Page:Songs of the Affections.pdf/180

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172
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.



THE STORM PAINTER[1]

IN HIS DUNGEON.




Where of ye, O tempests! is the goal?
Are ye like those that shake the human breast?
Or do ye find at length, like eagles, some high nest?
Childe Harold.




Midnight, and silence deep!
—The air is fill'd with sleep,
With the stream's whisper, and the citron's breath;


  1. Pietro Mulier, called II Tempesta, from his surprising pictures of storms. "His compositions," says Lanzi, "inspire a real horror, presenting to our eyes death-devoted ships overtaken by tempests and darkness; fired by lightning; now rising on the mountain-wave, and again submerged in the abyss of ocean." During an imprisonment of five years in Genoa, the pictures which he painted in his dungeon were marked by additional power and gloom.—See Lanzi's History of Painting, translated by Roscoe.