wrought Three centuries and three score years ago, With fantasies of his peculiar thought: The instruments of carpentry and science Scatter'd about her feet, in strange alliance With the keen wolf-hound sleeping undistraught; Scales, hour-glass, bell, and magic-square above; The grave and solid infant perch'd beside, With open winglets that might bear a dove, Intent upon its tablets, heavy-eyed; Her folded wings as of a mighty eagle But all too impotent to lift the regal Robustness of her earth-born strength and pride; And with those wings, and that light wreath which seems To mock her grand head and the knotted frown Of forehead charged with baleful thoughts and dreams, The household bunch of keys, the housewife's gown Voluminous, indented, and yet rigid The comet hanging o'er the waste dark seas, The massy rainbow curv'd in front of it Beyond the village with the masts and trees; The snaky imp, dog-headed, from the Pit, Bearing upon its batlike leathern pinions Her name unfolded in the sun's dominions, The "MELENCOLIA" that transcends all wit. Thus has the artist copied her, and thus Surrounded to expound her form sublime, Her fate heroic and calamitous; Fronting the dreadful mysteries of Time, Unvanquish'd in defeat and desolation, Undaunted in the hopeless conflagration Of the day setting on her baffled prime. Baffled and beaten back she works on still, Weary and sick of soul she works the The sense that every struggle brings defeat Because Fate holds no prize to crown success; That all the oracles are dumb or cheat Because they have no secret to express; That none can pierce the vast black veil uncertain Because there is no light beyond the curtain; That all is vanity and nothingness. Titanic from her high throne in the north, That City's sombre Patroness and Queen, In bronze sublimity she gazes forth Over her Capital of teen and threne, Over the river with its isles and bridges, The marsh and moorland, to the stern rockridges, Confronting them with a coeval mien. The moving moon and stars from east to west Circle before her in the sea of air; Shadows and gleams glide round her sol emn rest. Her subjects often gaze up to her there : The strong to drink new strength of iron endurance, The weak new terrors; all, renew'd assur ance And confirmation of the old despair. LIFE'S HEBE In the early morning-shine And the first who took the cup But the next who took the cup With the red wine fill'd it up; What he drank then was in hue And the next who took the cup But the next who took the cup She the while without a word And the next who took the cup To the sunshine held it up, Gave it back and did not taste; It was empty when replaced : First he bow'd a reverent bow, Then he kiss'd her on the brow. But the next who took the cup Then she sang with blithest cheer: Who has thirst, come here, come here! In the cup of crystal bright, Warm as warmest heart's desire: She was young and fair and gay FROM "HE HEARD HER SING" AND thus all-expectant abiding I waited not long, for soon A boat came gliding and gliding out in the light of the moon, Gliding with muffled oars, slowly, a thin dark line, Round from the shadowing shores into the silver shine Of the clear moon westering now, and still drew on and on, While the water before its prow breaking and glistering shone, Slowly in silence strange; and the rower row'd till it lay Afloat within easy range deep in the curve of the bay; And besides the rower were two: a Woman, who sat in the stern, And Her by her fame I knew, one of those fames that burn, Startling and kindling the world, one whose likeness we everywhere see; And a man reclining half-curl'd with an indolent grace at her knee, The Signor, lord of her choice; and he lightly touch'd a guitar; A guitar for that glorious voice! Illumine the sun with a star! She sat superb and erect, stately, all-happy, serene, Her right hand toying uncheck'd with the hair of that page of a Queen; With her head and her throat and her bust like the bust and the throat and the head Of Her who has long been dust, of her who shall never be dead, Preserv'd by the potent art made trebly potent by love, While the transient ages depart from under the heavens above, Preserv'd in the color and line on the canvas fulgently flung By Him the Artist divine who triumph'd and vanish'd so young: Surely there rarely hath been a lot more to be envied in life Than thy lot, O Fornarina, whom Raphael's heart took to wife. There was silence yet for a time save the tinkling capricious and quaint, Then She lifted her voice sublime, no longer tender and faint, And the Voice flow'd on and on, and ever it swell'd as it pour'd, Till the stars that throbb'd as they shone seem'd throbbing with it in accord; Till the moon herself in my dream, still Empress of all the night, Was only that voice supreme translated into pure light: And I lost all sense of the earth though I still had sense of the sea; And I saw the stupendous girth of a tree like the Norse World-Tree; And its branches fill'd all the sky, and the deep sea water'd its root, And the clouds were its leaves on high and the stars were its silver fruit; Yet the stars were the notes of the singing and the moon was the voice of the song, Through the vault of the firmament ring ing and swelling resistlessly strong; And the whole vast night was a shell for that music of manifold might, And was strain'd by the stress of the swell of the music yet vaster than night. And I saw as a crystal fountain whose shaft was a column of light More high than the loftiest mountain ascend the abyss of the night; And its spray fill'd all the sky, and the clouds were the clouds of its spray, Which glitter'd in star-points on high and fill'd with pure silver the bay; And ever in rising and falling it sang as it rose and it fell, And the heavens with their pure azure walling all puls'd with the pulse of its swell, For the stars were the notes of the singing and the moon was the voice of the song Through the vault of the firmament ringing and swelling ineffably strong; And the waves of its blood seem'd to dash on the shore of the sky to the cope With the stress of the fire of a passion and yearning of limitless scope, Vast fire of a passion and yearning, keen torture of rapture intense, A most unendurable burning consuming the soul with the sense : "Love, love only, forever love with its torture of bliss ; All the world's glories can never equal two souls in one kiss: Love, and ever love wholly; love in all time and all space; Life is consummate then solely in the death of a burning embrace. Harriet Eleanor Hamilton King Had look'd upon the glory of that day In shape so terrible ;- for all the road Life, and full flame of loveliness of life. The red geraniums blaz'd in banks breasthigh, And from the open doors in the white walls Where roses, white and yellow and full From the green sheath, till all the green was hid By the white spread of giant-blowing wings. And here and there one had not been unclos'd Yesterday, and the vivid shoots had run flower. And in and out the balconies thin stems Went twisting, and the chains of passionflowers, Bud, blossom, and phantasmal orb of fruit Alternate, swung, and lengthen'd every hour. And fine-leav'd greenery crept from bower to bower With thick white star-flakes scatter'd; and the bloom Of orient lilies, and the rainbow-blue Pois'd upon brittle stalks, glanced up and down; And shining darkness of the cypress clos'd The deep withdrawing glades of evergreen, Lit up far off with oleander pyres. Out of the rocky dust of the wayside The lamps of the aloes burn'd themselves aloft, Immortal; and the prickly cactus-knots He issued on to the Piazza, where The wonder of the world, the Fountain streams From height to height of marble, dashing down White waves forever over whitest limbs, That shine in multitudes amid the spray And sound of silver waters without end, Rolling and rising and showering suddenly. There standing where the fig-trees made a shade Close in the angle, he beheld the streets Stretch fourways to the beautiful great In wavering color'd lines of light and shade. And downwards, from the greatest of the gates, Porta Felice, swept the orange-groves; And out beyond them, sleeping in the light, And turrets, and steep alabaster walls, ear : Until at last, through miles of shadowy air, The blue and violet mountains shut the sky. Bare are the branches, cold is the air, I come, a flame that is fed by none : Thou seest me golden, O golden Sun! Deep in the warm sleep underground Yet a beam that pierced, and a thrill Call'd me and drew me from far away; - I have won, unshelter'd, alone, remote. I shall hear no note of the nightingale ; The swallow will come at the break of green, He will never know that I have been Before him here when the world was |