The Three, nor enable their sister On the voyage, she looked at Ulysses- Tho' the small one, just launched in the wave, From under the rock, her bold sister Fortù, shall we sail there together And see from the sides Quite new rocks show their faces, new haunts Where the siren abides? Shall we sail round and round them, close over The rocks, tho' unseen, That ruffle the grey glassy water To glorious green? Then scramble from splinter to splinter, Reach land and explore, On the largest, the strange square black turret With never a door, Just a loop to admit the quick lizards; Then, stand there and hear The birds' quiet singing, that tells us -The secret they sang to Ulysses He heard and he knew this life's secret Ah, see! The sun breaks o'er Calvano; And flutters it o'er the mount's summit All is over. Look out, see the gipsy, Our tinker and smith, Has arrived, set up bellows and forge, And down-squatted forthwith To his hammering, under the wall there; One eye keeps aloof The urchins that itch to be putting While the other, thro' locks of curled wire, Shines the hog, come to share in the windfall All is over. Wake up and come out now, And see the fine things got in order Of the Sacrament, set forth this evening. Of the Rosary's Virgin, by no means As you'll hear in the off-hand discourse The Dominican brother, these three weeks, Not a pillar nor post but is dizened With red and blue papers; All the roof waves with ribbons, each altar But the great masterpiece is the scaffold All the fiddlers and fifers and drummers Not afraid of Bellini nor Auber, Who, when the priest's hoarse, And then will the flaxen-wigged Image Thro' the plain, while in gallant procession All round the glad church lie old bottles Which will be, when the Image re-enters, Religiously popped; And at night from the crest of Calvano On the plain will the trumpets join chorus, At all events, come-to the garden See me tap with a hoe on the plaster A scorpion with wide angry nippers! -"Such trifles!" you say? Fortù, in my England at home, Men meet gravely to-day And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws -If 't were proper, Scirocco should vanish THE LOST LEADER UST for a handful of silver he left us, J Just for a hand to stick in his coat a Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him, Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, Made him our pattern to live and to die! Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, Burns, Shelley, were with us,--they watch from their graves! He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, We shall march prospering,-not thro' his presence; untrod, One more triumph for devils, and sorrow for angels, One wrong more to man, one more insult to God! Life's night begins: let him never come back to us! There would be doubt, hesitation and pain, Forced praise on our part-the glimmer of twilight, Never glad confident morning again! Best fight on well, for we taught him,-strike gallantly, Aim at our heart ere we pierce through his own; Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us, Pardoned in Heaven, the first by the throne! THE LOST MISTRESS ALL'S over, then does truth sound bitter As one at first believes? Hark, 'tis the sparrows' good-night twitter And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly, One day more bursts them open fully To-morrow we meet the same then, dearest? Mere friends are we,-well, friends the merest For each glance of that eye so bright and black, -Yet I will but say what mere friends say, I will hold your hand but as long as all may, HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD OH, to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brush-wood sheaf While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough And after April, when May follows, And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows— Blossoms and dewdrops-at the bent-spray's edge- And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, |