Works

Failing sometimes to understand
Why there are folk whose flesh should seem
Like carrion puffed with noisome steam,
Fly-blown to the eye that looks on it,
Fly-blown to the touch of a hand;...

The cannon's brazen lips are cold;
No red shell blazes down the air;
And street and tower, and temple old,
Are silent as despair.
The Lombard stands no more at bay,...

You lived in a land horror-haunted,
And wrote with a pen half-divine;
You drank bitter sorrow, undaunted
And cast precious pearls before swine.

O sweetly wild and 'witching Poesy!
Thou light of this world's hermitage I prove thee;
And surely none helps loving thee that knows thee,
A soul of feeling cannot help but love thee....

Pompey, what fortune gives you back
To the friends and the gods who love you?
Once more you stand in your native land,
With your native sky above you.
Ah, side by side, in years agone,...

Signor, se vero '.


My Lord! if ever ancient saw spake sooth,
Hear this which saith: Who can, doth never will.
Lo! thou hast lent thine ear to fables still,...

1.

Indeed I live in the dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.

Ah, what an age it is...

When you and I were younger the world was passing fair;
Our days were sped with laughter, our steps were free as air;
Life lightly lured us onward, and ceased not to unroll...

O Postumus, my Postumus, the years are gliding past,
And piety will never check the wrinkles coming fast,
The ravages of time old age's swift advance has made,...

Why do ye weep, sweet babes? can tears
Speak grief in you,
Who were but born
just as the modest morn
Teem'd her refreshing dew?
Alas, you have not known that shower
That mars a flower,...

What fate decreed, time now has made us see,
A renovation of the west by thee.
That preternatural fever, which did threat
Death to our country, now hath lost his heat,...

(On the Return of the "Ophir")

Most well-behaved little Prince, -
As the small boy
Who will one day be the Sovereign Lord
Of certain other small boys
In whom I am interested...

O you that were eyes and light to the King till he past away
From the darkness of life'
He saw not his daughter'he blest her: the blind King sees you to-day,
He blesses the wife.

Fair things are slow to fade away,
Bear witness you, that yesterday1
From out the Ghost of Pindar inyou
Roll'd an Olympian; and they say2

That here the torpid mummy wheat...

JOHN courts Perrette; but all in vain;
Love's sweetest oaths, and tears, and sighs
All potent spells her heart to gain
The ardent lover vainly tries:
Fruitless his arts to make her waver,...

"Give me only a fragment of earth beyond the earth's limits,"
So the godlike man said, "and I will move it with ease."
Only give me permission to leave myself for one moment,...

Topsy Turvy is her name;
She's a curiosity:
Never sees the world the same
As it seems to you and me.

"All the world is upside down,"
So she says; then, with a frown,...

Madam, you have done well! Let others with praise unholy,
Speech addressed to a woman who never breathed upon earth,
Daub you over with lies or deafen your ears with folly,...

To Scythian and Cantabrian plots,
Pay them no heed, O Quintius!
So long as we
From care are free,
Vexations cannot cinch us.

Unwrinkled youth and grace, forsooth,
Speed hand in hand together;...

Be tranquil, Dellius, I pray;
For though you pine your life away
With dull complaining breath,
Or speed with song and wine each day,
Still, still your doom is death.
...