Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE COUNTESS LAMBERTI, by MARY HOWITT


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE COUNTESS LAMBERTI, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: She still was young; but guilt and tears
Last Line: "to one long penitence."
Alternate Author Name(s): Botham, Mary
Subject(s): Fathers & Daughters; Love - Unrequited; Marriage; Marriage - Forced; Murder; Weddings; Husbands; Wives; Marriage - Arranged


She still was young; but guilt and tears
Had done on her the work of years.
In a lone house of penitence
She dwelt; and, saving unto one,
A sorrowing woman meek and kind,
Words spake she unto none.

It was about the close of May,
When they two sate apart
In the warm light of parting day,
That she unsealed her burdened heart.

"They married me when I was young,
A very child in years;
They married me at the dagger's point,
Amid my prayers and tears.

"To Count Lamberti I was wed,
He to the pope was brother,
They made me pledge my faith to him
The while I loved another:
Ay, while I loved to such excess,
My love than madness scarce was less!

"I would have died for him, and he
Loved me with equal warmth and truth.
Lamberti's age was thrice mine own,
And he had long outlived his youth.

"His brow was scarred by many wounds;
His eye was stern, and cold, and grave;
He was a soldier from his youth,
And all confessed him brave;
He had been much in foreign lands,
And once among the Moors a slave.

"I thought of him like Charlemagne,
Or any knight of old:
When I was a child upon the knee
His deeds to me they told.

"I knew the songs they made of him,
I sang them when a child:
Giuseppe sang them too with me,
He loved all tales of peril wild.

"I tell thee, he was stern and grey;
His years were thrice mine own.
That I was to Giuseppe pledged,
To all my kin was known.

"My heart was to Giuseppe vowed;
Love was our childhood's lot;
I loved him ever; never knew
The time I loved him not.

"He was an orphan, and the last
Of a long line of pride:
My father took him for his son;
He was to us allied.

"And he within our house was bred,
From the same books in youth we read,
Our teachers were the same; and he
Was as a brother unto me;
A brother!—no, I never knew
How warm a brother's love might be;
But dearer every year he grew.

"Love was our earliest, only life;
Twin forms that had one heart
Were we, and for each other lived,
And never thought to part.

"My father had him trained for war;
He went to Naples, where he fought:
And then the Count Lamberti came,
And me in marriage sought;
He from my father asked my hand,
And I knew nought of what they planned.

"I was no party in the thing.
Why he was ever at my side
I knew not; nor why, when we rode,
My father bade me with him ride.

"No, no! And when Lamberti spoke
Of love, I misbelieving heard;
And strangely gazed into his face,
Appalled at every word.

"It seemed to me as if there fell
From some old saint a tone of hell;
As if the hero heart of pride,
Which my Giusepp' had sanctified
Among the heroes of old time,
Before me blackened stood with crime.

"That night my father sought my room,
And, furious betwixt rage and pride,
He bade me on an early day
Prepare to be Lamberti's bride.

"I thought my father too was mad,
Yet silently I let him speak;
I had no power for word or sign,
I felt the blood forsake my cheek.

"And my heart beat with desperate pain,
The sting of rage was at its core;
There was a tumult in my brain,
And I fell senseless on the floor.

"At length, upon my knees, I prayed
My father to regard the vow
Which to Giuseppe I had made.
Oh Heaven! his furious brow,
His curling lip of sneering scorn,
Like fiends they haunt me now.

"Ay, spite my vows, they made me wed,
Young as I was in years;
At the dagger's point they married me,
Amid my prayers and tears.

"Our palace was at Tivoli,
An ancient place of Roman pride,
Girt round with a sepulchral wood,
Wherein a ruined temple stood;
And there, whilst I was yet a bride,
I saw Giuseppe at my side.

"My own Giuseppe! He had come
From Naples with a noble train;
He came to claim me for his wife:
Would God we ne'er had met again!

"Lamberti's speech still harsher grew,
And darker still his spirit's gloom;
At length, all suddenly, one day
He hurried me to Rome.

"I had a dream, three times it came:
I saw as plainly as by day
A horrid thing, the bloody place
Where young Giuseppe lay.

"I saw them in that ancient wood,
I heard him wildly call on God;
I saw him stabbed; I saw him dead
Upon the bloody sod.

"I knew the murderers, they were two;
I saw them with my sleeping eye;
I knew their voices stern and grim;
I saw them plainly murder him
In the old wood at Tivoli.
Three times the dream was sent to me,
It could not be a lie.

"I knew it could not be a lie;
I knew his precious blood was spilt;
I saw the murderer day by day
Dwell calmly in his guilt.

"No wonder that a frenzy came;
At midnight from my bed I leapt,
I snatched a dagger in my rage,
I stabbed him as he slept.

"I say, I stabbed him as he slept.
It was a horrid deed of blood;
But then I knew that he had slain
Giuseppe in the wood.

"I told my father of my dream;
I watched him every word I spake;
He tried to laugh my dream to scorn,
And yet I saw his body quake.

"They fetched Giuseppe from the wood,
And a great funeral feast they had;
They buried Count Lamberti too,
And said that I was mad.

"I was not mad, and yet I bore
A curse that was no less;
And many, many years went on
Of gloomy wretchedness.

"I saw my father, how he grew
An old man ere his prime;
I knew the secret penance-pain
He bore for that accursëd crime.
"I too, there is a weight of sin
Upon my soul,—it will not hence:
'Tis therefore that my life is given
To one long penitence."





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