Fronting her silent in the glass- 66 Him, the Carver, a hand to aid, "Who fashions the clay no love will change, “And fixes a beauty never to fade. "Let Robbia's craft so apt and strange "Make me a face on the window there, "And let me think that it may beguile 66 Dreary days which the dead must spend "Down in their darkness under the aisle, "To say, 'What matters it at the end? "I did no more while my heart was warm "Than does that image, my pale-faced friend.' "Where is the use of the lip's red charm, "Unless we turn, as the soul knows how, But long ere Robbia's cornice, fine With flowers and fruits which leaves enlace, (And, leaning out of a bright blue space, As a ghost might lean from a chink of sky, The passionate pale lady's face— Eyeing ever, with earnest eye And quick-turned neck at its breathless stretch, The Duke had sighed like the simplest wretch Some subtle moulder of brazen shapes- "John of Douay shall effect my plan, "In the very square I have crossed so oft: "That men may admire, when future suns “Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft, "While the mouth and the brow stay brave in bronze "Admire and say, 'When he was alive "How he would take his pleasure once!' "And it shall go hard but I contrive "To listen the while, and laugh in my tomb "At idleness which aspires to strive." So! While these wait the trump of doom, Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder Only they see not God, I know, The soldier-saints who, row on row, Burn upward each to his point of bliss Since, the end of life being manifest, He had burned his way thro' the world to this. I hear you reproach, "But delay was best, "For their end was a crime."—Oh, a crime will do As well, I reply, to serve for a test, As a virtue golden through and through, And prove its worth at a moment's view! Must a game be played for the sake of pelf? The true has no value beyond the sham: When your table 's a hat, and your prize, a dram. Stake your counter as boldly every whit, If you choose to play !-is my principle. The counter, our lovers staked, was lost Is, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, How strive you? De te, fabula ! LOVE AMONG THE RUINS. I. WHERE the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles, Miles and miles, On the solitary pastures where our sheep Half-asleep Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop As they crop Was the site once of a city great and gay, (So they say) Of our country's very capital, its prince, Ages since, Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far Peace or war. II. Now, the country does not even boast a tree, As you see, To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills Intersect and give a name to, (else they run Into one) Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires Up like fires |