I know not what I ask, nor what I seek:
I feel but what thou art-and what I am;
And I would hear yet once before I perish
The voice which was my music-Speak to me !
For I have called on thee in the still night,

Startled the slumbering birds from the hushed boughs,
And woke the mountain wolves, and made the caves

Acquainted with thy vainly-echoed name,

Which answered me-many things answered me—
Spirits and men- -but thou wert silent all.
Yet speak to me! I have outwatched the stars,
And gazed o'er heaven in vain in search of thee.
Speak to me! I have wandered o'er the earth
And never found thy likeness-Speak to me !
Look on the fiends around-they feel for me:
I fear them not, and feel for thee alone-
Speak to me! though it be in wrath;—but say-
I reck not what-but let me hear thee once-
This once-once more!

Phantom of Astarte. Manfred!
Man.

Say on, say on

I live but in the sound-it is thy voice!

Phan. Manfred! To-morrow ends thine earthly ills.

Man. One word for mercy! Say, thou lovest me.

Phan. Manfred!

The spirit of Astarte disappears, and Manfred falls in convulsions to the earth. Recovering soon afterwards, he departs from the hall.

In the third act the Abbot of St. Maurice visits Manfred, to offer bim the consolations of that power which alone can sooth his miseryreligion. Manfred rejects his offer decidedly, but with thanks for the motive which had induced the old man to make it. The last scene contains the catastrophe, which is that of Manfred's giving up his spirit in a dreadful manner.

This is admirably managed, and Lord Byron has contrived to make

the demons sufficiently terrible without descending to any of the common artifices.

Manfred's opening soliloquy is a very fine piece of poetry. The Abbot enters, and, after a dialogue between him and Manfred, an evil spirit rises in the mist, and claims Manfred as his prey. The baron refuses to obey his summons; other spirits then arise, but Manfred still mocks and defies them; and, although he feels his life ebbing from him, scorus to acknowledge their supremacy over him. He says: My past power

Was purchased by no compact with thy crew,
But by superior science-penance-daring-
And length of watching-strength of mind-and skill
In knowledge of our fathers-when the earth
Saw men and spirits walking side by side,
And gave ye no supremacy: I staud

Upon my strength-I do defy-deny

Spurn back, and scorn ye!—

The demous disappear; and Manfred, exhausted, falls into the Abbot's arms, and expires.

The chief fault in this poem is the ruggedness of the versification. In blank verse there are certain difficulties, which, it seems, are either mastered at once or never. Lord Byron never succeeded in constructing it skilfully, and it is, perhaps, the only description of English verse that baffled his attempts.

The sorrows and sufferings of Tasso furnished Lord Byron with the subject of his next poem. At Ferrara he visited the hospital of St. Anna, in one of the cells of which the illustrious poet was confined by his heartless tyrant Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, under the pretence of his being mad. Over the door of this cell the following inscription, addressed to posterity, was placed by General Miollis:

Respect, O Posterity! this spot, which has become famous because Torquato Tasso was shut up within its confines, more through sorrow than delirium. After having been detained here seven years and two months, during which period he produced many works both in prose and in verse, he was liberated at the instance of the city of Bergamo, on the 6th day of July, 1586.'

This dungeon is below the ground floor of the hospital, and the light penetrates through a grated window from a small yard, which seems to

have been common to other cells. It is nine paces long, between five and six wide, and about seven feet high.

In this dreary dungeon, for seven long years, was this poet doomed to drag on his existence, the companion of maniacs, whose howlings were constantly ringing in his ears, and exciting a naturally sensitive temper, until the pretext of his imprisonment was almost justified. The supposed cause of his confinement was the anger which the Duke of Ferrara felt at the presumption of Tasso in daring to entertain a passion for the Duke's sister, the Lady Leonora d'Este. Respecting the truth of this fact there is considerable doubt; but there is enough in it to form the foundation of a poem, and of this Lord Byron availed himself.

The Lament of Tasso' is supposed to be uttered by the poet in his dungeon, as he sits brooding over his unmerited wrongs in his maniac cell. He alludes to the composition of his Gierusalemme Liberata, which he regrets is now finished; and then speaks of his passion for the Lady Leonora:

But this is o'er-my pleasant task is done :—
My long-sustaining friend of many years!
If I do blot thy final page with tears,
Know, that my sorrows have wrung from me none.
But thou, my young creation! my soul's child!
Which, ever playing round me, came and smiled,
And wooed me from myself with thy sweet sight,
Thou too art gone-and so is my delight:
And therefore do I weep and inly bleed
With this last bruise upon a broken reed.
Thou too art ended-what is left me now?
For I have anguish yet to bear-and how?
I know not that-but in the innate force
Of my own spirit shall be found resource.
I have not sunk, for I had no remorse,
Nor cause for such.

He draws a fearful picture of the horrors of his dungeon in the

following stanza :

Above me, hark! the long and maniac cry

Of minds and bodies in captivity.

And hark! the lash and the increasing howl,

And the half-inarticulate blasphemy!

There be some here with worse than frenzy foul,

Some who do still goad on the o'er-laboured mind,
And dim the little light that's left behind
With needless torture, as their tyrant will

Is wound up to the lust of doing ill :

With these and with their victims am I classed,

'Mid sounds and sights like these long years have passed; 'Mid sights and sounds like these my life may close:

So let it be for then I shall repose.

This dreadful description is beautifully and naturally contrasted with the sketch which the poet gives of his youthful feelings. It is like the consolation which such a mind must find-and the only one that it could find-in its worst misery, by looking back to the days of youth and joy, when Hope decked all the future in colours vivid as the rainbow, but not so fleeting, since they endure to the last hour of life:

It is no marvel-—from my very birth

My soul was drunk with love, which did pervade
And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth;

Of objects all inanimate I made

Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers
And rocks, whereby they grew, a paradise,

Where I did lay me down within the shade
Of waving trees, and dreamed uncounted hours,
Though I was chid for wandering; and the wise
Shook their white aged heads o'er me, and said
Of such materials wretched men were made,
And such a truant boy would end in woe,
And that the only lesson was a blow;

And then they smote me, and I did not weep,
But cursed them in my heart, and to my haunt
Returned and wept alone, and dreamed again
The visions which arise without a sleep..
And with my years my soul began to pant
With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain;
And the whole heart exhaled into One Want,

But undefined and wandering, till the day

I found the thing I sought-and that was thee;
And then I lost my being all to be

Absorbed in thine-the world was passed away—
Thou didst annihilate the earth to me!