MAZARIN.

FAREWELL TO THE BEAUTIFUL, WITHOUT.

"I was walking, some days after, in the new apartments of his palace. I recognized the approach of the Cardinal (Mazarin) by the sound of his slippered feet, which he dragged one after the other, as a man enfeebled by a mortal inalady. I concealed myself behind the tapestry, and I heard him say, 'Il faut quitter tout cela!' ('I must leave all that!") He stopped at every step, for he was very feeble, and casting his eyes on each object that attracted him, he sighed forth, as from the bottom of his heart, Il faut quitter tout cela! What pains have I taken to acquire these things! Can I abandon them without regret? I shall never see them more where I am about to go!""&c.— MEMOIRES INEDITS DE LOUIS HENRI, COMTE DE BRIENNE, Barrière's Edition, vol. ii. p. 115.

SERENE the Marble Images

Gleamed down, in lengthened rows;
Their life, like the Uranides,

A glory and repose.

Glowed forth the costly canvas spoil
From many a gorgeous frame ;
One race will starve the living toil,
The next will gild the name.

That stately silence silvering through,
The steadfast tapers shone
Upon the Painter's pomp of hue,

The Sculptor's solemn stone.

Saved from the deluge-storm of Time,
Within that ark, survey

Whate'er of elder Art sublime
Survives a world's decay!

There creeps a foot, there sighs a breath,
Along the quiet floor;

An old man leaves his bed of death
To count his treasures o'er.

Behold the dying mortal glide
Amidst the eternal Art;
It were a sight to stir with pride
Some pining Painter's heart!

It were a sight that might beguile
Sad Genius from the Hour,
To see the life of Genius smile
Upon the death of Power.

The ghost-like master of that hall
Is king-like in the land;

And France's proudest heads could fall
Beneath that spectre hand.

Veiled in the Roman purple, preys

The canker-worm within;

And more than Bourbon's sceptre, sways The crook of Mazarin.

Italian, yet more dear to thee
Than sceptre, or than crook,
The Art in which thine Italy
Still charmed thy glazing look!

So feebly, and with wistful eyes,
He crawls along the floor;
A dying man, who, ere he dies,
Would count his treasures o'er.

And, from the landscape's soft repose,
Smiled thy calm soul, Lorraine;
And, from the deeps of Raphael, rose
Celestial Love again.

In pomp, which his own pomp recalls,
The haggard owner sees

Thy cloth of gold and banquet halls,
Thou stately Veronese!

While, cold as if they scorned to hail
Creations not their own,

The Gods of Greece stand marble-pale
Around the Thunderer's throne.

There, Hebe brims the urn of gold;

There, Hermes treads the skies;

There, ever in the Serpent's fold,
Laocoon deathless dies.

There, startled from her mountain rest, Young Dian turns to draw

The arrowy death, that waits the breast

Her slumber failed to awe.

There, earth subdued by dauntless deeds,

And life's large labors done,

Stands, sad as Worth with mortal meeds,

Alcmena's mournful son.*

They gaze upon the fading form
With mute immortal eyes;-

Here, clay that waits the hungry worm,
There, children of the skies.

Then slowly as he tottered by,
The old Man, unresigned,

Sighed forth: “Alas! and must I die,

And leave such life behind?

"The Beautiful, from which I part,

Alone defies decay!"

Still, while he sighed, the eternal Art
Smiled down upon the clay.

And as he waved the feeble hand,
And crawled unto the porch,

He saw the Silent Genius stand
With the extinguished torch!

The world without, for ever yours,
Ye stern remorseless Three;

* Certainly the Sculptor of the Farnese Hercules well conceived that ideal character of the demigod which makes Aristotle (Prob. 39) class the grand Personification of Labor amongst the Melancholy. It is the union of mournful repose with colossal power, which gives so profound a moral sentiment to that masterpiece of art.

What, from that changeful world, secures

Calm Immortality?

Nay, soon or late decays, alas!
Or canvas, stone, or scroll;
From all material forms must pass
To forms afresh, the soul.

'Tis but in that which doth create,
Duration can be sought;

A worm can waste the canvas;· - Fate
Ne'er swept from Time a Thought.

Lives Phidias in his works alone?-
His Jove returns to air:

But wake one godlike shape from stone,
And Phidian thought is there!

Blot out the Iliad from the earth,
Still Homer's thought would fire
Each deed that boasts sublimer worth,
And each diviner lyre.

Like light, connecting star to star,
Doth Thought transmitted run:-

Rays that to earth the nearest are,
Have longest left the sun.