VI Wild precipice and earthquake-riven wall; Bare jagged lava naked to the sky; Whence densely struggles up and slow floats by Heaven's murky shroud of smoke funereal; Horror whereby the silent groves enthral; Black weedy pit and rifted cavity; Bleak loneliness whose drear sterility Doth prowling creatures of the wild appal: Like one distraught who doth his woe deplore, Bereft of sense by thousand miseries, As passion prompts, companioned or alone; Your desert so I rove; if as before Heaven deaf continue, through these crevices, My cry shall pierce to the Avernian throne. The poet's melancholy deepens, and he enters upon the stage of dismal and hopeless resignation to the inevitable: VII As one who on uneasy couch bewails Besetting sickness and Time's tardy course, Proving if drug, or gem, or charm have force To conquer the dire evil that assails: But when at last no remedy prevails, And bankrupt Art stands empty of resource, Beholds Death in the face, and scorns recourse To skill whose impotence in nought avails. So I, who long have borne in trust unspent That distance, indignation, reason, strife With Fate would heal my malady, repent, Frustrate all hopes wherewith my soul was rife, And yield unto my destiny, content To languish for the little left of life. A lower depth still has to be reached ere the period of salutary and defiant reaction:-- VIII So mightily abound the hosts of Pain, Whom sentries of my bosom Love hath made, No space is left to enter or evade, And inwardly expire sighs born in vain, If any pleasure mingle with the train, By the first glimpse of my poor heart dismayed, Instant he dies, or else, in bondage stayed, Pines languishing, or flies that drear domain. Pale semblances of terror keep the keys, Of frowning portals they for none displace Save messengers of novel miseries: All thoughts they scare that wear a gladsome face; And, were they anything but Miseries, Themselves would hasten from the gloomy place. Slighted love easily passes from rejection into rebellion, and we shall see that such was the case with Tansillo. The following sonnet denotes an intermediate stage, when resignation is almost renunciation, but has not yet become revolt:-- IX