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Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it byand-by.

XI

And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?

Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?

Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should

be prized?

Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,

Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and

woe:

But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear; The rest may reason and welcome; 't is we musicians know.

XII

Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign :
I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce.
Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again,
Sliding by semitones, till I sink to the minor,—yes,
And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground,
Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the
deep:

Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found,

The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.

TWO IN THE CAMPAGNA.

I

I WONDER do you feel to-day

As I have felt since, hand in hand,

We sat down on the grass, to stray
In spirit better through the land,
This morn of Rome and May?

II

For me, I touched a thought, I know,
Has tantalized me many times,
(Like turns of thread the spiders throw
Mocking across our path) for rhymes
To catch at and let go.

III

Help me to hold it! First it left
The yellowing fennel, run to seed

There, branching from the brickwork's cleft,
Some old tomb's ruin: yonder weed
Took up the floating weft,

IV

Where one small orange cup amassed

Five beetles,-blind and green they grope Among the honey-meal and last,

Everywhere on the grassy slope,

I traced it. Hold it fast!

V

The champaign with its endless fleece
Of feathery grasses everywhere!
Silence and passion, joy and peace,
An everlasting wash of air-
Rome's ghost since her decease.

VI

Such life here, through such lengths of hours, Such miracles performed in play,

Such primal naked forms of flowers,

Such letting nature have her way While heaven looks from its towers!

VII

How say you? Let us, O my dove,
Let us be unashamed of soul,
As earth lies bare to heaven above!
How is it under our control

To love or not to love?

VIII

I would that you were all to me,

You that are just so much, no more. Nor yours nor mine, nor slave nor free! Where does the fault lie? What the core O' the wound, since wound must be?

IX

I would I could adopt your will,

See with your eyes, and set my heart

Beating by yours, and drink my fill

At your soul's springs,-your part, my part In life, for good and ill.

X

No. I yearn upward, touch you close,
Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,

Catch your soul's warmth,-I pluck the rose
And love it more than tongue can speak-
Then the good minute goes.

XI

Already how am I so far

Out of that minute? Must I go Still like the thistle-ball, no bar,

Onward, whenever light winds blow, Fixed by no friendly star?

XII

Just when I seemed about to learn!
Where is the thread now? Off again.
The old trick! Only I discern-
Infinite passion, and the pain
of finite hearts that yearn.

"DE GUSTIBUS—”

I

YOUR ghost will walk, you lover of trees, (If our loves remain)

In an English lane,

By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.
Hark, those two in the hazel coppice-
A boy and a girl, if the good fates please,
Making love, say,—

The happier they !

Draw yourself up from the light of the moon, And let them pass, as they will too soon,

With the beanflower's boon,

And the blackbird's tune,

And May, and June!

II

What I love best in all the world
Is a castle, precipice-encurled,
In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine.
Or look for me, old fellow of mine,
(If I get my head from out the mouth
O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands,
And come again to the land of lands)-

In a sea-side house to the farther South,
Where the baked cicala dies of drouth,
And one sharp tree-'t is a cypress-stands,
By the many hundred years red-rusted,
Rough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted,
My sentinel to guard the sands

To the water's edge. For, what expands
Before the house, but the great opaque
Blue breadth of sea without a break?
While, in the house, for ever crumbles
Some fragment of the frescoed walls,
From blisters where a scorpion sprawls.
A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles
Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons,
And says there's news to-day—the king
Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing,
Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling:
-She hopes they have not caught the felons.
Italy, my Italy!

Queen Mary's saying serves for me—

(When fortune's malice

Lost her, Calais)

Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it, "Italy."

Such lovers old are I and she:

So it always was, so shall ever be.

THE GUARDIAN-ANGEL.

A PICTURE AT FANO.

I

DEAR and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave

That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!

Let me sit all the day here, that when eve

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