The dry, unyielding, niggard breast,
Offering no nourishment, no rest,
To that young head which soon shall rise
Disdainfully, in might and glory, to the skies.
Sweetly where caverned Dirce flows
Do white-armed maidens chaunt my lay,
Flapping the while with laurel-rose
The honey-gathering tribes away;
And sweetly, sweetly, Attick tongues
Lisp your Corinna's early songs;
To her with feet more graceful come
The verses that have dwelt in kindred breasts at home.
O let thy children lean aslant
Against the tender mother's knee,
And gaze into her face, and want
To know what magic there can be
In words that urge some eyes to dance,
While others as in holy trance
Look up to heaven; be such my praise!
Why linger? I must haste, or lose the Delphick bays.
We mind not how the sun in the mid-sky
Is hastening on; but when the golden orb
Strikes the extreme of earth, and when the gulphs
Of air and ocean open to receive him,
'Dampness and gloom invade us; then we think
Ah! thus it is with youth. Too fast his feet
Run on for sight; hour follows hour; fair maid
Succeeds fair maid; bright eyes bestar his couch;
The cheerful horn awakens him; the feast,
The revel, the entangling dance, allure,
And voices mellower than the Muse's own
Heap up his buoyant bosom on their wave. A little while, and then.... Ah youth! youth! youth! Listen not to my words... but stay with me! When thou art gone, Life may go too; the sigh That rises is for thee, and not for Life.
[From the Examination of Shakespeare.]
I loved him not; and yet now he is gone
I checked him while he spoke; yet could he speak,
Alas, I would not check.
For reasons not to love him once I sought
And wearied all my thought
To vex myself and him; I now would give
My love, could he but live
Who lately lived for me, and when he found
'Twas vain, in holy ground
He hid his face amid the shades of death.
I waste for him my breath
Who wasted his for me; but mine returns,
And this lorn bosom burns
With stifling heat, heaving it up in sleep,
And waking me to weep
Tears that had melted his soft heart; for years
Wept he as bitter tears.
'Merciful God!' such was his latest prayer,
'These may she never share!'
Quieter is his breath, his breast more cold
Than daisies in the mould,
Where children spell, athwart the churchyard gate,
His name, and life's brief date.
Pray for him, gentle souls, whoe'er you be,
And, O, pray too for me.
Ye who have toiled uphill to reach the haunt
Of other men who lived in other days,
Whether the ruins of a citadel
Raised on the summit by Pelasgic hands,
Or chamber of the distaff and the song.
Ye will not tell what treasure there ye found,
But I will.
Ye found there the viper laid
Full-length, flat-headed, on a sunny slab,
Nor loth to hiss at ye while crawling down.
Ye saw the owl flap the loose ivy leaves
And, hooting, shake the berries on your heads.
Now, was it worth your while to mount so high? Merely to say ye did it, and to ask
If those about ye ever did the like?
Believe me, O my friends, 'twere better far
To stretch your limbs along the level sand
As they do, where small children scoop the drift,
Thinking it must be gold, where curlews soar
And scales drop glistening from the prey above.
Twenty years hence my eyes may grow
If not quite dim, yet rather so,
Yet yours from others they shall know
Twenty years hence.
Twenty years hence, though it may hap
That I be called to take a nap
In a cool cell where thunder clap
Was never heard,
There breathe but o'er my arch of grass,
A not too sadly sighed 'Alas!'
And I shall catch ere you can pass
That winged word.
Lately our poets loitered in green lanes,
Content to catch the ballad of the plains;
I fancied I had strength enough to climb
A loftier station at no distant time,
And might securely from intrusion doze
Upon the flowers thro' which Ilissus flows.
In those pale olive grounds all voices cease,
And from afar dust fills the paths of Greece.
My slumber broken and my doublet torn,
I find the laurel also bears a thorn.
When Helen first saw wrinkles in her face
('Twas when some fifty long had settled there
And intermarried and brancht off awide),
She threw herself upon her couch, and wept ;
On this side hung her head, and over that
Listlessly she let fall the faithless brass
That made the men as faithless.
Found them, or fancied them, and would not hear
That they were only vestiges of smiles,
Or the impression of some amorous hair
Astray from cloistered curls and roseat band,
Which had been lying there all night perhaps
Upon a skin so soft... No, no, you said,
Sure, they are coming, yes, are come, are here...
Well, and what matters it... while you are too!
Say ye, that years roll on and ne'er return?
Say ye, the Sun who leaves them all behind,
Their great creator, cannot bring one back
With all his force, tho' he draw worlds around?...
Witness me, little streams! that meet before
My happy dwelling; witness, Africo
And Mensola ! that ye have seen at once
Twenty roll back, twenty as swift and bright
As are your swiftest and your brightest waves,
When the tall cypress o'er the Doccia
Hurls from his inmost boughs the latent snow.
Go, and go happy, pride of my past days
And solace of my present, thou whom Fate
Alone hath severed from me! One step higher
Must yet be mounted, high as was the last
st;
Friendship, with faltering accent, says Depart!
And take the highest seat below the crowned.
How often, when life's summer day
Is waning, and its sun descends,
Wisdom drives laughing wit away,
And lovers shrivel into friends!
You smiled, you spoke, and I believed,
By every word and smile deceived.
Another man would hope no more—
Nor hope I what I hoped before:
But let not this last wish be vain,
Deceive-deceive me once again!
There are who say we are but dust,
We may be soon, but are not yet,
Nor should be while in Love we trust
And never what he taught forget.
Why, why repine, my pensive friend,
At pleasures slipt away?
Some the stern Fates will never lend,
And all refuse to stay.
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