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ADVERTISEMENT.

The story of “Rosalind and Helen” is, undoubtedly, not an attempt in the highest style of poetry. It is in no degree calculated to excite profound meditation; and if, by interesting the affections and amusing the imagination, it awakens a certain ideal melancholy favourable to the reception of more important impressions, it will produce in the reader all that the writer experienced in the composition. I resigned myself, as I wrote, to the impulses of the feelings which moulded the conception of the story; and this impulse determined the pauses of a measure, which only pretends to be regular inasmuch as it corresponds with, and expresses, the irregularity of the imaginations which inspired it.

I do not know which of the few scattered poems I left in England will be selected by my bookseller to add to this collection. One (“Lines written among the Euganean Hills”.–Editor.), which I sent from Italy, was written after a day’s excursion among those lovely mountains which surround what was once the retreat, and where is now the sepulchre, of Petrarch. If any one is inclined to condemn the insertion of the introductory lines, which image forth the sudden relief of a state of deep despondency by the radiant visions disclosed by the sudden burst of an Italian sunrise in autumn on the highest peak of those delightful mountains, I can only offer as my excuse, that they were not erased at the request of a dear friend, with whom added years of intercourse only add to my apprehension of its value, and who would have had more right than any one to complain, that she has not been able to extinguish in me the very power of delineating sadness.

Naples, December 20, 1818.

ROSALIND, HELEN, AND HER CHILD.

SCENE. THE SHORE OF THE LAKE OF COMO.

 

 HELEN:
 

 Come hither, my sweet Rosalind.
 

 'Tis long since thou and I have met;
 

 And yet methinks it were unkind
 

 Those moments to forget.
 

 Come, sit by me. I see thee stand            5
 

 By this lone lake, in this far land,
 

 Thy loose hair in the light wind flying,
 

 Thy sweet voice to each tone of even
 

 United, and thine eyes replying
 

 To the hues of yon fair heaven.            10
 

 Come, gentle friend: wilt sit by me?
 

 And be as thou wert wont to be
 

 Ere we were disunited?
 

 None doth behold us now; the power
 

 That led us forth at this lone hour           15
 

 Will be but ill requited
 

 If thou depart in scorn: oh! come,
 

 And talk of our abandoned home.
 

 Remember, this is Italy,
 

 And we are exiles. Talk with me             20
 

 Of that our land, whose wilds and floods,
 

 Barren and dark although they be,
 

 Were dearer than these chestnut woods:
 

 Those heathy paths, that inland stream,
 

 And the blue mountains, shapes which seem        25
 

 Like wrecks of childhood's sunny dream:
 

 Which that we have abandoned now,
 

 Weighs on the heart like that remorse
 

 Which altered friendship leaves. I seek
 

 No more our youthful intercourse.           30
 

 That cannot be! Rosalind, speak.
 

 Speak to me. Leave me not.--When morn did come,
 

 When evening fell upon our common home,
 

 When for one hour we parted,--do not frown:
 

 I would not chide thee, though thy faith is broken:   35
 

 But turn to me. Oh! by this cherished token,
 

 Of woven hair, which thou wilt not disown,
 

 Turn, as 'twere but the memory of me,
 

 And not my scorned self who prayed to thee.