thy groves what rests?--the cypress tree! As from the air a strain of music fades, Dark silence buries thee!