Works

"I stood at the back of the shop, my dear,
But you did not perceive me.
Well, when they deliver what you were shown
I shall know nothing of it, believe me!"
...

"I'll tell being past all praying for -
Then promptly die . . . He was out at the war,
And got some scent of the intimacy
That was under way between her and me;...

"But hear. If you stay, and the child be born,
It will pass as your husband's with the rest,
While, if we fly, the teeth of scorn
Will be gleaming at us from east to west;...

"O that mastering tune?" And up in the bed
Like a lace-robed phantom springs the bride;
"And why?" asks the man she had that day wed,
With a start, as the band plays on outside....

They stand confronting, the coffin between,
His wife of old, and his wife of late,
And the dead man whose they both had been
Seems listening aloof, as to things past date....

"O lonely workman, standing there
In a dream, why do you stare and stare
At her grave, as no other grave there were?

"If your great gaunt eyes so importune...

For all our works a recompence is sure;
'Tis sweet to think on what was hard t'endure.

Come, let us, ere we go to bed,
O'er the decaying embers chat,
Though little Mary hangs her head,
And strokes no more the purring cat.

And let us tell how prisoners pine...

'Tis Saturday morn and all is bright
By nature's own endowing;
The sun is fiercely giving light,
And only me--
Plowing.

Across the river I hear the sound
Of a boatman slowly rowing;...

Although our suffering meet with no relief,
An equal mind is the best sauce for grief.

Say, what is Honour? 'Tis the finest sense
Of 'justice' which the human mind can frame,
Intent each lurking frailty to disclaim,
And guard the way of life from all offence...

[1]


[Boy discovered at a table, with the Thirty-Nine Articles before him.--
Enter the Rt. Rev. Doctor Phillpots.]

Doctor P.--There, my lad, lie the...

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:...

Artist, I own thy genius; but the touch
May be too restless, and the glare too much:
And sure none ever saw a landscape shine,
Basking in beams of such a sun as thine,
But felt a fervid dew upon his phiz,...

I.

ROME.--A Hall in a Palace. ALESSANDRA and CASTIGLIONE

Alessandra. Thou art sad, Castiglione.

Castiglione. Sad!--not I.
Oh, I'm the happiest, happiest man in Rome!...

I.

ROME., A Hall in a Palace. ALESSANDRA and CASTIGLIONE

Alessandra. Thou art sad, Castiglione.

Castiglione. Sad!, not I.
Oh, I'm the happiest, happiest man in Rome!...

SCENE 1. - PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN.

THE LORD AND THE HOST OF HEAVEN.

ENTER THREE ARCHANGELS.

RAPHAEL:
The sun makes music as of old
Amid the rival spheres of Heaven,...

SCENE 1:

ENTER CYPRIAN, DRESSED AS A STUDENT;
CLARIN AND MOSCON AS POOR SCHOLARS, WITH BOOKS.

CYPRIAN:
In the sweet solitude of this calm place,
This intricate wild wilderness of trees...

What needs this din about the town o' Lon'on,
How this new play an' that new sang is comin'?
Why is outlandish stuff sae meikle courted?
Does nonsense mend like whiskey, when imported?...

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,...