Whatever England's felds display,
The fairest scenes are thine, Torbay !
Not even Liguria's sunny shore
With palm and aloe pleas'd me more.
Sorrento softer tale may tell,
Parthenope sound louder shell,
Amalfi, Ocean's proudest boast,
Show loftier hills and livelier coast,
Where Nereids hear the nightly flute,
And gather fresh such morning fruit
As hangs within their highth, and shows
Its golden gleam thro' glossy boughs.
But, with thy dark oak-woods behind,
Here stretcht against the western wind
The sails that from the Zuyderzee
Brought him who left our fathers free.
Yet (shame upon me!) I sometimes
Have sighed awhile for other climes,
Where, tho' no mariner, I too
Whistled aloft my little crew:
"Twas now to spar, 'twas now to fence,
"Twas now to fathom Shakspeare's sense,
And now to trace the hand divine
That guided Raffael's faultless line.
And then we wonder who could raise
The massy walls at which we gaze,
Where amid songs and village glee
Soars immemorial Fiesole.
At last we all in turn declare
We know not who the Cyclops were.
"But the Pelasgians! those are true?"
"I know as much of them as you."
"Pooh! nonsense! you may tell us so;
Impossible you should not know!"
Then plans, to find me out, they lay,
Which will not fail another day.
England, in all thy scenes so fair,
Thou canst not show what charm'd me there!
With rosy hand a little girl prest down
A boss of fresh-cull'd cowslips in a rill:
Often as they sprang up again, a frown
Show'd she disliked resistance to her will:
But when they droopt their heads and shone much less,
She shook them to and fro, and threw them by,
And tript away. "Ye loathe the heaviness
Ye love to cause, my little girls!" thought I,
"And what had shone for you, by you must die."
Very true, the linnets sing
Sweetest in the leaves of spring :
You have found in all these leaves
That which changes and deceives,
And, to pine by sun or star,
Left them, false ones as they are.
But there be who walk beside
Autumn's, till they all have died,
And who lend a patient ear
To low notes from branches sere.
ON HAIR FALLING OFF AFTER AN ILLNESS.
Conon was he whose piercing eyes
Saw Berenice's hair surmount the skies,
Saw Venus spring away from Mars
And twirl it round and fix it 'mid the stars.
Then every poet who had seen
The glorious sight sang to the youthful queen,
Until the many tears were dried,
Shed for that hair by that most lovely bride.
Hair far more beauteous be it mine
Not to behold amid the lights divine,
But gracing, as it graced before,
A brow serene which happier men adore.
First bring me Raffael, who alone hath seen
In all her purity Heaven's virgin queen,
Alone hath felt true beauty; bring me then
Titian, ennobler of the noblest men;
And next the sweet Correggio, nor chastise
His little Cupids for those wicked eyes.
I want not Rubens's pink puffy bloom,
Nor Rembrandt's glimmer in a dusty room.·
With those, and Poussin's nymph-frequented woods,
His templed highths and long-drawn solitudes
I am content, yet fain would look abroad
On one warm sunset of Ausonian Claude.
I leave thee, beauteous Italy! no more
From the high terraces, at even-tide,
To look supine into thy depths of sky,
Thy golden moon between the cliff and me,
Or thy dark spires of fretted cypresses
Bordering the channel of the milky-way.
Fiesole and Valdarno must be dreams
Hereafter, and my own lost Affrico
Murmur to me but in the poet's song.
I did believe (what have I not believed?)
Weary with age, but unopprest by pain,
To close in thy soft clime my quiet day
And rest my bones in the Mimosa's shade.
Hope! Hope! few ever cherisht thee so little;
Few are the heads thou hast so rarely raised;
But thou didst promise this, and all was well.
For we are fond of thinking where to lie
When every pulse hath ceast, when the lone heart
Can lift no aspiration.. reasoning
As if the sight were unimpaired by death,
Were unobstructed by the coffin-lid,
And the sun cheered corruption! Over all
The smiles of Nature shed a potent charm,
And light us to our chamber at the grave.
He who sees rising from some open down
A column, stately, beautiful, and pure,
Its rich expansive capital would crown
With glorious statue, which might long endure,
And bring men under it to gaze and sigh
And wish that honour'd creature they had known,
Whose name the deep inscription lets not die.
I raise that statue and inscribe that stone.
There may be many reasons why,
O ancient land of Kong-Fu-Tsi!
Some fain would make the little feet
Of thy indwellers run more fleet.
But while, as now, before my eyes
The steams of thy sweet herb arise,
Amid bright vestures, faces fair,
Long eyes, and closely braided hair,
And many a bridge and many a barge,
And many a child and bird as large,
I can not wish thee wars nor woes .
And when thy lovely single rose,
Which every morn I haste to see,
Smiles with fresh-opened flower on me,
And when I think what hand it was
Cradled the nursling in its vase,
By all thy Gods! O ancient land!
I wish thee and thy laws to stand.
TO ONE WHO SAID SHE SHOULD LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT.
When sea-born Venus guided o'er
Her warrior to the Punic shore,
Around that radiant head she threw
In deep'ning clouds ambrosial dew:
But when the Tyrian queen drew near,
The light pour'd round him fresh and clear.
Ill-starr'd Elisa! hence arose
Her faithless joys, her stedfast woes,
Sighs, that with life alone expire,
And flames that light the funeral pyre.
O Goddess! if that peerless maid
Thou hast with every grace array'd,
Must, listening to thy gentle voice,
Fix at first view th' eternal choice.
Suspend the cloud before her eyes
Until some godlike man arise;
One of such wisdom that he knows
How much he wins, how much he owes ;
One in whose breast united lie
Calm courage and firm constancy;
Whose genius makes the world his own,
Whose glory rests in her alone.
ON AN ECLIPSE OF THE MOON.
Struggling, and faint, and fainter didst thou wane,
O Moon! and round thee all thy starry train
Came forth to help thee, with half-open eyes,
And trembled every one with still surprise,
That the black Spectre should have dared assail
Their beauteous queen and seize her sacred veil.
Reprehend, if thou wilt, the vain phantasm, O Reason!
Of the breast we have lean'd on, the hand we have linkt,
That dream is so vivid at no other season
As when friendship is silent and love is extinct.
In poetry there is but one supreme,
Tho' there are many angels round his throne,
Mighty, and beauteous, while his face is hid.
There is, alas! a chill, a gloom,
About my solitary room
That will not let one flowret bloom
Even for you :
The withering leaves appear to say,
"Shine on, shine on, O lovely May!
But we meanwhile must drop away."
Light! life! adieu.
Ternissa! you are fled!
I say not to the dead,
But to the happy ones who rest below:
For, surely, surely, where
Your voice and graces are,
Nothing of death can any feel or know.
Girls who delight to dwell
Where grows most asphodel,
Gather to their calm breasts each word you speak:
The mild Persephone
your cool palm smoothes down stern Pluto's cheek.
PRAYER OF THE BEES TO ALCIPHRON.
There was a spinner in the days of old,
So proud, so bold,
She thought it neither shame nor sin
To challenge Pallas to come down and spin.
The goddess won, and forced the crone to hide her
Ugly old head and shrink into a spider.
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