English

IN RETURN FOR A TALBOTYPE PICTURE OF VENICE

Poet and friend! if any gift could bring
A joy like that of listening while you sing,
'T were such as this,—memorial of the days,
When Tuscan airs inspired more tender lays;
When the gray Apennine, or Lombard plain,
Sunburnt, or spongy with autumnal rain,
Mingled perchance, as first they met your sight,
Some drops of disappointment with delight;
When, rudely wakened from the dream of years,
You heard Velino thundering in your ears,

Stretched helpless on the burning sands I lie,
While scorching suns beat on me as they pass.
Day after day I watch the glaring sky,
A fiery furnace reared like burnished brass.

Spread like a tawny lion's shaggy hide,
The yellow plains reach hillocks red and brown;
See here the bones where dogs and men have died,
While imp-faced rocks in hideous hate looked down!

No living thing will come to share my grief,
Save when at night the famished coyotes howl,
Or, coiled at twilight by some withered sheaf,

In days long past no happier ship than I
Flung forth her empire's banner to the breeze;
No bolder bark withstood a stormy sky,
With fiercer ardor fought the foaming seas.

But then at last a day of evil came
On which we met the onslaught of the foe.
Oh, who shall tell the story of my shame,
My desolation, my disgrace, my woe?

My hull was splintered by their bursting shells,
My tottering turrets down the deck were hurled;
I heard my dying seamen's shrieks and yells,

The gulls are mad-in-love with the river
And the river unveils her face and smiles.
In her sleep-brooding eyes they mirror their shining wings.
She lies on silver pillows: the sun leans over her.
He warms and warms her, he kisses and kisses her.
There are sparks in her hair and she stirs in laughter.
Be careful, my beautiful waking one! you will catch on fire.
Wheeling and flying with the foam of the sea on their breasts
The ineffable mists of the sea clinging to their wild wings
Crying the rapture of the boundless ocean.

Year after year I wait, reposing here
Among the Faithful, by the Prophet blest;
A stranger now to grief, remorse and fear,
My one-time restless heart is wreathed in rest.

The years glide on, and still they find me free
From every care that dogs the feet of men;
No sun on desert sand, no storm at sea,
Shall ever come to vex my soul again.

No clouded skies on pages ashen-gray
Reflect heart-breaking annals of the earth;
The Judas-kisses all have passed away,
With all the madness that eclipsed our mirth.

The higher that our spirits climb,
The more does truth appear a lie,
The more do things of Space and Time
Appear a rainbow in the sky —
A frail illusion of the sun
That fades and perishes when won.

Merely a rainbow, red and blue,
A thing that birds go flying through;
Yet on the rainbow's coloured arch
(Only perhaps six inches broad)
Armies of Hopes and Dreams can march
Up to the very Heart of God.

Be truth a lie,
Yet far and high,
In search of truth we still will fly;

TWENTY-FOURTH OF OCTOBER , 1852

Comes there a frigate home? what mighty bark
Returns with torn, but still triumphant sails?
Such peals awake the wondering Sabbath — hark!
How the dread echoes die among the vales!

What ails the morning, that the misty sun
Looks wan and troubled in the autumn air?
Dark over Marshfield! — 't was the minute gun:
God! has it come that we foreboded there?

Once lived a Man who from a Rock broke stone —
For little wage, great labour. Hear him groan,
" O to be rich, and lounging on a bed
With sleepy silken curtains at my head! "
And there came an Angel, saying, Be it so!

And he was rich, and on a bed at rest
Of silk as soft as roses. From the west
The King came by with horsemen and patrolled
That land, beneath his canopy of gold.

And the Newly Rich gazed from his lattice; " Why
Have I no kingdom and no canopy?
Happy I were, with just one little thing:

Wild rose,
Child rose,
Why did you come so late?
I had gleams of you,
And dreams of you,
And I could not choose but wait,
Thro' desolate days,
On lonely ways,
In the desert-land of Fate.
Child rose,
Wild rose,
Why did you come so late?

Child rose,
Wild rose,
Why did you linger so?
I saw your face
In a dreamland place
Years and years ago,—
Your glossy hair,
And your forehead fair,
And your deep dark eyes aglow.
Wild rose,
Child rose,

( Scene — A Blasted H EATH .)

One-Legged Soldier.

By all the gods! there's a fire burning
And three old hags about it churning;
Shall I starve here while they frisk it?
Since broth is what I want, — I'll risk it.

The Witches.

Storm, drums, and pound, knuckles! —
Hissing joy, our furnace chuckles!
Bright cities be its embers
While its heart's heart dismembers
Merry flames like Moscow steeples
For the warming of the peoples!

First Witch.