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THE ASSIGNATION
Stay for me there! I will not fail.
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
[Exequy on the death of his wife, by Henry King,
Bishop of Chichester.]
ILL-FATED and mysterious man!--bewildered in the brilliancy of thine own
imagination, and fallen in the flames of thine own youth! Again in fancy
I behold thee! Once more thy form hath risen before me!--not--oh not
as thou art--in the cold valley and shadow--but as thou shouldst
be--squandering away a life of magnificent meditation in that city of
dim visions, thine own Venice--which is a star-beloved Elysium of the
sea, and the wide windows of whose Palladian palaces look down with a
deep and bitter meaning upon the secrets of her silent waters. Yes! I
repeat it--as thou shouldst be. There are surely other worlds
than this--other thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude--other
speculations than the speculations of the sophist. Who then shall call
thy conduct into question? who blame thee for thy visionary hours, or
denounce those occupations as a wasting away of life, which were but the
overflowings of thine everlasting energies?
It was at Venice, beneath the covered archway there called the Ponte di
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