Click in the field, then press CTRL+C to copy the HTML code
<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=478182" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Ginevra</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Wild, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one<br>Who staggers forth into the air and sun<br>From the dark chamber of a mortal fever,<br>Bewildered, and incapable, and ever<br>Fancying strange comments in her dizzy brain <br>Of usual shapes, till the familiar train<br>Of objects and of persons passed like things<br>Strange as a dreamer’s mad imaginings,<br>Ginevra from the nuptial altar went;<br>The vows to which her lips had sworn assent <br>Rung in her brain still with a jarring din,<br>Deafening the lost intelligence within.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And so she moved under the bridal veil,<br>Which made the paleness of her cheek more pale,<br>And deepened the faint crimson of her mouth,<br>And darkened her dark locks, as moonlight doth,--<br>And of the gold and jewels glittering there<br>She scarce felt conscious,--but the weary glare<br>Lay like a chaos of unwelcome light,<br>Vexing the sense with gorgeous undelight,<br>A moonbeam in the shadow of a cloud<br>Was less heavenly fair--her face was bowed,<br>And as she passed, the diamonds in her hair<br>Were mirrored in the polished marble stair<br>Which led from the cathedral to the street;<br>And ever as she went her light fair feet<br>Erased these images.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The bride-maidens who round her thronging came,<br>Some with a sense of self-rebuke and shame,<br>Envying the unenviable; and others<br>Making the joy which should have been another’s<br>Their own by gentle sympathy; and some<br>Sighing to think of an unhappy home:<br>Some few admiring what can ever lure<br>Maidens to leave the heaven serene and pure<br>Of parents’ smiles for life’s great cheat; a thing<br>Bitter to taste, sweet in imagining.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But they are all dispersed--and, lo! she stands<br>Looking in idle grief on her white hands,<br>Alone within the garden now her own; <br>And through the sunny air, with jangling tone,<br>The music of the merry marriage-bells,<br>Killing the azure silence, sinks and swells;--<br>Absorbed like one within a dream who dreams<br>That he is dreaming, until slumber seems <br>A mockery of itself--when suddenly<br>Antonio stood before her, pale as she.<br>With agony, with sorrow, and with pride,<br>He lifted his wan eyes upon the bride,<br>And said--‘Is this thy faith?’ and then as one <br>Whose sleeping face is stricken by the sun<br>With light like a harsh voice, which bids him rise<br>And look upon his day of life with eyes<br>Which weep in vain that they can dream no more,<br>Ginevra saw her lover, and forbore<br>To shriek or faint, and checked the stifling blood<br>Rushing upon her heart, and unsubdued<br>Said--‘Friend, if earthly violence or ill,<br>Suspicion, doubt, or the tyrannic will<br>Of parents, chance or custom, time or change,<br>Or circumstance, or terror, or revenge,<br>Or wildered looks, or words, or evil speech,<br>With all their stings and venom can impeach<br>Our love,--we love not:--if the grave which hides<br>The victim from the tyrant, and divides<br>The cheek that whitens from the eyes that dart<br>Imperious inquisition to the heart<br>That is another’s, could dissever ours,<br>We love not.’--‘What! do not the silent hours<br>Beckon thee to Gherardi’s bridal bed? <br>Is not that ring’--a pledge, he would have said,<br>Of broken vows, but she with patient look<br>The golden circle from her finger took,<br>And said--‘Accept this token of my faith,<br>The pledge of vows to be absolved by death; <br>And I am dead or shall be soon—my knell<br>Will mix its music with that merry bell,<br>Does it not sound as if they sweetly said<br>“We toll a corpse out of the marriage-bed”?<br>The flowers upon my bridal chamber strewn<br>Will serve unfaded for my bier—so soon<br>That even the dying violet will not die<br>Before Ginevra.’ The strong fantasy<br>Had made her accents weaker and more weak,<br>And quenched the crimson life upon her cheek,<br>And glazed her eyes, and spread an atmosphere<br>Round her, which chilled the burning noon with fear,<br>Making her but an image of the thought<br>Which, like a prophet or a shadow, brought<br>News of the terrors of the coming time.<br>Like an accuser branded with the crime<br>He would have cast on a beloved friend,<br>Whose dying eyes reproach not to the end<br>The pale betrayer—he then with vain repentance<br>Would share, he cannot now avert, the sentence--<br>Antonio stood and would have spoken, when<br>The compound voice of women and of men<br>Was heard approaching; he retired, while she<br>Was led amid the admiring company<br>Back to the palace,--and her maidens soon<br>Changed her attire for the afternoon,<br>And left her at her own request to keep<br>An hour of quiet rest:--like one asleep<br>With open eyes and folded hands she lay,<br>Pale in the light of the declining day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Meanwhile the day sinks fast, the sun is set,<br>And in the lighted hall the guests are met;<br>The beautiful looked lovelier in the light<br>Of love, and admiration, and delight<br>Reflected from a thousand hearts and eyes,<br>Kindling a momentary Paradise.<br>This crowd is safer than the silent wood,<br>Where love’s own doubts disturb the solitude;<br>On frozen hearts the fiery rain of wine<br>Falls, and the dew of music more divine <br>Tempers the deep emotions of the time<br>To spirits cradled in a sunny clime:--<br>How many meet, who never yet have met,<br>To part too soon, but never to forget.<br>How many saw the beauty, power and wit<br>Of looks and words which ne’er enchanted yet;<br>But life’s familiar veil was now withdrawn,<br>As the world leaps before an earthquake’s dawn,<br>And unprophetic of the coming hours,<br>The matin winds from the expanded flowers <br>Scatter their hoarded incense, and awaken<br>The earth, until the dewy sleep is shaken<br>From every living heart which it possesses,<br>Through seas and winds, cities and wildernesses,<br>As if the future and the past were all<br>Treasured i’ the instant;--so Gherardi’s hall<br>Laughed in the mirth of its lord’s festival,<br>Till some one asked--‘Where is the Bride?’ And then<br>A bridesmaid went,--and ere she came again<br>A silence fell upon the guests--a pause<br>Of expectation, as when beauty awes<br>All hearts with its approach, though unbeheld;<br>Then wonder, and then fear that wonder quelled;--<br>For whispers passed from mouth to ear which drew<br>The colour from the hearer’s cheeks, and flew <br>Louder and swifter round the company;<br>And then Gherardi entered with an eye<br>Of ostentatious trouble, and a crowd<br>Surrounded him, and some were weeping loud.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They found Ginevra dead! if it be death <br>To lie without motion, or pulse, or breath,<br>With waxen cheeks, and limbs cold, stiff, and white,<br>And open eyes, whose fixed and glassy light<br>Mocked at the speculation they had owned.<br>If it be death, when there is felt around<br>A smell of clay, a pale and icy glare,<br>And silence, and a sense that lifts the hair<br>From the scalp to the ankles, as it were<br>Corruption from the spirit passing forth,<br>And giving all it shrouded to the earth,<br>And leaving as swift lightning in its flight<br>Ashes, and smoke, and darkness: in our night<br>Of thought we know thus much of death,—no more<br>Than the unborn dream of our life before<br>Their barks are wrecked on its inhospitable shore.<br>The marriage feast and its solemnity<br>Was turned to funeral pomp--the company,<br>With heavy hearts and looks, broke up; nor they<br>Who loved the dead went weeping on their way<br>Alone, but sorrow mixed with sad surprise <br>Loosened the springs of pity in all eyes,<br>On which that form, whose fate they weep in vain,<br>Will never, thought they, kindle smiles again.<br>The lamps which, half extinguished in their haste,<br>Gleamed few and faint o’er the abandoned feast, <br>Showed as it were within the vaulted room<br>A cloud of sorrow hanging, as if gloom<br>Had passed out of men’s minds into the air.<br>Some few yet stood around Gherardi there,<br>Friends and relations of the dead,--and he,<br>A loveless man, accepted torpidly<br>The consolation that he wanted not;<br>Awe in the place of grief within him wrought.<br>Their whispers made the solemn silence seem<br>More still--some wept,... <br>Some melted into tears without a sob,<br>And some with hearts that might be heard to throb<br>Leaned on the table and at intervals<br>Shuddered to hear through the deserted halls<br>And corridors the thrilling shrieks which came<br>Upon the breeze of night, that shook the flame<br>Of every torch and taper as it swept<br>From out the chamber where the women kept;--<br>Their tears fell on the dear companion cold<br>Of pleasures now departed; then was knolled <br>The bell of death, and soon the priests arrived,<br>And finding Death their penitent had shrived,<br>Returned like ravens from a corpse whereon<br>A vulture has just feasted to the bone.<br>And then the mourning women came.--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">...</div><div style="margin:10px 0">THE DIRGE.<br>Old winter was gone<br>In his weakness back to the mountains hoar,<br>And the spring came down<br>From the planet that hovers upon the shore</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where the sea of sunlight encroaches <br>On the limits of wintry night;--<br>If the land, and the air, and the sea,<br>Rejoice not when spring approaches,<br>We did not rejoice in thee,<br>Ginevra! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">She is still, she is cold<br>On the bridal couch,<br>One step to the white deathbed,<br>And one to the bier,<br>And one to the charnel--and one, oh where? <br>The dark arrow fled<br>In the noon.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ere the sun through heaven once more has rolled,<br>The rats in her heart<br>Will have made their nest, <br>And the worms be alive in her golden hair,<br>While the Spirit that guides the sun,<br>Sits throned in his flaming chair,<br>She shall sleep.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Percy+Bysshe+Shelley">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a><div class=q>
<img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share">
<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=478182" data-title="Ginevra de Percy Bysshe Shelley" data-description="Wild, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one
Who staggers forth into the air and sun
From the dark chamber of a mortal fever,
Bewildered, and incapable, and ever
Fancying strange comments in her dizzy brain 
Of usual shapes, till the familiar trai..."></div>
</div>
</div>