Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to

rest.

Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from

Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth;

In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of the

hills

In the shuddering forests' new awe; in the sudden windthrills;

In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye

sidling still

Tho' averted, in wonder and dread; and the birds stiff

and chill

That rose heavily, as I approached them, made stupid

with awe.

E'en the serpent that slid away silent, he felt the new

Law.

The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers;

The same worked in the heart of the cedar, and moved

the vine-bowers.

And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent

and low,

With their obstinate, all but hushed voices - E'en so!

it is so.

YOUR ghost will walk, you lover of trees, (If 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,

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

With the beanflowers' boon,

And the blackbird's tune,

And May, and June!

2.

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 cicalas die of drouth,
And one sharp tree ('tis 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
Without the house, but the great opaque
Blue breadth of sea, and not a break?
While, in the house, forever 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 there's news to-day — the king

says

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 it still shall be !

WOMEN AND ROSES.

1.

I DREAM of a red-rose tree.
And which of its roses three
Is the dearest rose to me?

2.

Round and round, like a dance of snow
In a dazzling drift, as its guardians, go
Floating the women faded for ages,
Sculptured in stone, on the poet's pages.
Then follow the women fresh and gay,
Living and loving and loved to-day.

Last, in the rear, flee the multitude of maidens,
Beauties unborn. And all, to one cadence,

They circle their rose on my rose tree.

3.

Dear rose, thy term is reached,

Thy leaf hangs loose and bleached:
Bees pass it unimpeached.

4.

Stay then, stoop, since I cannot climb,

You, great shapes of the antique time!

How shall I fix you, fire you, freeze you,
Break my heart at your feet to please you?
Oh! to possess, and be possessed!

Hearts that beat 'neath each pallid breast!
But once of love, the poesy, the passion,

Drink once and die! - In vain, the same fashion, They circle their rose on my rose tree.

5.

Dear rose, thy joy's undimmed;
Thy cup is ruby-rimmed,

Thy cup's heart nectar-brimmed.

6.

Deep as drops from a statue's plinth
The bee sucked in by the hyacinth,
So will I bury me while burning,
Quench like him at a plunge my yearning,
Eyes in your eyes, lips on your lips!

Fold me fast where the cincture slips,

Prison all my soul in eternities of pleasure!

Girdle me once! But no- in their old measure

They circle their rose on my rose tree.

7.

Dear rose without a thorn,
Thy bud's the babe unborn,
First streak of a new morn.