Nor this disturbed by any thought of me,
So scourged with ills' innumerable train,
New grief new tear begetteth not, as sea
Chafes not the more for deluge of the rain.
The "quaint foliage" is in the original "Arab leaves," arabe frondi, an interesting proof of the cultivation of exotic plants at the period.
The lady rejoins her husband at Milan, and Tansillo, landing on the Campanian coast, lately devastated by earthquakes and eruptions, finds everywhere the image of his own bosom, and rejoices at the opportunity which yawning rifts and chasms of earth afford for an appeal to the infernal powers:—
VI
Bare jagged lava naked to the sky;
Whence densely struggles up and slow floats by
Heaven s murky shroud of smoke funereal;
Horror whereby the silent groves enthral;
Black weedy pit and rifted cavity;
Bleak loneliness whose drear sterility
Doth prowling creatures of the wild appal:
Like one distraught who doth his woe deplore,
Bereft of sense by thousand miseries,
As passion prompts, companioned or alone;
Your desert so I rove; if as before
Heaven deaf continue, through these crevices,
My cry shall pierce to the Avernian throne.
The poet s melancholy deepens, and he enters upon the stage of dismal and hopeless resignation to the inevitable:
