Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867.

III. On Seeing the Picture of Æolus, by Pellegrino Tibaldi

Washington Allston (1779–1843)

FULL well, Tibaldi, did thy kindred mind

The mighty spell of Buonarroti own.

Like one who, reading magic words, receives

The gift of intercourse with worlds unknown,

’T was thine, deciph’ring Nature’s mystic leaves,

To hold strange converse with the viewless wind;

To see the spirits, in embodied forms

Of gales and whirlwinds, hurricanes and storms.

For, lo! obedient to thy bidding, teems

Fierce into shape their stern, relentless lord;

His form of motion ever-restless seems;

Or, if to rest inclined his turbid soul,

On Hecla’s top to stretch, and give the word

To subject winds that sweep the desert pole.