Works

But do not let us quarrel any more,
No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once:
Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.
You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?...

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,...

A simple ring with a single stone,
To the vulgar eye no stone of price:
Whisper the right word, that alone,
Forth starts a sprite, like fire from ice,
And lo, you are lord (says an Eastern scroll)...

Such a starved bank of moss
Till, that May-morn,
Blue ran the flash across:
Violets were born!

Sky, what a scowl of cloud
Till, near and far,
Ray on ray split the shroud:...

I.
That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers,
And the blue eye
Dear and dewy,
And that infantine fresh air of hers!

II.
To think men cannot take you, Sweet,
And enfold you,...

I am a Goddess of the ambrosial courts,
And save by Here, Queen of Pride, surpassed
By none whose temples whiten this the world.
Thro' Heaven I roll my lucid moon along;...

'The Poet's age is sad: for why?
In youth, the natural world could show
No common object but his eye
At once involved with alien glow,
His own soul's iris-bow.

'And now a flower is just a flower:...

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.
...

Ah, my Giacinto, he's no ruddy rogue,
Is not Cinone? What, to-day we're eight?
Seven and one's eight, I hope, old curly-pate!
Branches me out his verb-tree on the slate,
Amo -as -avi -atum -are -ans,...

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:...

A Reminiscence of A.D. 1676


'No, boy, we must not', so began
My Uncle (he's with God long since),
A-petting me, the good old man!
'We must not', and he seemed to wince,...

I.
Oh, the beautiful girl, too white,
Who lived at Pornic, down by the sea,
Just where the sea and the Loire unite!
And a boasted name in Brittany
She bore, which I will not write.

II....

New Year's Day at Asolo in the Trevisan

Scene. A large mean airy chamber. A girl, Pippa, from the Silk-mills, springing out of bed.


Day!
Faster and more fast,...

The rain set early in to-night,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake,
I listened with heart fit to break;...

Never the time and the place
And the loved one all together!
This path, how soft to pace!
This May, what magic weather!
Where is the loved one's face?
In a dream that loved one's face meets mine,...

I
Query: was ever a quainter
Crotchet than this of the painter
Giacomo Pacchiarotto
Who took 'Reform' for his motto?

II
He, pupil of old Fungaio,
Is always confounded (heigho!)...

I.
The morn when first it thunders in March,
The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say.
As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch
Of the villa-gate this warm March day,...

'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'...

Oh, the old wall here! How I could pass
Life in a long midsummer day,
My feet confined to a plot of grass,
My eyes from a wall not once away!

And lush and lithe, do the creepers clothe...