Page images
PDF
EPUB

To grant me a taste of your intonaco, Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye?

Not a churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco?

Could not the ghost with the close red сар,

My Pollajolo, the twice a craftsman, Save me a sample, give me the hap

Of a muscular Christ that shows the draughtsman?

No Virgin by him the somewhat petty, Offinical touch and tempera crumblyCould not Alesso Baldovinetti

Contribute SO much, I ask him humbly?

Margheritone of Arezzo,

With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret,

Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet

[blocks in formation]

No matter for these! But Giotto, you, Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it.

Oh, never! it shall not be counted trueThat a certain precious little tablet Which Buonarrotti eyed like a loverWas buried so long in oblivion's womb And, left for another than I to discover, Turns up at last! and to whom? - to whom?

, that have haunted the dim San Spirito,

(Or was it rather the Ognissanti ?) Patient on altar-step planting a weary toe!

Nay, I shall have it yet! Detur amanti! My Koh-i-noor-or (if that's a platitude)

Jewel of Giamschid, the Persian Sofi's eye;

So, in anticipative gratitude,

What if I take up my hope and prophesy?

When the hour grows ripe, and a certain dotard

Is pitched, no parcel that needs invoicing,

To the worse side of the Mont St. Gothard, We shall begin by way of rejoicing; None of that shooting the sky (blank cartridge),

Nor a civic guard, all plumes and lacquer,

Hunting Radetzky's soul like a partridge Over Morello with squib and cracker.

This time we 'll shoot better game and

bag 'em hot

No mere display at the stone of Dante But a kind of sober Witanagemot

(Ex: "Casa Guidi,” quod videas ante) Shall ponder, once Freedom restored to Florence,

How Art may return that departed with her.

Go, hated house, go each trace of the Loraine's,

And bring us the days of Orgagna hither!

How we shall prologuize, how we shall perorate,

Utter fit things upon art and history, Feel truth at blood-heat and falsehood at zero rate,

Make of the want of the age no

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

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, 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 says there 's news to-day-the king

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Couldst thou repeat a stroke and gain the sky!

And is it not the bitterer to think That disengage our hands and thou wilt sink

Although thy love was love in very deed?

I know that nature! Pass a festive day, Thou dost not throw its relic-flower away Nor bid its music's loitering echo speed.

Thou let'st the stranger's glove lie where it fell;

f old things remain old things all is well,

For thou art grateful as becomes man best:

And hadst thou only heard me play one tune,

r viewed me from a window, not so

soon

With thee would such things fade as with the rest.

seem to see! We meet and part; 't is brief:

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

MISCONCEPTIONS

THIS is a spray the Bird clung to, Making it blossom with pleasure, Ere the high tree-top she sprung to, Fit for her nest and her treasure. Oh, what a hope beyond measure Was the poor spray's, which the flying feet hung to,—

So to be singled out, built in, and sung to!

This is a heart the Queen leaned on,
Thrilled in a minute erratic,
Ere the true bosom she bent on,

Meet for love's regal dalmatic.
Oh, what a fancy ecstatic

Was the poor heart's, ere the wanderer went on

Love to be saved for it, proffered to, spent on! 1855.

ONE WAY OF LOVE

ALL June I bound the rose in sheaves.
Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves
And strew them where Pauline may
pass.

She will not turn aside? Alas!
Let them lie. Suppose they die?
The chance was they might take her eye.

How many a month I strove to suit
These stubborn fingers to the lute!
To-day I venture all I know.

She will not hear my music? So!
Break the string; fold music's wing:
Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!

[blocks in formation]
« PreviousContinue »