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, through 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.

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.

(1855.)

UP AT A VILLA-DOWN IN THE CITY.

(As distinguished by an Italian Person of quality.)

I.

Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!

II.

Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast;
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.

III.

Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull
Just on a mountain edge as bare as the creature's skull,
Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull!

-I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned wool.

IV.

But the city, oh the city-the square with the houses! Why? They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's something to take

the eye!

Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry;

You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by ; Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets

high;

And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.

V.

What of a villa? though winter be over in March by rights, 'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights:

You've the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze,

And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint grey olive-trees.

VI.

Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all at once;
In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns.
'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce arisen three angers well,
The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell
Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell.

VII.

Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to spout and

splash!

In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows

flash

On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle

and pash

Round the lady atop in her conch--fifty gazers do not abash, Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of sash.

VIII.

All the year long at the villa, nothing to see though you linger, Except yon cypress that points like death's lean lifted forefinger. Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix i' the corn and mingle, Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle. Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is shrill, And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on the hill.

Enough of the seasons,-I spare you the months of the fever and chill.

IX.

Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin:

No sooner the bells leave off than the diligence rattles in:
You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin.
By and by there's the travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood,
draws teeth;

Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath.

At the post-office such a scene-picture-the new play, piping hot! And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot.

Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fatherly of rebukes,
And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law
of the Duke's!

Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the reverend Don So-and-so
Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Jerome and Cicero,
'And moreover,' (the sonnet goes rhyming,) 'the skirts of Saint
Paul has reached,

Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he preached.'

Noon strikes, here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart,

With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart!

Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife;
No keeping one's haunches sti.l: it's the greatest pleasure in life.

X.

But bless you, it 's dear—it 's dear! fowls, wine, at double the rate. They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays

passing the gate

It's a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, not the city! Beggars can scarcely be choosers: but still-ah, the pity, the pity Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with cowls and sandals,

And the penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding the yellow candles;

One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross with

handles,

And the Duke's guard brings up the rear, for the better prevention of scandals:

Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife.
Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!

(1855.)

MAY AND DEATH.

I.

I wish that when you died last May,
Charles, there had died along with you
Three parts of spring's delightful things;
Ay, and, for me, the fourth part toɔ.

II.

A foolish thought. and worse, perhaps!
There must be many a pair of friends
Who, arm in arm, deserve the warm
Moon-births and the long evening-ends.

So, for their sake, be May still May!
Let their new time, as mine of old,

Do all it did for me: I bid

Sweet sights and songs throng manifold.

IV.

Only, one little sight, one plant,

Woods have in May, that starts up green
Save a sole streak which, so to speak,

Is spring's blood, spit its leaves between,

V.

That, they might spare; a certain wood

Might miss the plant; their loss were small:
But I,-whene'er the leaf grows there,

Its drop comes from my heart, that's all.

(1857.)