Questi sono degli esempi di poesie ispirate dalla storia di Beatrice Cenci.
Beatrice Cenci
[Seen in a City Shop-Window] (1871)
Out of low light an exquisite faint face
Suddenly started. Goldenness of hair,
A South-look of sweet-sorrowful eyes, a trace
Of prison-paleness: what if these were there,
When Guido's hand could never reach the grace
That glimmered on me from the Italian air --
Fairness so fierce, or fierceness half so fair?
"Is it some Actress?" a slight school-boy said.
Some Actress? Yes.
---- The curtain rolled away,
Dusty and dim. The scene -- among the dead --
In some weird, gloomy-pillared palace lay;
The Tragedy, which we have brokenly read,
With its two hundred ghastly years was grey:
None dared applaud with flowers her shadowy way --
Yet, ah! how bitterly well she seemed to play!
Hush! for a child's quick murmur breaks the charm
Of terror that was winding round me so;
And, at the white touch of her pretty arm,
Darkness and Death and Agony crouch low
In old-time dungeons: "Tell me, (is it harm
To ask you?) is the picture real, though? --
And why the beautiful ladies, all, you know,
Live so far-off, and die so long ago?"
Un esempio dall'opera di P.B. Shelley, "The Cenci"
(1819)
Act V Scene IV
BEATRICE:
Farewell, my tender brother. Think
Of our sad fate with gentleness,
as now;
And let mild, pitying thoughts
lighten for thee
Thy sorrow's load. Err not in harsh despair,
But tears and patience. One thing more,
my child;
For thine own sake be constant to the
love
Thou bearest us; and to the faith that
I,
Though wrapped in a strange cloud of
crime and shame,
Lived ever holy and unstained. And though
Ill tongues shall wound me, and our
common name
150
Be as a mark stamped on thine innocent
brow
For men to point at as they pass, do
thou
Forbear, and never think a thought unkind
Of those who perhaps love thee in their
graves.
So mayest thou die as I do; fear and
pain
Being subdued. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!
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