.

There may be heaven; there must be hell;
Meantime, there is our earth here--well!

NOTES:
"Time's Revenges." An author soliloquizes in his garret
over the fact that he possesses a friend who loves him and
would do anything in his power to serve him, but for
whom he cares almost nothing. At the same time he
himself loves a woman to such distraction that he counts
himself crowned with love's best crown while sacrificing
his soul, his body, his peace, and his fame in brooding on
his love, while she could calmly decree that he should
roast at a slow fire if it would compass her frivolously
ambitious designs. Thus his indifference to his friend is
avenged by the indifference the lady shows toward him.

46. The Florentine: Dante. Used here, seemingly, as
a symbol of the highest attainments in poesy, his (the
speaker's) reverence for which is so great that he would
rather put his cheek under his lady's foot than that poetry
should suffer any indignity at his hands; yet in spite of
all the possibilities open to him through his enthusiasm for
poetry, he prefers wasting his entire energies upon one
unworthy of him.

THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND

That second time they hunted me
From hill to plain, from shore to sea,
And Austria, hounding far and wide
Her blood-hounds thro' the country-side,
Breathed hot and instant on my trace,--
I made six days a hiding-place
Of that dry green old aqueduct
Where I and Charles, when boys, have plucked
The fire-flies from the roof above,
Bright creeping thro' the moss they love: 10
--How long it seems since Charles was lost!
Six days the soldiers crossed and crossed
The country in my very sight;
And when that peril ceased at night,
The sky broke out in red dismay
With signal fires; well, there I lay
Close covered o'er in my recess,
Up to the neck in ferns and cress,
Thinking on Metternich our friend,
And Charles's miserable end, 20
And much beside, two days; the third,
Hunger overcame me when I heard
The peasants from the village go
To work among the maize; you know,
With us in Lombardy, they bring
Provisions packed on mules, a string
With little bells that cheer their task,
And casks, and boughs on every cask
To keep the sun's heat from the wine;
These I let pass