Valour to pride hath turned; grave holiness To vile hypocrisy; all gentle ways To empty forms; sound sense to idle lays; Pure love to heat; beauty to paint and dress:--...
Ye Alpine rocks! If less your peaks elate To heaven exalt you than that gift divine, Freedom; why do your children still combine To keep the despots in their stolen state?...
Holding the cynic lantern in your hand, Through Europe, Egypt, Asia, you have passed, Till at Ausonia's feet you find at last That Cyclops' cave, where I, to darkness banned,...
New Ark of Noah! when the cruel scourge Of that barbarian tyrant like a wave Went over Italy, thou then didst save The seed of just men on the weltering surge....
Valour and mind form real nobility, The which bears fruit and shows a fair increase By doughty actions: these and nought but these Confer true patents of gentility....
He who hath brush and colours, and chance-wise Doth daub, befouling walls and canvases, Is not a painter; but, unhelped by these, He who in art is masterful and wise....
Nay, prithee tell me, Love, when I behold My lady, do mine eyes her beauty see In truth, or dwells that loveliness in me Which multiplies her grace a thousandfold?...
Now hath my life across a stormy sea Like a frail bark reached that wide port where all Are bidden, ere the final reckoning fall Of good and evil for eternity. ...
Scarce had I seen for the first time his eyes Which to your living eyes were life and light, When closed at last in death's injurious night He opened them on God in Paradise....
It happens that the sweet unfathomed sea Of seeming courtesy sometimes doth hide Offence to life and honour. This descried, I hold less dear the health restored to me....
God's grace, the cross, our troubles multiplied, Will make us meet in heaven, full well I know: Yet ere we yield our breath, on earth below Why need a little solace be denied?...
Blest spirit, who with loving tenderness Quickenest my heart so old and near to die, Who mid thy joys on me dost bend an eye Though many nobler men around thee press!...