[
  {
    "title": "Scene From 'tasso'",
    "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
    "lines": [
      "MADDALO, A COURTIER.",
      "MALPIGLIO, A POET.",
      "PIGNA, A MINISTER.",
      "ALBANO, AN USHER.",
      "",
      "MADDALO:",
      "No access to the Duke! You have not said",
      "That the Count Maddalo would speak with him?",
      "",
      "PIGNA:",
      "Did you inform his Grace that Signor Pigna",
      "Waits with state papers for his signature?",
      "",
      "MALPIGLIO:",
      "The Lady Leonora cannot know",
      "That I have written a sonnet to her fame,",
      "In which I ... Venus and Adonis.",
      "You should not take my gold and serve me not.",
      "",
      "ALBANO:",
      "In truth I told her, and she smiled and said,",
      "'If I am Venus, thou, coy Poesy,",
      "Art the Adonis whom I love, and he",
      "The Erymanthian boar that wounded him.'",
      "O trust to me, Signor Malpiglio,",
      "Those nods and smiles were favours worth the zechin.",
      "",
      "MALPIGLIO:",
      "The words are twisted in some double sense",
      "That I reach not: the smiles fell not on me.",
      "",
      "PIGNA:",
      "How are the Duke and Duchess occupied?",
      "",
      "ALBANO:",
      "Buried in some strange talk. The Duke was leaning,",
      "His finger on his brow, his lips unclosed.",
      "The Princess sate within the window-seat,",
      "And so her face was hid; but on her knee",
      "Her hands were clasped, veined, and pale as snow,",
      "And quivering--young Tasso, too, was there.",
      "",
      "MADDALO:",
      "Thou seest on whom from thine own worshipped heaven",
      "Thou drawest down smiles--they did not rain on thee.",
      "",
      "MALPIGLIO:",
      "Would they were parching lightnings for his sake",
      "On whom they fell!",
      "",
      "SONG FOR 'TASSO'.",
      "",
      "I loved--alas! our life is love;",
      "But when we cease to breathe and move",
      "I do suppose love ceases too.",
      "I thought, but not as now I do,",
      "Keen thoughts and bright of linked lore,",
      "Of all that men had thought before.",
      "And all that Nature shows, and more.",
      "",
      "And still I love and still I think,",
      "But strangely, for my heart can drink",
      "The dregs of such despair, and live,",
      "And love;...",
      "And if I think, my thoughts come fast,",
      "I mix the present with the past,",
      "And each seems uglier than the last.",
      "",
      "Sometimes I see before me flee",
      "A silver spirit's form, like thee,",
      "O Leonora, and I sit",
      "...still watching it,",
      "Till by the grated casement's ledge",
      "It fades, with such a sigh, as sedge",
      "Breathes o'er the breezy streamlet's edge."
    ],
    "linecount": "62"
  }
]