VII.

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,
Existent behind all laws, that made them, and, lo, they are!
And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,
That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.\
Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught;

It is everywhere in the world- loud, soft, and all is said:
Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought,

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And, there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head! ·

VIII.

Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared;

Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow;
For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared,
That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go.

Never to be again! But many more of the kind

As good, nay, better perchance: is this your comfort to me?

To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind

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To the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be.

IX.

Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name?
Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands!
What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same?
Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?
There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;
The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound;
What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.

X.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist,
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by.

XI.

And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence

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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 thro' 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

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IO

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, thro' 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.

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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!

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THE GUARDIAN-ANGEL.

A PICTURE AT FANO.

I.

DEAR and Angelu hast done with him, for me!

EAR and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave

Let me sit all the day here, that when eve

Shall find performed thy special ministry, And time come for departure, thou, suspending Thy flight, mayst see another child for tending, Another still to quiet and retrieve.

II.

Then I shall feel thee step one step, no more, From where thou standest now, to where I gaze. - And suddenly my head is covered o'er

With those wings, white above the child who prays Now on that tomb and I shall feel thee guarding Me, out of all the world; for me, discarding

Yon heaven thy home, that waits and opes its door.

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