Works

Brave soul, 'twere well if all the same would say,
And artists aim their patron's wish t'obey.
What signifies a wart, or e'en a scar?
Leave both, skilled hand, and paint us as we are....

I shall not ask Jean Jaques Rousseau[1]
If birds confabulate or no;
'Tis clear, that they were always able
To hold discourse, at least in fable;
And e'en the child who knows no better...

The night cold as nuggets, dark as acorn,
against your chest; snow falling
like abandoned echoes releasing energy
into the spyglass, umbrella moon.

A solitary figure trapping hapless sparrows...

BOOK I.


In days of old, there lived, of mighty fame,
A valiant prince, and Theseus was his name:
A chief, who more in feats of arms excell'd,
The rising nor the setting sun beheld....

Old Sawbones, pale as a sheet,
white sand, whispering edge of the sea.

II
The mind tarries not one place long,
(longitudinal wanderings off a map).
Is shiftless, both a shirker (and army deserter)...

Blest land of Judea! thrice hallowed of song,
Where the holiest of memories pilgrim-like throng;
In the shade of thy palms, by the shores of thy sea,
On the hills of thy beauty, my heart is with thee.
...

Old plant of Asia -
Mutilated vine
Holding earth's leaping sap
In every stem and shoot
That lopped off, sprouts again -
Why should you seek a plateau walled about,
Whose garden is the world?

Darkness comes out of the earth
And swallows dip into the pallor of the west;
From the hay comes the clamour of children's mirth;
Wanes the old palimpsest.

The night-stock oozes scent,...

I lay upon the headland-height, and listened
To the incessant sobbing of the sea
In caverns under me,
And watched the waves, that tossed and fled and glistened,
Until the rolling meadows of amethyst...

Who is Lydia, pray, and who
Is Hypatia? Softly, dear,
Let me breathe it in your ear--
They are you, and only you.
And those other nameless two
Walking in Arcadian air--
She that was so very fair?...

Ye mountains, on whose torrent-furrowed slopes,
And bare and silent brows uplift to heaven,
I envied oft the soul which fills your wastes
Of pure and stern sublime, and still expanse...

To The Marquis Gino Capponi.


I was mistaken, my dear Gino. Long
And greatly have I erred. I fancied life
A vain and wretched thing, and this, our age,
Now passing, vainest, silliest of all....

Set where the upper streams of Simois flow
Was the Palladium, high 'mid rock and wood;
And Hector was in Ilium, far below,
And fought, and saw it not but there it stood!
...

The Trojan swain had judged the great dispute,
And beauty's power obtain'd the golden fruit,
When Venus, loose in all her naked charms,
Met Jove's great daughter clad in shining arms,...

A light departed from the hearth of home,
Leaving a shadow where its radiance shone, -
A flower just bursting into life and bloom,
Lopped from its stem, the bower left sad and lone, -...

Love, let me thank you for this!
Now we have drifted apart,
Wandered away from the sea, -
For the fresh touch of your kiss,
For the young warmth of your heart,
For your youth given to me.
...

Him best in all the dim Arthuriad,
Of lovers of fair women, him I prize,--
The Pagan Palomydes. Never glad
Was he with sweetness of his lady's eyes,
Nor joy he had.
...

(See Note 20)

Many forms belong to greatness.
He who now has left us bore it
As a doubt that made him sleepless,
But at last gave revelation, -
As a sight-enhancing power,...

O what are heroes, prophets, men,
But pipes through which the breath of Pan doth blow
A momentary music. Being's tide
Swells hitherward, and myriads of forms
Live, robed with beauty, painted by the sun;...

This Pan is but an idle god, I guess,
Since all the fair midsummer of my dreams
He loiters listlessly by woody streams,
Soaking the lush glooms up with laziness;
Or drowsing while the maiden-winds caress...