Chapter I: LEAN against a pillar in the sun,

The sandals loose on mine arrested feet,
While from their paths orbicular the fleet
Slim racers drop like stars. O loveliest one,
Lender of sixfold wings the while I run,
Whose tortoise-lyre saves yet for me its sweet
Cyllenic suasions old, to thy dim seat
Glory and grace! the votive rites are done.
Thy sole rememberer honey hath, nor palm,
Libation none, nor lamb to lead to thee,
Ah, Maia’s son! once god, and once aye-living.
Here stood thy shrine: here chants my heart in calm
Sad as the centralmost weird wave’s at sea,
Hermes! thy last June pæan and thanksgiving.

A SALUTATION.

HIGH-HEARTED Surrey! I do love your ways,
Venturous, frank, romantic, vehement,
All with inviolate honor sealed and blent,
To the axe-edge that cleft your soldier-bays:
I love your youth, your friendships, whims, and frays;
Your strict, sweet verse, with its imperious bent,
Heard as in dreams from some old harper’s tent,
And stirring in the listener’s brain for days.
Good father-poet! if to-night there be
At Framlingham none save the north-wind’s sighs,
No guard but moonlight’s crossed and trailing spears,
Smile yet upon the pilgrim named like me,
Close at your gates, whose fond and weary eyes
Sought not one other down three hundred years!

AT A SYMPHONY.

OH, I would have these tongues oracular
Dip into silence, tease no more, let be!
They madden, like some choral of the free
Gusty and sweet against a prison-bar.
To earth the boast that her gold empires are,
The menace of delicious death to me,
Great Undesign, strong as by God’s decree,
Piercing the heart with beauty from afar!
Music too winning to the sense forlorn!
Of what angelic lineage was she born,
Bred in what rapture?--These her sires and friends:
Censure, Denial, Gloom, and Hunger’s throe.
Praised be the Spirit that thro’ thee, Schubert! so
Wrests evil unto wholly heavenly ends.

SLEEP.

O GLORIOUS tide, O hospitable tide
On whose moon-heaving breast my head hath lain,
Lest I, all eased of wounds and washed of stain
Thro’ holy hours, be yet unsatisfied,
Loose me betimes! for in my soul abide
Urgings of memory; and exile’s pain
Weighs on me, as the spirit of one slain
May throb for the old strife wherein he died.

Often and evermore, across the sea
Of dark and dreams, to fatherlands of day
O speed me! like that outworn king erewhile
From kind Phæacia shoreward borne; for me,
Thy loving healèd Greek, thou too shall lay
Beneath the olive boughs of mine own isle.

THE ATONING YESTERDAY.

YE daffodilian days, whose fallen towers
Shielded our paradisal prime from ill,
Fair past, fair motherhood! let come what will,
We, being yours, defy the anarch powers.
For us the happy tidings fell, in showers
Enjewelling the wind from every hill;
We drained the sun against the winter’s chill;
Our ways were barricadoed in with flowers:

And if from skyey minsters now unhoused,
Earth’s massy workings at the forge we hear,
The black roll of the congregated sea,
And war’s live hoof: O yet, last year, last year
We were the lark-lulled shepherdlings, that drowsed
Grave-deep, at noon, in grass of Arcady!

‘RUSSIA UNDER THE CZARS.’

OF thraldom and the accursèd diadem
In that vast snow-land, shout the passionate tale;
Touch graybeards in the mart, bid braggarts quail,
And rouse the student lone from his old phlegm
To breathe the self-same sacred air with them,
Spirits supreme, our brothers! whose avail
Is sacrifice. Nay, make no woman’s wail:
Rome is re-born! whom kings dare not contemn.
On Neva’s shore-streets tho’ high blood be spent,
There this lorn world’s renascent hopes are meeting:
In camp is Mucius, at the bridge, Horatius;
Regulus walks in gyves, magnificent;
And thence men hear--O sound sublime and gracious!
The unquelled heart of Cæsar’s Brutus beating.

FOUR SONNETS FROM ‘LA VITA NUOVA.’

I.

‘_Io mi sentii svegliar dentro allo core._’

WITHIN my bosom, from long apathy,
Love’s mood of tenderness extreme awoke,
And spying him far off, mine eye bespoke
Love’s self, so joyous scarce it seemèd he,
Crying: ‘Now, verily, pay thy vows to me!’
And bright thro’ every word his smile outbroke.
Then stood we twain, I in my liege lord’s yoke,
Watching the path he came by, soon to see
The Lady Joan and Lady Beatrice
Nearing our very nook, each marvel close
Following her peer, all beauty else above;
And Love said, in a voice like Memory’s:
‘The first is Spring; but she that with her goes,
My counterpart, bears my own name of Love!’

II.

‘_Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare._’

SO chaste, so noble looks that lady mine
Saluting on her way, that tongues of some
Are mute a-tremble, and the eyes that clomb
High as her eyes, abashed, their gaze decline.
Thro’ perils of heard praise she moves benign,
Armored in her own meekness, as if come
Hither from Heaven, to give our Christendom
Even of a miracle the vouch divine.
So with beholders doth her worth avail,
It sheds, thro’ sight, a sweetness on the soul,
(Alas! how told to one that felt it never?)
And from her presence seemeth to exhale
A breath half-solace and of love the whole,
That saith to the bowed spirit ‘Sigh!’ forever.

III.

‘_Era venuta nella mente mia._’

THERE came upon my mind remembrances
Of my lost lady, who for her reward
Is now set safe, by Heaven’s Most Highest Lord,
In kingdoms of the meek, where Mary is.
And Love, whose own are her dear memories,
Called to the sighs in my heart’s wreckage stored:
‘Go!’ whereby outwardly, with one accord,
Not having ever other vent than this,
Plaining athwart my breast they flocked to air,
With speech that, oft recalled, draws unaware
The darkened tears into my mournful eyes;
And those that came in greatest anguish thence
Sang: ‘O most glorious Intelligence!
Thou art one year this day in Paradise.’

IV.

‘_Deh peregrini, che pensosi andate._’

YE pilgrims, who with pensive aspect go
Thinking, perhaps, of bygone things and dear,
Come you from lands so very far from here
As unto us who watch your port would show?
For that you weep not outright, filing slow
Thro’ the mid-highway of this city drear,
You even as gentle stranger-folk appear,
Who of the common sorrow nothing know!
Would you but linger, would you but be told,
Pledge with its thousand sighs my soul doth give
That you, likewise, should travel on heart-broken:
Ah, we have lost our Beatrice! Behold,
What least soever word be of her spoken,
The tears must follow now from all that live.

University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.