Works

Carved in the silence by the hand of Pain,
And made more perfect by the gift of Peace,
Than if Delight had bid your sorrow cease,
And brought the dawn to where the dark has lain,...

Francesca's life that was a limpid flame
Agleam against the shimmer of a sword,
Which falling, quenched the flame in blood outpoured
To free the house of Rimino from shame,...

You say, as I have often given tongue
In praise of what another's said or sung,
'Twere politic to do the like by these;
But have you known a dog to praise his fleas?

Oh, be not led away.
Lured by the colour of the sun-rich day.
The gay romances of song
Unto the spirit-life doth not belong.
Though far-between the hours
In which the Master of Angelic Powers...

As one, the secret lover of a queen,
Watches her move within the people's eye,
Hears their poor chatter as she passes by,
And smiles to think of what his eyes have seen;...

Thou who singest through the earth,
All the earth's wild creatures fly thee,
Everywhere thou marrest mirth.
Dumbly they defy thee.
There is something they deny thee.

Pines thy fallen nature ever...

I who am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,
Send you my words for messengers
The way I shall not pass along.

I care not if you bridge the seas,
Or ride secure the cruel sky,...

Of thy judicious Muse's sense,
Young Hinchinbroke so very proud is,
That Sacharissa and Hortense
She looks henceforth upon as dowdies.

Yet she to one must still submit,...

Minstrel, what have you to do
With this man that, after you,
Sharing not your happy fate,
Sat as England's Laureate?
Vainly, in these iron days,
Strives the poet in your praise,...

Still towards the steep Parnassian way
The moon-led pilgrims wend,
Ah, who of all that start to-day
Shall ever reach the end?

Year after year a dream-fed band
That scorn the vales below,...

I would not venture to dispraise or praise.
Too well I know the indifference which bounds
A poet in the narrow working-grounds
Where he is blind and deaf in all his ways.
...

There was a moment when of you
A splendid hope I had to tell,
Believing "Here is one man who
Will serve our waiting country well."

I saw you sedulous and keen,
I heard the burning words you spoke....

All you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages,
You have not learn'd of Nature, of the politics of Nature, you have not learn'd the great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality;...

Though I have loved you well, I ween,
And you, too, fancied me,
Your heart hath too divided been
A constant heart to be.
And like the gay and youthful knight,
Who loved and rode away,...

My dear Sir, -
In the whole round
Of animated nature
I am acquainted
With nothing or nobody
Who is, generally speaking,
So gay, gaudy, and interesting
As yourself.
From my youth up...

Is reform needed? Is it through you?
The greater the reform needed, the greater the personality you need to accomplish it.

You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood, complexion, clean and sweet?...

("Si vous continuez toute p'le.")

[November, 1870.]


If you continue thus so wan and white;
If I, one day, behold
You pass from out our dull air to the light,
You, infant - I, so old:...

The face of glory and her pleasant voice,
O fortunate youth, now recognize,
And how much nobler than effeminate sloth
Are manhood's tested energies.
Take heed, O generous champion, take heed,...

Around me roared the nearly deafening street.
Tall, slim, in mourning, in majestic grief,
A woman passed me, with a splendid hand
Lifting and swinging her festoon and hem;
...

Severe the proof the Grecian youth was doomed to undergo,
Before he might what lurks beneath the Eleusinia know
Art thou prepared and ripe, the shrine the inner shrine to win,...