JUST'S[60] (1819)
'Tis night, and tempests whistle o'er the moor;
Oh, Spanish father, ope the door!
Deny me not the little boon I crave,
Thine order's vesture, and a grave!
Grant me a cell within thy convent-shrine--
Half of this world, and more, was mine;
The head that to the tonsure now stoops down
Was circled once by many a crown;
The shoulders fretted now with shirt of hair
Did once the imperial ermine wear.
Now am I as the dead, e'er death is come,
And sink in ruins like old Rome.
* * * * *
THE GRAVE OF ALARIC[61] (1820)
On Busento's grassy banks a muffled chorus echoes nightly,
While the swirling eddies answer and the wavelets ripple lightly.
Up and down the river, shades of Gothic warriors watch are keeping,
For they mourn their people's hero, Alaric, with sobs of weeping.
All too soon and far from home and kindred here to rest they laid him,
While in youthful beauty still his flowing golden curls arrayed him.
And along the river's bank a thousand hands with eager striving
Labored long, another channel for Busento's tide contriving.
Then a cavern deep they hollowed in the river-bed depleted,
Placed therein the dead king, clad in proof, upon his charger seated.
O'er him and his proud array the earth they filled, and covered loosely,
So that on their hero's grave the water-plants would grow profusely.
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