Works

Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs,
The not-incurious in God's handiwork
(This man's-flesh he hath admirably made,
Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste,...

Referring to the third verse of this poem, the Pall Mall Gazette of February 1, 1890, said: 'One evening, just before his death-illness, the poet was reading this from a proof to his daughter-in-law and sister. He said: 'It alm...

What a pretty tale you told me
Once upon a time
Said you found it somewhere (scold me!)
Was it prose or was it rhyme,
Greek or Latin? Greek, you said,
While your shoulder propped my head.
...

I.

Out of the little chapel I burst
Into the fresh night air again.
I had waited a good five minutes first
In the doorway, to escape the rain
That drove in gusts down the common's centre,...

Fame

See, as the prettiest graves will do in time,
Our poet's wants the freshness of its prime;
Spite of the sexton's browsing horse, the sods
Have struggled thro' its binding osier-rods;...

I.

How very hard it is to be
A Christian! Hard for you and me,
Not the mere task of making real
That duty up to its ideal,
Effecting thus complete and whole,
A purpose or the human soul'...

FIRST SPEAKER, as David

I.
On the first of the Feast of Feasts,
The Dedication Day,
When the Levites joined the Priests
At the Altar in robed array,
Gave signal to sound and say,
...

But give them me, the mouth, the eyes, the brow!
Let them once more absorb me! One look now
Will lap me round for ever, not to pass
Out of its light, though darkness lie beyond:...

I.

Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead!
Sit and watch by her side an hour.
That is her book-shelf, this her bed;
She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,
Beginning to die too, in the glass;...

What it was struck the terror into me?
This, Publius: closer! while we wait our turn
I'll tell you. Water's warm (they ring inside)
At the eighth hour, till when no use to bathe.
...

'The poets pour us wine'
Said the dearest poet I ever knew,
Dearest and greatest and best to me.
You clamor athirst for poetry
We pour. 'But when shall a vintage be'...

Scene. Inside the Turret on the Hill above Asolo. Luigi and his Mother entering.


Mother
If there blew wind, you'd hear a long sigh, easing
The utmost heaviness of music's heart.


Luigi...

I.
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith 'A whole I planned,...

PIANO DI SORRENTO


Fort', Fort', my beloved one,
Sit here by my side,
On my knees put up both little feet!
I was sure, if I tried,
I could make you laugh spite of Scirocco:...

That second time they hunted me
From hill to plain, from shore to sea,
And Austria, hounding far and wide
Her blood-hounds thro' the country-side,
Breathed hot and instant on my trace,...

I.

As I ride, as I ride,
With a full heart for my guide,
So its tide rocks my side,
As I ride, as I ride,
That, as I were double-eyed,
He, in whom our Tribes confide,...

I chanced upon a new book yesterday;
I opened it, and, where my finger lay
'Twixt page and uncut page, these words I read,
Some six or seven at most, and learned thereby...