i LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 S^aji,- ©ojBjrtg'^t l|ij.;-t.:j. 
 
 Shelf -1.1 J-'^ 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
Books bw lUiUiam Sljavp. 
 
 CHILDREN OF TO-MORROW : A ROMANCE. 
 
 A FELLOWE AND HIS WIFE. 
 
 (With Blanche Willis Howard.) 
 
 FLOWER O' THE VINE: ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 {TJiird Edition) AND SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 {Second Edition). 
 
 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI: A RECORD AND 
 STUDY. 
 
 SHELLEY: A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY. 
 
 LIFE OF HEINE. {Great Writers Series.) 
 
 LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING: A MEMOIRE 
 POUR SERVIR. 
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS OF JOSEPH SEVERN. 
 
 • ♦ ♦ 
 
 Any oy these volumes in ay be ordered from 
 
 OHAELES L. WEBSTER & COMPANY, 
 
T Ia^CIUaaa^ SJuinh 
 
RI DI ROM.V \M^F? 
 
 WITH r^"'^ '^ ^'* 
 
 \ T A V 
 
 
 CHAR...:... ^. V. : ..:. .,. ■ 
 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YOR 
 
Earth is k 
 
 "M there. " 
 
 Browning. 
 
 .„. SI,., 
 
FLOWER O' THE VINE: 
 
 ROMANTIC BALLADS AND^SPI- 
 RI DI ROMA : BY WILLIAM ^HARP : 
 WITH INTRODUCTION BY THOMAS 
 A. JANVIER 
 
 C IVIAY 11 isr:^ ' 
 
 f^^f X 
 
 CHARLES L.WEBSTER AND COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK MDCCCXCII 
 

 Copyright, 1892, 
 CHARLES L. WEBSTER & CO. 
 
 {A// rig/its reserved.) 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 Jenkins & McCowan, 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 In accordance with a conrtly usage that is founded 
 iti common sense {as is the rule with courtly usages, 
 though Democrats rail to the contrary) letters of intro- 
 duction are held to be a necessary portion of the equip- 
 ment of a gentleman who is about to set forth upon his 
 travels in foreign lands. For the most part, to be 
 sure, the traveller may go happily enough without such 
 credentials ; and on his own merits make for himself 
 — supposing him to be truly gentle, and of a cordial 
 quality — all the friends whom he desires by the ivay. 
 But now and again — as in the cascmof some ill-bred 
 fellow questioniftg suddenly his antecedents — his letters 
 will be useful to prove shortly to strangers that in his 
 own country he is a person of condition ;■ and still more 
 often will he find pleasure in exhibiting them, in proof 
 of his worthiness, to those luho frankly have given him 
 their confident friendship without asking for other evi- 
 dence of his merit than himself. 
 
 I take it that from this custom in regard to wandering 
 humans, flows the like custom of supplying with letters 
 commendatoiy those waiidering books which — by trans- 
 lation into a foreign tongue, or by tra?isplanting in 
 their vernacular idiom info a foreign country — chal- 
 
VI INTRODUCTION 
 
 Icnge the attention of neiv friends (or eitemies) beyo7id 
 the limits of their own natural frontiers. Yet, very 
 evidently^ a book stands much less in need of such cer- 
 tification thafi does a ma?i j for the purpose of a man 
 not seldom is to conceal his 7nea?ting., and always is to 
 conceal his defects., from those around him ; while a 
 book— preeminently of all things created — testifies to 
 and most openly displays its oian inherent quality 
 whether the same be good or bad. In the case of the 
 book, therefore., the ceremony of presentation by a com- 
 mofi acquaifitance has at its root a phase of a still 7nore 
 kindly ineaning : for it is less an offer of safe conduct 
 through a regio7i where may lurk annoyances., ajid eve?i 
 dangers., than it is a prompt display of welcoming 
 friendliness — 7vhat may be termed, in metaphor, a fly- 
 ing down to the coast on the part of some one citizen of 
 that new stra^ige country in eager haste to manifest 
 the warmth of his good will {and also, perhaps, to 
 catch a little reflected glojy) by being the very first to 
 greet the oncoming distinguished personage as he steps 
 ashore. 
 
 Holding these views in the premises, I esteem as a 
 high and agreeable privilege my present opportunity 
 thus to welcome, while in appearance introducing to my 
 fellow coMitrymen, the Poet whose verses begin a page 
 or two farther on. I say " /// appearance " to intro- 
 duce, for I am not so dull as to fancy that any word of 
 
INTRODUCTION Vll 
 
 this matter of mine will be heeded nntil the essential 
 substance of the Poems to which, nofninally, it is prece- 
 dent shall have been read and re-read with delight; 
 nor am I at all disposed to pick a quarrel with those 
 who may smile a little at the spectacle of a herald thus 
 sounding his trumpet at the wrong end of the line. On 
 the contrary^ I am well pleased to occupy that position 
 for the reason that it is a very secure one. Coming 
 as a sequel, rather than as a foreword, this note of 
 mi?ie is to be rated with the letter of introduction ( ''ust 
 now spoken of) which is tendered after an acquaint- 
 ance has been opened and a friendship fairly begun 
 withottt its aid : that is to say, so far as the practical 
 requirements of the situation go — the friendship being 
 established beyond a per adventure — it is unnecessary ; 
 yet has it a chance of being read with interest, and 
 more than willingly, in the hope that it may throw yet 
 morh light upon the personality of the jiewly found 
 friend. And, moreover, because of the certainty that 
 what I here write will be approached {out of its too- 
 arrogant order) by those who already have apprehended 
 the excellencies of the Poems, I am confident that my 
 readers will sympathize with me in the pleasure that I 
 have in formally presenting to their consideration work 
 of so fine and of so unusual a sort. 
 
 William Sharp has a great deal of personality. As 
 Skybele wrote of Sir Potter Towson, he is ' ' a man of 
 
Vin INTRODUCTION 
 
 viagfiificent measurements " ; his vigorous spirit is in 
 keeping with its large bodily frame^ and both his soul 
 and body still are elate with the triumphant impulses 
 of youth. His nationality is proclaimed positively in 
 the first poem in this volume : only a Scotsman could 
 have ivritten " The Weird of Michael Scott." But 
 while bor?i of substantial Paisley stock, and bred for 
 half his lifetime in Scotland, his years of journeying 
 and residence in foreigti countries have made him very 
 much a citizen of the ivorld. His earlier travels were 
 by no nieafis conventional : a voyage to Australia ; a 
 stay at the Gold Diggings ; aii expedition through 
 Gippsla7id, across the Australia?i Alps^ in the course of 
 ivhich death from starvation ivas close upon him j a 
 cruise in the Pacific, ending in a holiday on the Ha- 
 7vaiian Islands ; and theii, at last, back to England. 
 Later came less venturesome travel on the continent of 
 Europe j long residencies in Italy, France, ajid Ger- 
 many ; tivo visits to America. For one ivho under- 
 stood ho'iu to use it, such journeyman life was of the 
 hicrhest value. 
 
 o 
 
 As he has proved, this journeyman did know how 
 to use it. On his return to England from the antip- 
 odes, he formed a friendship with Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti which brought him speedily into intimate asso- 
 ciation with the most interesting group of literary men 
 that Lo7idon has known since the early years of the 
 century. His appreciative feeling for his surround- 
 ings 7vas shown later in his Life of Rossetti ; wJtile the 
 
INTRODUCTION IX 
 
 developing effect of these surroundings upon his critical 
 faculty was exhibited In his scholarly editorial ivork — 
 notably In his Canterbury Poets Series — and to a still 
 more marked degree In his Life of Heine : a critical 
 study of the first value ^ outranking all else — not even 
 excepting his Life of Browning — that as yet he has 
 accomplished In prose. 
 
 By Air. Sharp's oivn election [si f ice, with a cruelty 
 unmerited., he has disowned abnost all of his earlier ivork 
 in verse) his standing as a poet practically will be 
 rated by the poems which are collected within this 
 volume. Certainly.^ he need not fear the result. Lhe 
 {juantlty Is small, but the qualities are rare, and of a 
 rare excellence. I say 'Equalities,'' as though the writ- 
 ings of two poets were gathered here ; and, In truth, 
 the widely differing sorts of poetry which are assem- 
 bled within these covers very well might pass for the 
 utterances of two men of different races and widely 
 sundered climes. Here, joined but not blended. Is the 
 poetry of the South and of the North. It Is an Inver- 
 sion of that curious process by 7vhich the waters of the 
 White and Blue rivers, ivhereof the N'lle Is made, 
 floiving out from separate sources, journey on together 
 in the same channel for a long while 7vlthout mingling. 
 In this case, the two streams of verse come from the 
 same source— yet Instantly aie so distinct and separate 
 
X INTRODUCTION 
 
 that the most acutely critical of observers would not be 
 likely to refer tJieni to a cominon origin. 
 
 But in each of the forms of poetic expression which 
 he employs — in the ballad measure^ and in the more 
 subtle arrange7nent of tvords by which rhythm is 
 achieved ivithout rhyme — this Poet has hereditary 
 rights J for both of these for jns come to him by descent 
 from his remote progenitors the Scottish bards. His 
 ballad makings indeed, is of so admirable a quality — 
 not merely in its versification, but in its nice choice 
 and development of theme — that we must try far back 
 into the centuries, to the eerie creations of those same 
 Scottish singers, to find its parallel. For this Poet, 
 like those of the elder day, has drawn his inspiration 
 direct from local legend and from rugged nature and 
 has clothed his thoughts in terse, aggressive words — 
 ivherefore his writing has little in cojfimon with the 
 modern poesy {as its contrivers fitly call it) which 
 aboufids in roimded syllables and echoes daintily the 
 airs and graces of the town. His ballads are not mere 
 masses of rhymes dexterously fitted together : they are 
 poems ivith living souls. 
 
 I cannot fancy a stronger literary contrast than is 
 found in turning from these stern utterances to the 
 soft Sospiri di Roma ; from the strange shadows lit 
 by vivid flashes from supernatural fires of the mys- 
 terious North to the glowing and generously open 
 splendour of the South. It seems entirely in keeping 
 •ivith the abrupt transition that the restraint of rhyme 
 
INTRODUCTION XI 
 
 should he left be hind and that this poetry of the South 
 should be controlled only by a rhythm as lithe, as subtly 
 illusive y and as evanescent as is the rhythm of the 
 southern wind. This irregular, unrhymed measure is 
 a very primitive method. So sang of old our Pocfs 
 oivn Gaelic minstrels ; so sing to-day the gentle savages 
 of the South Sea among whom for a while he sojourned. 
 For the thought which he wished to convey he could not 
 have employed a more fitting vehicle. An English critic 
 has observed that " when irregular measures do achieve 
 a triuniph they leave upo7i us the priceless impression 
 of spontaneity and sincerity'' ; and the artistic reason 
 why the Sospiri di Roma ivere shaped in aii unusual 
 form is found in the fact that spontaneity and sincerity 
 were the qualities supremely necessary to the adequate 
 development of the Poet's selected themes. His employ- 
 ment of 7vhat MonJzhouse has termed '■'•poetry in solu- 
 tion'' is not the resource of a careless or incapable 
 writer who caniuH work within the precise limitations 
 of ordinary measures ; it is the deliberate choice of 
 a dangerously facile method by one who is justified in 
 using it because his hand is strong enougJi for its 
 control. 
 
 That a new singer should be born into the ivorld is 
 7wt, after all, a very ivonderful matter ; for it is a 
 blessed truth that such creations of genius ever are 
 coming for 7vard tiewly for the pleasure and comfort of 
 
Xll INTRODUCTION 
 
 mankind. But, with suhniission, I do hold to be re- 
 markable this birth of a singer who sings so excellently 
 in such strangely separate keys j this merging of two 
 distinct patefits of poetic nobility in a single fortunate 
 
 heir. 
 
 Thojnas A. Janvier. 
 New York, April 7, i8g2. 
 
FLOWER O'THE VINE 
 
TO 
 
 EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 
 
 WITH 
 
 HOMAGE AND LOVE 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGF. 
 
 Introduction 5 
 
 Romantic Ballads. 
 
 The Weird of Michael Scott. 
 
 Part 1 21 
 
 Part II 26 
 
 Part III 32 
 
 The Son of Allan 41 
 
 Mad Madge o' Cree 49 
 
 The Deith-Tide 53 
 
 The Last Voyage of Keir the Monk 56 
 
 Poems of Phantasy. 
 
 Phantasy 65 
 
 The Willis-Dancers 67 
 
 The Coves of Crail 72 
 
 A Dream 73 
 
 The Wandering Voice 74 
 
 The Twin-Soul 76 
 
 The Isle of Lost Dreams 77 
 
 The Death-Child 78 
 
 SosriRi Di Roma. 
 
 Prelude 85 
 
 Susurro 87 
 
 High Noon at Midsummer on the Campagna . . 8S 
 
 Fior di Memoria 90 
 
 The Fountain of the Acqua Paola 97 
 
 Primo Sospiro di Primavera 103 
 
 Clouds 106 
 
 xvii 
 
XVin CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Dream at Ardea .... loS 
 
 Red Poppies ii6 
 
 The White Peacock ii8 
 
 The Swimmer of Nemi 120 
 
 Al far della Notte 122 
 
 Thistledown 124 
 
 The Two Ruins 127 
 
 The Shepherd 129 
 
 All' Ora della Stella 132 
 
 The Mandolin 135 
 
 Bat-Wings 140 
 
 La Velia 141 
 
 Spuma dal Mare 143 
 
 A Winter Evening in Rome 145 
 
 The Bather 147 
 
 At Veil 150 
 
 The Wild Mare 154 
 
 August Afternoon in Rome 156 
 
 The Olives of Tivoli . 159 
 
 Scirocco 161 
 
 The Wind at Fidenae 164 
 
 Sorgendo la Luna 1C6 
 
 In July: Agro Romano 168 
 
 The Naked Rider 169 
 
 The Fallen Goddess 172 
 
 De Profundis iSi 
 
 Ultimo Sospiro 1S2 
 
 Epilogue 1S4 
 
OF THE north: 
 
 Romantic Ballads 
 
 AND 
 
 Poems of Phantasy 
 
NOTE 
 
 (Michael the Scot : fi. circa 1250.) Variants of the Michael Scott legends 
 still exist in parts of tlie Scottish Southlands : betwixt Tweed and Forth, 
 mainly in the remote districts of the shires of Selkirk, Peebles, and Roxburgh; 
 and, north of the Forth, here and there along the Fife coast. The most com- 
 mon is that which relates to the magician's power of changing into an animal 
 anyone who crossed him; and it is upon this that Part 1. of the following 
 ballad turns. That also is current which relates how Michael the Scot could 
 win the soul from the body of any woman whom he loved. There are sev- 
 eral versions of this uncanny kind of wooing: sometimes Michael Scott is 
 said to have seduced the spirit from its tranced tenement, only to find him- 
 self eluded after all; sometimes the maiden, unable to resist his spell, comes 
 to him, but over the battlements, and so is killed ; again, just as she is about 
 to yield she calls on Christ, and only a phantasmal image of her goes forth, 
 though in the struggle her mortal body perishes (it was upon this version 
 that Rossetti intended to write a poem ; his prose outline of it is given in his 
 Collected Works) ; or, yet again, she comes at her wizard-lover's signal, but 
 when he would embrace her a cross of fire intervenes, and, to save himself 
 from sudden hell-flames which arise, he has perforce to bid her return in 
 safety. I have in Part II. treated Michael Scott's allurement of Margaret's 
 soul not wholly accordantly with any legendary account, yet in superficial 
 conformity with that which most appealed to my imagination. Part III. is 
 in treatment entirely imaginary, although, of course, the germinal idea— that 
 of encountering at the point of death one's own soul — is both old and wide- 
 spread. The Doppelgangeridca is a most impressive one in its crudest guise, 
 and I have endeavoured to heighten its imaginative effect by making Michael 
 Scott pronounce unwittingly a dreadful doom upon his own soul. 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 
 THE WEIRD OF MICHAEL SCOTT 
 
 The wild wind moaned: fast waned the light: 
 Dense cloud-wrack gloomed the front of night 
 The moorland cries were cries of pain : 
 Green, red, or broad and glaring white 
 The lightnings flashed athwart the main. 
 
 The sound and fury of the waves, 
 Upon the rocks, among the caves, 
 Boomed inland from the thunderous strand : 
 Mayhap the dead heard in their graves 
 The tumult fill the hollow land. 
 
 With savage pebbly rush and roar 
 The billows swept the echoing shore 
 In clouds of spume and swirling spray : 
 The wild wings of the tempest bore 
 The salt rime to the Haunted Brae. 
 
 21 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 
 Upon the Haunted Brae (where none 
 Would Hnger in the noontide sun) 
 Michael the Wizard rode apace : 
 Wildly he rode where all men shun, 
 With madness gleaming on his face. 
 
 Loud, loud he laugh'd whene'er he saw 
 The lightnings split on Lammer-Law, 
 " 'Blood, bride, and bier ' the aicld rime saith 
 Heirs wind tae me ae nicht sail blaw, 
 The nicht I ride u?tto my death ! " 
 
 Across the Haunted Brae he fled. 
 And mock'd and jeer'd the shuddering dead 
 Wan white the horse that he bestrode, 
 The fire-fiaughts stricken as it sped 
 Flashed thro' the black mirk of the road. 
 
 And ever as his race he ran, 
 A shade pursued the fleeing man, 
 A white and ghastly shade it was ; 
 " Like saut sea-spray across wet san' 
 Or wind abune the moonlit grass ! — 
 
 " Like saut sea-spray it follows me, 
 Or wind o'er grass — so fast's I flee : 
 In vain I shout, and laugh, and call- 
 The thing betwixt me and the sea 
 God kens it is my ain lost saul ! " 
 
THE WEIRD OF MICHAEL SCOTT 2;^ 
 
 Down, down the Haunted Brae, and past 
 
 The verge of precipices vast 
 
 And eyries where the eagles screech ; 
 
 By great pines swaying in tlie blast, 
 
 Through woods of moaning larch and beech ; 
 
 On, on by moorland glen and stream. 
 Past lonely lochs where ospreys scream. 
 Past marsh-lands where no sound is .heard. 
 The rider and his white horse gleam. 
 And, aye behind, that dreadful third. 
 
 Wild and more wild the wild v/ind blew, 
 But Michael Scott the rein ne'er drew: 
 Loud and more loud his laughter shrill, 
 His wild and mocking laughter, grew. 
 In dreadful cries 'twixt hill and hill. 
 
 At last the great high road he gained. 
 And now with whip and voice he strained 
 To swifter flight the gleaming mare ; 
 Afar ahead the fierce sleet rained 
 Upon the ruin'd House of Stair. 
 
 Then Michael Scott laughed long and loud 
 "Whan shone the mune ahint yon cloud 
 I kent the Towers that saw my birth — 
 Lang, lang, sail wait my cauld grey shroud, 
 Lang cauld and wcct my bed o' earth ! " 
 
24 ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 
 But as by Stair he rode full speed 
 His horse began to pant and bleed : 
 "Win hame, win hame, my bonnie mare, 
 Win hame if thou would'st rest and feed, 
 Win hame, we're nigh the House of Stair ! " 
 
 But with a shrill heart-bursten yell 
 
 The white horse stumbled, plunged, and fell, 
 
 And loud a summoning voice arose, 
 
 " Is't White-Horse Death that rides frae Hell, 
 
 Or Michael Scott that hereby goes?" 
 
 " Ah, Lord of Stair, I ken ye weel ! 
 Avaunt, or I your saul sail steal, 
 An' send ye howling through the wood 
 A wild man-wolf — aye, ye maun reel 
 An' cry upon your Holy Rood !" 
 
 Swift swept the sword within the shade, , 
 Swift was the flash the blue steel made, 
 Swift was the downward stroke and rash — 
 But, as though levin-struck, the blade 
 Fell splintered earthward with a crash. 
 
 With frantic eyes Lord Stair out-peered 
 Where Michael Scott laughed loud and jeered 
 " Forth fare ye now, yc've gat lang room ! 
 Ah, by my saul thou 'It dree thy weird ! 
 Begone, were-wolf, till the day o' doom ! " 
 
THE WEIRD OF MICHAEL SCOTT 25 
 
 A shrill scream pierced the lonely place ; 
 A dreadful change came o'er the face ; 
 The head, with bristled hair, swung low ; 
 Michael the Wizard turned and fled 
 And laughed a mocking laugh of woe. 
 
 And through the wood there stole and crept, 
 And through the wood there raced and leapt, 
 A thing in semblance of a man ; 
 An awful look its wild eyes kept 
 As howling through the night it ran. 
 
26 ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 
 PART 11 
 
 Athwart the wan bleak moonlit waste, 
 With staring eyes, in frantic haste. 
 With thin locks back-blown by the wind, 
 A grey gaunt haggard figure raced 
 And moaned the thing that sped behind. 
 
 It followed him, afar or near : 
 In wrath he curs'd ; he shrieked in fear ; 
 But ever more it followed him : 
 Oftimes he stopp'd, to stoop, to peer. 
 To front the following phantom grim. 
 
 Naught would he see ; in vain would list 
 For wing-like sound or feet that hissed 
 As wind-blown snow upon the ice ; 
 The grey thing vanished like a mist, 
 Or like the smoke of sacrifice : 
 
 "Come forth beyontthe mirk," his cry, 
 " For I maun live or I maun die. 
 But na, na mair I'll suffer baith !" 
 Then, with a shriek, would onward fly : 
 And, swift behind, his following wraith. 
 
THE WEIRD OF MICHAEL SCOTT 27 
 
 Michael the Wizard sped across 
 The peat and bracken o' the moss : 
 He heard the muir-wind rise and fall, 
 And laughed to see the birk-boughs toss 
 An' the stealthy shadows leap or crawl. 
 
 When white St. Monan's Water streamed 
 For leagues athwart the muir, and gleamed 
 With phosphorescent marish-fires, 
 With wild and sudden joy he screamed, 
 For scarce a mile was Kevan-Byres — 
 
 Sweet Kevan-Byres, dear Kevan-Byres, 
 That oft of old was thronged with squires 
 And joyous damsels blithe and gay : 
 Alas, alas for Kevan-Byres 
 That now is cold and grey. 
 
 There in her bed on linen sheet 
 With white soft limbs and love-dreams sweet 
 Fair Margaret o' the Byres would be : 
 (Ah, when he'd lain and kissed her feet 
 Had she not laughed in mockery !) 
 
 Aye, she had laughed, for what reck'd she 
 
 O' a' the powers of Wizardie ! 
 
 " Win up, win up, guid Michael Scott, 
 
 For ye sail ne'er win boon o' me, 
 
 By plea, or sword, or spell, God wot !" 
 
28 ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 
 Aye, these the words that she had said : 
 These were the words that as he fled 
 Michael the Wizard muttered o'er — 
 " My Margaret, bow your bonnie head, 
 For ye sail never flout me more ! " 
 
 Swiftly he raced, with gleaming eyes, 
 And wild, strange, sobbing, panting cries, 
 Dire, dire, and fell his frantic mood ; 
 Until he gained St. Monan's Rise 
 Whereon the House of Kevan stood. 
 
 There looked he long and fixed his gaze 
 Upon a room where in past days 
 His very soul had pled love's boon : 
 Lit was it now with the wan rays 
 Flick-flickering from the cloud-girt moon. 
 
 "Come forth, May Margaret, come, my heart ! 
 For thou and I nae mair sail part — 
 Come forth, I bid, though Christ himsel' 
 My bitter love should strive to thwart. 
 For I have a' the powers o' Hell ! " 
 
 What was the white wan thing that came 
 And lean'd from out the window-frame, 
 Waving wild arms against the sky? 
 What was the hollow echoing name, 
 What was the thin despairing cry? 
 
THE WEIRD OF MICHAEL SCOTT 29 
 
 Adown the long and dusky stair, 
 Across the courtyard bleak and bare, 
 Swift past the gate, and out upon 
 The whistling, moaning, midnight air — 
 What is't that Michael Scott has won ? 
 
 Across the moat it seems to flee, 
 It speeds across the windy lea, 
 And through the ruin'd abbey-arch ; 
 Now like a mist all waveringly 
 It stands beneath a lonely larch. 
 
 "Come, Margaret, my Margaret, 
 Ye see my vows I ne'er forget : 
 Come win wi' me across the waste — 
 Lang, lang I've wandered cauld and wet, 
 An' now thy sweet warm lips would taste!" 
 
 But as a whirling drift of snow, 
 
 Or flying foam the sea-winds blow. 
 
 Or smoke swept thin before a gale, 
 
 It flew across the waste — and oh 
 
 'Twas Margaret's voice in that long wail ! 
 
 Swift as the hound upon the deer. 
 Swift as the stag when nigh the mere, 
 Michael the Wizard followed fast — 
 What though May Margaret fled in fear. 
 She should be his, be his, at last! — 
 
30 ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 
 O'er broom and whin and bracken high, 
 Where the peat bog lay gloomily, 
 Where sullenly the bittern boomed 
 And startled curlews swept the sky, 
 Until St. Monan's Water loomed ! 
 
 " The cauld wet water sail na be 
 
 The bride-bed for my love and me — 
 
 For now upon St. Monan's shore 
 
 May Margaret her love sail gie 
 
 To him she mocked and jeered of yore ! " 
 
 Was that a heron in its flight.? 
 
 Was that a mere-mist wan and white.? 
 
 What thing from lonely kirkyard grave ? 
 
 Forlorn it trails athwart the night 
 
 With arms that writhe and wring and wave ! 
 
 Deep down within the mere it sank, 
 Among the slimy reeds and rank, 
 And all the leagues-long loch was bare — 
 One vast, grey, moonlit, lifeless blank 
 Beneath a silent waste of air. 
 
 "O God, O God ! her soul it is ! 
 Christ's saved her frae my blasting kiss ! 
 Her soul frae out her body drawn, 
 The body I maun have for bliss ! 
 O body dead and spirit gaun !" 
 
THE WEIRD OF MICHAEL SCOTT 3^1 
 
 Hours long o'er Monan's wave he stared. 
 
 The fire-flaughts flashed and gleamed and glared, 
 
 The death-lights o' the lonely place : 
 
 And aye, dead-still, he watch'd, till flared 
 
 The sunrise on his haggard face. 
 
 Full well he knew that with its fires 
 Loud was the tumult 'mong the squires, 
 And fierce the bitter pain of all 
 Where stark and stiff in Kevan-Byres 
 May Margaret lay beneath her pall. 
 
 Then once he laughed, and twice, and thrice. 
 Though deep within his hollow eyes 
 Dull-gleamed a light of fell despair. 
 Around, Earth grew a Paradise 
 In the sweet golden morning air. 
 
 Slowly he rose at last, and swift 
 One gaunt and frantic arm did lift 
 And curs'd God in his heav'n o'erhead : 
 Then, like a lonely cloud adrift. 
 Far from St. Monan's wave he fled. 
 
32 ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 
 PART 
 
 All day the curlew wailed and screamed, 
 All day the cushat crooned and dreamed, 
 All day the sweet muir-wind blew free : 
 Beyond the grassy knowes far gleamed 
 The splendour of the singing sea. 
 
 Above the myriad gorse and broom 
 And miles of golden kingcup-bloom 
 The larks and yellowhammers sang : 
 Where the scaur cast an hour-long gloom 
 The lintie's falling notes out-rang. 
 
 Oft as he wandered to and fro — 
 As idly as the foam-bells flow 
 Hither and thither on the deep — 
 Michael the Wizard's face would grow 
 From death to life, and he would weep — 
 
 Weep, weep hot tears of bitter pain 
 For what might never be again : 
 Yet even as he wept his face 
 Would gleam with mocker}^ insane. 
 With laughter fierce on would he race. 
 
THE WKIRl) OF MICHAEL SCOTT ^^ 
 
 Screaming a wild and savage cry, 
 Till awed to silence by the sky 
 Unfathomable, vast, serene: 
 Then would he wayfare silently 
 With hush'd and furtive mein. 
 
 At times he watch'd the white clouds sail 
 Across the wastes of azure pale ; 
 Or oft would haunt some moorland pool 
 Fringed round with thyme and fragrant gale 
 And canna-tufts of snow-white wool. 
 
 Long in its depths would Michael stare, 
 
 As though some secret thing lay there : 
 
 Mayhap the moving water made 
 
 A gloom where crouched a Kelpie fair 
 
 With death-eyes gleaming through the shade. 
 
 Then on with weary listless feet 
 
 He fared afar, until the sweet 
 
 Cool sound of mountain brooks drew nigh. 
 
 And loud he heard the strayed lambs bleat 
 
 And the white ewes responsive cry. 
 
 High up among the hills full clear 
 He heard the belling of the deer 
 Amid the corries where they browsed, 
 And, where the peaks rose gaunt and sheer. 
 Fierce swirling echoes eagle-roused. 
 
34* ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 
 He watched the kestrel wheel and sweep, 
 He watched the dun fox glide and creep, 
 He heard the whaup's long-echoing call, 
 Watched in the stream the brown trout leap 
 And the grilse spring the wate;;-fall. 
 
 Along the slopes the grouse-cock whirred ; 
 The grey-blue heron scarcely stirred 
 Amid the mossed grey tarn-side stones: 
 The burns gurg-gurgled through the yird 
 Their sweet clear bubbling undertones. 
 
 Above the tarn the dragon-fly 
 Shot like a flashing arrow by ; 
 Vague in a moving shifting haze 
 The gnat-clouds sank or soared on high 
 And danced their wild aerial maze. 
 
 As the day waned he heard afar 
 The hawking fern-owl's dissonant jar 
 Disturb the silence of the hill : 
 The gloaming came : star after star 
 He watched the skiey spaces fill. 
 
 But as the darkness grew and made 
 Forest and mountain one vast shade, 
 Michael the Wizard moaned in dread- 
 A long white moonbeam like a blade 
 Swept after him where'er he fled. 
 
THE WEIRD OF MICHAEL SCOTT 35 
 
 Swiftly he leapt o'er rock and root, 
 Swift o'er the fern his flying foot, 
 But swifter still the white moonbeam : 
 Wild was the grey-owl's dismal hoot. 
 But wilder still his maniac scream. 
 
 Once in his flight he paused to hear 
 A hollow shriek that echoed near : — 
 The louder were his dreadful cries. 
 The louder rang adown the sheer 
 Gaunt cliffs the echoing replies. 
 
 As though a hunted wolf, he raced 
 To the lone woods across the waste 
 Steep granite slopes of Crammond-Low- 
 The haunted forest where none faced 
 The terror that no man might know. 
 
 Betwixt the mountains and the sea 
 Dark leagues of pine stood solemnly, 
 Voiceful with grim and hollow song, 
 Save when each tempest-stricken tree 
 A savage tumult would prolong. 
 
 Beneath the dark funereal plumes, 
 Slow waving to and fro — death-blooms 
 Within the void dim wood of death — 
 Oft shuddering at the fearful glooms 
 Sped Michael Scott with failing breath. 
 
36 ROMANTIC HALLADS 
 
 Once, as he passed a dreary place, 
 Between two trees he saw a face — 
 A white face staring at his own : 
 A weird strange cry he gave for grace, 
 And heard an echoing moan. 
 
 " Whate'er you be, O thing that hides 
 Among the trees — O thing that bides 
 In yonder moving mass o' shade 
 Come forth tae me !" — wan Michael glides 
 Swift, as he speaks, athwart the glade : 
 
 "Whate'er you be, I fear ye nought ! 
 Michael the Wizard has na fought 
 Wi' men and demons year by year 
 To shirk ae thing he has na sought 
 Or blanch wi' any mortal fear ! " 
 
 But not a sound thrilled thro' the air — 
 Not even a she-fox in her lair 
 Or brooding bird made any stir — 
 All was as still and blank and bare 
 As is a vaulted sepulchre. 
 
 Then awe, and fear, and wild dismay 
 O'ercame mad Michael, ashy grey, 
 With eyes as of one newly dead : 
 "If wi' my sword I canna slay, 
 Thou'lt dree my weird when it is said ! 
 
THE WEIRD OF MICHAEL SCOTT ' 37 
 
 ** Whate'er you be, man, beast, or sprite, 
 I wind ye round wi' a sheet o' light — 
 Aye, round and round your burning frame 
 I cast by spell o' wizard might 
 A fierce undying sheet of flame ! " 
 
 Swift as he spoke a thing sprang out, 
 
 A man-like thing, all hemmed about 
 
 With blazing blasting burning fire ! 
 
 The wind swoop'd wi' a demon-shout 
 
 And whirled the red flame higher and higher ! 
 
 And as, appalled, wan Michael stood 
 The flying flaughts swift fired the wood; 
 And even as he shook and stared 
 The gaunt pines turned the hue of blood 
 And all the waving branches flared. 
 
 Then with wild leaps the accursed thing 
 Drew ever nigher : with a spring 
 Michael escaped its fiery clasp. 
 Although he felt the fierce flame sting 
 And all the horror of its grasp. 
 
 Swift as an arrow far he fled. 
 But swifter still the flames o'erhead 
 Rushed o'er the waving sea of pines, 
 And hollow noises crashed and sped 
 Like splitting blasts in ruin'd mines. 
 
38 ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 
 A burning league — leagues, leagues of fire 
 Arose behind, and ever higher 
 The flying semi-circle came : 
 And aye beyond this dreadful pyre 
 There leapt a man-like thing in flame. 
 
 With awful scream doom'd Michael saw 
 
 The flying furnace reach Black-Law : 
 
 " 'Blood, bride, and bier,' the mild rime saith, 
 
 Heirs wijtd tae 7Jie ae iiicht sail blaiv. 
 
 The nicht I ride unto my death I 
 
 " The blood of Stair is roimd me now: 
 My bride can laugh to scorn my vow : 
 My bier, my bier, ah sail it be 
 Wi a crown o' fire around my brow 
 Or deep within the cauld said sea / " 
 
 Like lightning, over Black-Law's slope 
 Michael fled swift with sudden hope : 
 What though the forest roared behind — 
 He yet might gain the cliff and grope 
 For where the sheep-paths twist and wind. 
 
 The air was like a furnace-blast 
 
 And all the dome of heaven one vast 
 
 Expanse of flame and fiery wings : 
 
 To the cliff's edge, ere all be p^st, 
 
 With shriek on shriek lost Michael springs. 
 
THE WEIRD OF MICHAEL SCOTT 39 
 
 But none can hear his bitter call, 
 None, none can see him sway and fall — 
 Yea, one there is that shrills his name ! 
 * ' O God, it is my aiii lost said 
 That I hae girt wi' deathless flame !" 
 
 With waving arms and dreadful cries 
 He cowers beneath those glaring eyes — 
 But all in vain — in vain — in vain ! 
 His own soul clasps him as its prize 
 And scorches death upon his brain. 
 
 Body and soul together swing 
 Adown the night until they fling 
 The hissing sea-spray far and wide : 
 At morn the fresh sea-wind will bring 
 A black corpse tossing on the tide. 
 
Allan, son of Allan, Chief of the Colquhouns, had wooed and won Ada-r, 
 daughter of Malcolm McDiarmid ; but on the day the nuptials were to have 
 taken place she was carried off in willing flight by MacDonald of the Isles. 
 Allan pursued with twenty of Lord Malcolm's men, but arrived on the lonely 
 Argyll sea-board only an hour too late, MacDonald having just sailed in 
 triumph to his western isles. Allan for a time lost his reason, but in the au- 
 tumn again regained his former vigour, and it was shortly after this time, in 
 the first month of the New Year, that a message came at last from Mac- 
 Donald offering to privily meet the man he had wronged, and fight out 
 their quarrel alone. 
 
 The ballad opens on the eve of this duel. Allan, nigh upon the appointed 
 meeting-place on a lonely hill-side, waits the fixt hour at the hut of one 
 known as the Witch of Dunmore. She forsees the fatal result of the duel to 
 her clansman as well as to his foe, and strives to dissuade him from the com- 
 bat — recalling her past experiences to him and mentioning signs and por- 
 tents, hoping thus to convince him of the truth of her vision. 
 
THE SON OF ALLAN 4I 
 
 THE SON OF ALLAN 
 
 " The wind soughs weird through the moaning pines, 
 The icy moon through the fierce frost shines, 
 The steel-blue stars are baleful signs, 
 Son of Allan ! " 
 " The wind may bloiu to its last faijit breath. 
 Ere I turfi aside from the shadow of death! " 
 
 " My dreams come true: thou knowest my laugh 
 Hath split the mountain-shepherd's staff. 
 Hath blown the ripe grain into chaff — 
 Son of Allan !" 
 " Your curse may cojne and your curse may go- 
 My soul must dree some other woe ! " 
 
 " When New Year came with gusty moan 
 
 1 lay forgot, accurst, alone — 
 
 But I saw the scroll of your life as my own. 
 Son of Allan ! " 
 " God kn07us if Hell or Heaven s my life, 
 To-night is hoarse nn'th the sound of strife 
 
42 ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 
 " And I saw you ride one sweet May morn, 
 When the missel-thrush sang on the flowering thorn- 
 O better if you had ne'er been born, 
 Son of Allan ! " 
 " / luoitld that God had st?' angled my soul — 
 But living, to-night I seek one goal ! " 
 
 " And I saw you ride by the brown-stoned burn. 
 And your horse's hooves the flag-flowers spurn — 
 O turn ye now, while yet ye can turn. 
 Son of Allan !" 
 " The fierce tides ebb from the sea-drencJi d shore, 
 But I turn not now till one thing's o'er ! " 
 
 " And I saw you leave the speckled stream 
 Where the moor-hen clucks and the plovers scream, 
 And ride with your eyes in a far-off dream, 
 Son of Allan ! " 
 " Long lueeks ago I dreamt, a?id 7iow 
 The awakening fiears my fever d brow ! " 
 
 " And I saw you leave the woods apace 
 And seek Dunallan's grassy ways. 
 With a golden glory on your face, 
 Son of Allan ! " 
 ' ' A thousand years ago I sought 
 My love's cruel death, and knew it not ! '' 
 
THE SON OF ALLAN 43 
 
 " And 1 saw you choose a ready stall, 
 And leave your horse by the castle wall. 
 And loudly for the henchman call, 
 Son of Allan ! " 
 " No more on men or maids I call — 
 I or he this night shall fall ! " 
 
 " And I saw you leap the deer-skinned stair. 
 And I saw you kiss the golden hair 
 And the sweet red lips of Lady Adair, 
 Son of Allan ! " 
 ' ' / kissed her lips — each kiss a coal 
 That burns andjiames within my soul I " 
 
 " And I heard you say, ' My love, my dear, 
 How speed the maids with the bridal gear? 
 And then you whispered in her ear. 
 Son of Allan ! " 
 *' / lu/iispered then — dnt one shall know 
 No whispers soon when he lies low I ' 
 
 " And I saw them fill the one great room. 
 Where the sword-scarred pennons waved in gloom. 
 With a golden dish for every plume, 
 Son of Allan ! " 
 
 " White plumes may flaunt ,wJiite plumes may wave! 
 
 White swords shall this night carve a grave / " 
 
44 ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 
 " And I saw the wine-cups filled brim-high, 
 And joy shine bright in your bonnie blue eye 
 As ' Lady Adair ' was your toasting cry, 
 Son of Allan!" 
 " I hear no more the wine-cups clash, — 
 / hear tJie gu7'gling red blood splash ! " 
 
 " And I heard Lord Malcolm call out loud 
 For his daughter fair, — and I saw a bowed 
 Old henchman quake 'mid the servile crowd. 
 Son of Allan ! " 
 
 ''Let traitors sweat with sudden fright ! 
 
 Goas wrath disturbs the world to-night ! " 
 
 " But as sleet rings fierce on a wind-beat grange, 
 
 His words fell swift, and stinging, and strange, — 
 
 Lord Malcolm's smile had an awful change. 
 
 Son of Allan!" 
 
 " God's smile was lost in a deep dark frown — 
 
 But one of twain shall this 7iightfall down! " 
 
 " And I saw thy face wax flushed, then pale, 
 And thy lips grow blue like black-ice hail. 
 With eyes on fire with the soul's fierce bale. 
 Son of Allan!" 
 " Pale, pale I was with my souVs dread, — 
 But one this night shall lie full red !" 
 
THE SON OF ALLAN 45 
 
 " And I heard Lord Malcolm cry 'To horse! 
 MacDonald has swooped with the falcon's force, 
 But we'll catch them both ere they end their course, 
 Son of Allan!'" 
 " The ka7uk may swoop, and t he dove may fly, 
 But the hawk for the dove this night shall die ! " 
 
 " And I saw thee haste, and mount, and away 
 With twenty men by thy side that day. 
 And thy face was like the gloaming grey, 
 Son of Allan ! " 
 ''Long, long ago the sun shone brijht, — 
 But since that day black mirk d night ! " 
 
 " And I saw thee ride through the brief chill dark, 
 Till dawn awakened each sinless lark, 
 And the hills re-echoed the sheep-dog's bark, 
 Son of Allan!" 
 " Ah / long ago sweet morns were fair, — 
 Now blood seetns dropping everywhere ! " 
 
 "Till the horses tramped in the blazing noon. 
 And the cuckoo called farewell to June, 
 And the blackbird sang a blithe glad tune, 
 Son of Allan!" 
 '' Ah ! once I knew that sweet birds sang — 
 / hear ?iought 7iow but steel's harsh clang ! 
 
46 ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 
 " And, Son of Allan, ere swart night fell, 
 I heaid*Lord Malcolm's savage yell. 
 And saw thy face in the shadow of hell, 
 Son of Allan!" 
 ''Hope died iip07i that cursed strand — 
 But to-night we meet, each sword in hand! 
 
 " For the horses plashed on the wave-washed shore, 
 And MacDonald had sailed an hour before: 
 Thy bride to his isles the chieftain bore. 
 Son of Allan!" 
 ' ' My bride ! my bride ! no bride have I — 
 But a bridegroom this night shall fall and die ! " 
 
 " And I saw thee fall like one struck dead; 
 And they made for thee a pine-branch bed- 
 And thus-wise with thee home they sped. 
 Son of Allan!" 
 " O would to God I had met him where 
 He kissed and fondled his Lady Adair ! 
 
 " And I saw the fever burn and flame 
 Like fire through all thy tortured frame. 
 And ever shrill'dst thou one fair name, 
 Son of Allan!" 
 " O false, false heart of Lady Adair, 
 Whose corpse behold you cold and bare? '' 
 
THE SON OF ALLAN 47 
 
 " Not till the autumn's purple days 
 
 Did thine eyes lose their empty gaze — 
 
 Then Reason came in one sharp blaze, 
 Son of Allan!" 
 " O 7nadness comes and madness goes, 
 But the slain corpse 7io madness knows ! " 
 
 " Then word was brought MacDonald sent — 
 He bade you rest no more content 
 With dreams of anguish impotent, 
 Son of Allan!" 
 ' * No dreams I dream I one thing I know. 
 This night a soul to hell doth go ! " 
 
 '• And now beneath the New Year moon 
 He rides to grant your final boon — 
 And neither shall see Spring wed to June, 
 Son of Allan ! " 
 " Sweet Junes may bloom, and Junes may blow. 
 But a soul this night shall taste of woe ! " 
 
 " He grasps the hilt of his waist-band knife, 
 And he smiles as he thinks of his laughing wife, 
 And his blood leaps hard as a steed's for strife, 
 Son of Allan!" 
 ''Aye ! loud she may laugh, and loud 7nay he. 
 But his eyes shall gladden no more at the sea ! ' 
 
48 ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 
 " My dreams come true: upon my bed 
 Last night I dreamt I saw o'erhead 
 A darkness fold thee, and leave thee dead, 
 Son of Allan!" 
 " The 7nirk you saw is light to what 
 Will gather when he and I have fought ! 
 
 " Stop, stop! " (the Witch of Dunmore calls) 
 " I see in vision the man who falls: 
 A cloud of blood my sight appals, 
 Son of Allan! " 
 " / ivait no more for thy blind words — 
 No words this Jiight but gleaming swords I 
 
 " The wind soughs weird through the moaning pines, 
 
 The icy moon through the fierce frost shines, 
 
 The steel-blue stars are baleful signs. 
 
 Son of Allan!" 
 
 " The wind may blow to its last faint breath — 
 
 Cross swords, cross swords, for life or deatJi ! " 
 
 " Back bloody swords! Forbear, forbear! 
 Lord Allan see, thy wraith is there — 
 The stars gleam through its shadow-hair, 
 O son of Allan!" 
 
 " O dripping sword, spring, lunge, and sweep ! 
 
 thirsting sword, drink deep, drink deep / " 
 
MAD MADGE O CREE 49 
 
 MAD MADGE O' CREE 
 
 Hither and thither, to and fro, 
 
 She wander'd o'er the bleak hill-sides; 
 
 She watch'd the wild Sound toss and flow, 
 And the water-kelpies lead the tides.. 
 
 She heard the wind upon the hill 
 Or wailing wild across the muir, 
 
 And answered it with laughter shrill 
 And mocked its eldritch lure. 
 
 Within the running stream she heard 
 A music such as none may hear; 
 
 The voice of every beast and bird 
 Had meaning for her ear. 
 
 " What seek ye thus, fair Margery? 
 
 Ye know your Ranald's dead: 
 Win hame, my bonnie lass, wi' me, 
 
 Win hame to hearth and bed ! " 
 
50 ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 
 " Hark ! hear ye not the corbie call- 
 It shrills, Co7ne owre the glen. 
 
 For Ranald standeth fat?- a7id tall 
 Amid his shadow-jjten ! " 
 
 " ' His shadow-men,' O Margery ! 
 
 'Tis of the dead ye speak: 
 Syne they are in the saut deep sea 
 
 What gars ye phantoms seek ? " 
 
 " Hark, hear ye not the curlew wail 
 A/ay Margery viak haste, 
 
 For Ranald tvanders sad and pale 
 About the lojiely luaste" 
 
 " O Margery, what is't ye say: 
 
 Your Ranald's dead and drowned. 
 
 Neither by night, neither by day. 
 Sail your fair love be found." 
 
 " He is not dead, for I hae seen 
 His bonnie gowden hair: 
 
 Within his arms I've claspit been. 
 An' I have dream it there: 
 
 " Last night I stood by green Craigmore 
 And watch'd the foaming tide: 
 
 And there across the moonlit shore 
 A shadow sought my side. 
 
MAD MADGE O CREE 5 1 
 
 " But when he kissed me soft and sweet, 
 
 And faintly ca'd tae me, 
 I rose an' took his hand an' fleet 
 
 We sought the Caves o' Cree. 
 
 •• Ah, there we kissed, my love and I: 
 
 An' there sad songs he sang 
 O' how dead men drift wearily 
 
 'Mid sea-wrack lank and lang. 
 
 " And once my wan love whisper'd iow 
 
 How 'mid the sea-weeds deep, 
 As but yestreen he drifted slow. 
 
 He saw me lying asleep — 
 
 " Aye sound in sleep beneath the wave 
 
 Wi' shells an' sea-things there. 
 An' as the tide swept o'er my grave 
 
 It stirred like weed my hair: 
 
 "In vain, ah, all in vain, he tried 
 
 To reach an' clasp my hand. 
 To lay his body by my side 
 
 Upon that shell-strewn strand. 
 
 " But ah, within the Caves o' Cree 
 
 He kissed my lips full fain — 
 Ay, by the hollow booming sea 
 
 We'll meet, ray love, again." 
 
52 ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 
 That night again fair Margery 
 In Cree-Caves slept full sound, 
 
 And by her side lay lovingly 
 
 The wan wraith of the drowned. 
 
 O what is yon toss-tossing there 
 
 Where a' the white gulls fly: 
 Is yon gold weed or golden hair 
 
 The waves swirl merrily ? 
 
 O what is yon white shape that slips 
 
 Among the lapsing seas: 
 Pale, pale the rose-red of the lips 
 
 Whereo'er the spindrift flees. 
 
 What bears the tide unto the strand 
 Where the drown'd seaman lies ? 
 
 A waving arm, a hollow hand. 
 
 And face with death-dimmed eyes. 
 
 The tide uplifts them, leaves them where 
 Each first knew love beside the sea: 
 
 Bound each to each with yellow hair 
 Within the Caves o' Cree. 
 
THE DEITH-TIDE 53 
 
 THE DEITH-TIDE 
 
 PVi' a risi/i' win' , 
 An' a fiowin' tide^ 
 
 There' s a deith tae be; 
 When the win' gaes back 
 An' the tide's at the slack. 
 
 There's a spirit free. ' ' 
 —Fragment of a Highland Folksong. 
 
 The weet saut wind is blav/ing 
 Upon the misty shore: 
 And Uke a stormy snawing 
 The deid go streaming o'er: — 
 
 The wan drown'd deid sail wildly 
 Frae out each drumly wave: 
 It's O and O for the weary sea 
 And O for a quiet grave. 
 
 '• Whose voice is that is calling 
 Amid the deid-wrack there, 
 What saut tears these aye falling 
 Upon my rain-weet hair ? 
 
54 ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 
 " What white thing blawing, blawing 
 Before the moaning gale, 
 The grey thing 'mid the snawing, 
 The white thins: 'mid the hail? " 
 
 The wan drown'd deid sail wildly 
 Forth frae each sullen wave: 
 It's O and O for the weary sea 
 And O for a quiet grave. 
 
 " O wha be ye that's mournin' 
 Down by the saut sea-shore — 
 Mournin', mournin', mournin' 
 Alang the saut sea-shore: 
 
 " O weel I ken my dearie, 
 My dear love lost lang-syne: 
 O weep nae mair my dearie 
 Your tears o' bitter brine; 
 
 " The weet saut win' is falling, 
 An' hear ye not the tide, 
 The deith-tide calling, calling ? 
 O come wi' me, my bride ! 
 
 " O come wi' me, my marrow, 
 Ye '11 sleep love's sleep at last, 
 No in a cauld bed narrow 
 But swirlin' on the blast — 
 
THE DEITH-TIDE 55 
 
 " O come wi' me my ain ain Jean — 
 What gars ye grow sae chill ? " 
 " O I fear your hollow burnin' een, 
 An' your voice sae thin an' shrill ! " 
 
 ** O c©me wi' me my marrow, 
 Sae sweet sail be your sleep, 
 No in a cauld bed narrow 
 But in the swayin' deep." 
 
 The wan drown'd deid sail wildly 
 Frae back the weary land: 
 It's O and O for the saut deep sea 
 Ayont the barren strand. 
 
 " O weel my soul is flyin' 
 
 Abune the faem wi' thee: 
 
 My bodie white, cauld, cauld is lyin' 
 
 Beside the gurly sea: 
 
 " O gie tae me your shadowy han' 
 An' swift your phantom-kiss. 
 It's drear, sae drear, within the mirk 
 Here where the white waves hiss ! " 
 
 The wan drown'd deid sail wildly 
 Frae back the weary land; 
 It's O and O for the saut deep sea 
 Ayont the barren strand. 
 
56 ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 
 THE LAST VOYAGE OF KEIR THE MONK 
 
 f^' And the Joy of the World hath many names: and none knoweth her 
 save they be born again before they die." H. P. Siwaarmill.) 
 
 Singing his song of sunrise 
 Keir launched his island-boat: 
 
 Singing his song of sunrise 
 He soon was far afloat. 
 
 He smiled to see the wavelets 
 Leap in the dancing shine, 
 
 The glad sea far and wide 
 Like unto golden wine. 
 
 Against the deep blue hollow 
 
 Of the unfathom'd sky, 
 Like blown white flowers the seamews 
 
 Went sailing, drifting, by. 
 
 Along the vague blue mainland, 
 Among the perilous shoals. 
 
 The fishing-smacks went quietly 
 As dying souls. 
 
THE LAST VOYAGE OF KEIR THE MONK 57 
 
 He heard the island brethren 
 
 Singing the matin hymn; 
 For one brief moment only 
 
 His eager eyes were dim. 
 
 Singing his song of sunrise, 
 
 Keir bade the monks farewell: 
 " For ye are bound for heaven, ye think, 
 
 And I'm adrift for hell." 
 
 '• O beautiful, O beautiful. 
 
 The world is now become: 
 I am no longer blind and deaf, 
 
 No longer dumb: 
 
 " O beautiful, O beautiful " 
 
 (Thus Keir the monk did sing) 
 " The glory of the laughing world, 
 
 The virgin Spring ! " 
 
 And ever as he sang he rowed 
 
 And made the wavelets leap: 
 " I am as one who wakens late 
 
 From dark bewildered sleep ! 
 
 "O beautiful, O beautiful 
 
 The lovely splashing sea: 
 The yellow sands of Aberdour, 
 
 And branches waving free — 
 
58 ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 
 " Branches, green branches 
 That beckon me to follow 
 
 Down to where the forest falls 
 Into a little hollow ! 
 
 "Who singeth there so lowly 
 By moonshine or at noon: 
 
 Singing a low song sweetly 
 To an old forgotten tune ? 
 
 " An' if she be no maiden 
 
 Begot as women are. 
 More lovely is the elfin-maid 
 
 Who dwells afar. 
 
 " She dwells deep in the woodlands, 
 Or where the hill tarns gleam, 
 
 Or where the upland pastures 
 Rise from valleys of dream. 
 
 " O beautiful, O beautiful 
 
 Is she my mystic fay: 
 The lovely pathos of the night, 
 
 The glory of the day — 
 
 '* The glory of the day is hers. 
 The pathos of the night: 
 
 She hath won me by her golden hair, 
 Her eyes of shadowy light. 
 
THE LAST VOYAGE OF KEIR THE MONK 59 
 
 " She walks the woods of Aberdour: 
 
 Her song is heard afar: 
 For she an elfin-maiden is. 
 
 And not as women are. 
 
 " In woods of Aberdour, 
 
 Or by the yellow sands, 
 She looks into my eyes and laughs, 
 
 And takes me by the hands. 
 
 " If she hath won my perished soul 
 
 And I am lost for aye — 
 Sweet is my loss, O sweet my loss, 
 
 And brief at best my day." 
 
 They found them in the woods at dusk, 
 
 Lured by the phantom song: 
 They bound them each to each, and haled 
 
 The two lost souls along. 
 
 They took them to the moonlit strand 
 
 01 lonely Aberdour: 
 And there they dug within the sand 
 
 A narrow bridal bower. 
 
 " Soft shall ye lie, O Keir:" they cried: 
 
 " Loud may ye call at last. 
 For the only change for ye shall be 
 
 The wind o' hell's hot blast." 
 
6o ROMANTIC BALLADS 
 
 And they tramped the loose sand o'er their heads, 
 
 And sang their monkish hymn, 
 And joyed to know their brother's cup 
 
 Was filled to the brim. 
 
 But as they trampled wi' their feet 
 And sang their monkish hymn, 
 A shimmering mist cam' out o' the sea 
 \ And wavered white and dim. 
 
 " The phantom-woman will na bide — 
 God thw^art her demon-saul ! " 
 
 So cried the Prior in fear — and then 
 Keir stood amidst them all. 
 
 " O art thou but an awfu' thing 
 Out of the grave that's come: 
 
 O art thou Keir the monk that lies 
 White and cold and numb ? " 
 
 " I am Keir the monk, as ye know w^ell," 
 But he laughed low as he spake: 
 
 " I have had a long sweet sleep, and now 
 Once more I wake." 
 
 They seized him by his bloody hair 
 Still damp with his wet grave, 
 
 And dragged him down and flung him far 
 Into the salt deep wav^e. 
 
THE LAST VOYAGE OF KEIR THE MONK 6 1 
 
 But when they reached the Holy Isle 
 Keir walked upon the shore: 
 
 " Thy soul is lost, O Keir ! " they cried; 
 He lauohed: " For Evermore." 
 
 All night he walked the Holy Isle, 
 And some one with him there: 
 
 None knoweth what the white thing was 
 With the veil of golden hair. 
 
 But ere the dawn Keir sought his cell 
 
 And wrote upon the wall: 
 '' God said. Rejoice: and who was J 
 
 To mumble at the call I " 
 
 Singing his song of sunrise, 
 Keir launched his island-boat 
 
 Singing his song of sunrise 
 He soon was far afloat. 
 
 Singing his song of sunrise 
 They heard him bid farewell' — 
 
 " For I am bound for heaven, I wist, 
 And ye are still in hell." 
 
POEMS OF PHANTASY 
 
POEMS OF PHANTASY 
 
 PHANTASY 
 
 Riding o'er a lonely plain 
 I came unto a wood — 
 Straying I met, in dreamful mood, 
 A damsel singing a low strain, 
 All ye who love me love in vain ! 
 
 Her song it seemed far away, 
 But oh her kiss was sweet: 
 She led me to some green retreat. 
 
 And there within her arms I lay 
 
 The livelong day. 
 
 All ye who love me love in vain — 
 I kissed her wistful face 
 But found a leaf-strewn space 
 Alone, and far I heard her strain, 
 All ye who love me love in vain / 
 65 
 
66 POEMS OF PHANTASY 
 
 1 seek the wood in twilit "hours — 
 
 At times 1 hear her sing; 
 
 At times her white arms round me cling: 
 She leads me into magic bow'rs 
 And sings and wreaths me wilding flow'rs. 
 
 Her eyes are tears, and pain 
 
 Is in her kiss, but wildly gay 
 She laughs, and fades away, 
 
 And through the dim wood floats the strain, 
 
 All ye who love me lave in vain ! 
 
THE WILLIS-DANCERS 67 
 
 THE WILLIS-DANCERS 
 
 The moonlight floods the hollow dell: — 
 
 The dell where all the city's dead 
 
 Were laid, when oft the loud plague-bell 
 
 Filled wayfarers with sudden dread : 
 
 The accursed plague it was that swept 
 
 The young from life, and spared the old — 
 
 Who wept and lived, and lived and wept 
 
 And mourned the silent sleepers in the dell's chill fold. 
 
 The hollow dell is fill'd with light, 
 
 The frosty radiance of the moon ; 
 
 Yet gleams there are, more weirdly bright — 
 
 And what is that slow swelling tune? 
 
 It is not any wind that blows, 
 
 For not a wafted leaf doth fall ; 
 
 What is the rustling sound that grows. 
 
 As if a low wind stirred amid the poplars tall? 
 
 * The Willi or Willis-Dancers are the spirits of those who have died 
 untimely, youths and maidens who on earth had no fulfilment of their de- 
 sires. On certain nights they hold wild phantasmal revelry on earth. 
 
68 POEMS OF PHANTASY 
 
 Yon white, yon pale green hues that shine — 
 
 Are they but fungus-growths that beam : 
 
 What moves by yon funereal pine — 
 
 What haunts the pool where marsh-fires gleam ? 
 
 From out the shadow-haunted trees, 
 
 Along the nested hedgerows dumb, 
 
 And o'er the moonlit sloping leas 
 
 Singing a thin strange song the Willis-dancers come. 
 
 In hurrying scores, with silent feet, 
 In weird processional array 
 They pass, with motions wild and fleet : 
 And now they gain the common way. 
 Adown the long white road they flit. 
 Slow-singing their unechoing song, 
 Till, where the Calvary, moonlit. 
 
 Crowns the low hill — round whose white base the 
 
 [dancers throng. 
 
 Fair, fair, unutterably fair. 
 With wild and gleaming eyes they pray 
 O for the breath of mortal air, 
 O for the Joys grown faint and gray ! 
 But never the carven god commands ; 
 The frozen eyes nor gleam nor glance — 
 The Willis-folk ring phantom-hands, 
 Then laugh and mock and whirl away in frantic 
 
 [dance. 
 
THE WILLIS-DANCERS 69 
 
 Wild, wild the dance, with blazing eyes. 
 
 With flowing hair, and faun-like leaps. 
 
 With thrilling shouts, and ecstasies. 
 
 Now one withdraws, and wails, and weeps : 
 
 Her grave-blanch'd hair around her thrown, 
 
 Her white hands claspt, she doth not hear 
 
 A voice that claims her for his own, 
 
 Nor hearkens her dead Lover call in awful fear. 
 
 For oft when from the grave they've fled 
 To gain phantasmal joys on earth — 
 Fair youths and maids who ne'er were wed 
 But died within their spring-time mirth — 
 A fearful thing hath happ'd to some : 
 A joyous dancer hath withdrav/n. 
 Hath wailed and wept, and then grown dumb, 
 And paled, and pass'd away ev'n as the stars at 
 
 [dawn. 
 
 The wan soul, with its burning gaze 
 
 From hollow eyes with anguish fill'd, 
 
 Would fain the lapsing maiden raise : 
 
 One moment all her being is thrilled 
 
 With one wild passionate desire — 
 
 Then, as a flame that is blown out. 
 
 Or as a mist in the sun's fire 
 
 She fades into the silence round the whirling rout. 
 
70 POEMS OF PHANTASY 
 
 Still v/ilder, swifter grows the fray : 
 
 Youths who on earth had lived in vain. 
 
 Maids who had yearned the livelong day 
 
 For ease to love's imperious pain; 
 
 All whose high hopes had come to nought, 
 
 All who for life's delights had striven, 
 
 All who had suffered, dreamt, or wrought 
 
 To make of our common Earth a glowing Heaven- 
 
 All, all, with eager, frantic haste 
 
 Swift dart and glide and dance and spring — 
 
 As gnats above a stagnant waste 
 
 Will interweave in a mazy ring — 
 
 With locks that once were living gold 
 
 Tossed wildly in the moonlit air, 
 
 With panting breasts that ne'er were cold 
 
 In the dear vanish'd days ere death came unaware 
 
 Lovers who knew no joy of love 
 In the old barren years of life. 
 Together now enraptured move, 
 Claspt each to each with rapture rife : 
 Bosom to panting bosom pressed. 
 Hot lips athirst on thirsting lips, 
 Strange joys and languors doubly blest — 
 Snatch'd from the sombre grave, yea even from Death's 
 
 [eclipse ! 
 
THE WILLIS-DANCERS 7 1 
 
 Swift, swifter grows the mystic dance 
 
 More wild, more wild, each fierce embrace : 
 
 The woe of death's inheritance 
 
 Gleams ghastly on each wildered face ; 
 
 A wan grey light illumes the head 
 
 Of the carv'd god to whom they prayed ; 
 
 A halt — a hush — among the dead ! 
 
 A long-drawn sigh — and lo, the Willis-dancers fade ! 
 
72 POEMS OF PHANTASY 
 
 THE COVES OF CRAIL 
 
 The moon-white waters wash and leap, 
 The dark tide floods the Coves of Crail; 
 
 Sound, sound he lies in dreamless sleep, 
 Nor hears the sea-wind wail. 
 
 The pale gold of his oozy locks, 
 
 Doth hither drift and thither wave; 
 
 His thin hands plash against the rocks, 
 His white lips nothing crave. 
 
 Afar away she laughs and sings — 
 A song he loved, a wild sea-strain — 
 
 Of how the mermen weave their rings 
 Upon the reef-set main. 
 
 Sound, sound he lies in dreamless sleep, 
 
 Nor hears the sea-wind wail, 
 Though with the tide his white hands creep 
 
 Amid the Coves of Crail. 
 
A DREAM 73 
 
 A DREAM 
 
 Last night thro' a haunted land I went, 
 Upon whose margins Ocean leant 
 
 Waveless and soundless save for sighs 
 That with the twilight airs were blent. 
 
 And passing, hearing never stir 
 Of footfall, or the startled whirr 
 
 Of birds, I said, " In this land lies 
 Sleep's home, the secret haunt of her." 
 
 And then I came upon a stone 
 Whereon these words were writ alone, 
 
 The soul who reads, its body dies 
 Far hence that moineiit without moan. 
 
 And then I knew that I was dead, 
 And that the shadow overhead 
 
 Was not the darkness of the skies 
 But that from which my soul had fled. 
 
74 POEMS OF PHANTASY 
 
 THE WANDERING VOICE 
 
 They hear it in the sunless dale, 
 It moans beside the stream, 
 
 They hear it when the woodlands wail. 
 And when the storm-winds scream. 
 
 They hear it. — going from the fields 
 Through twilight-shadows home,- 
 
 It sighs across the silent wealds 
 And far and wide doth roam. 
 
 It moans upon the wind S\'o vi(?re 
 The House of Torquil stands; 
 
 It comes at dusk, and o'er and o'er 
 Haunts Torquil's lands. 
 
 He rides down by the foaming linn — 
 
 But hark! what is it calls 
 With faint far voice, so shrill and thin. 
 
 The House of Torquil falls. 
 
THE WANDERING VOICE 75 
 
 He lifts the revel-cup at night — 
 
 What makes him start and stare, 
 What makes his face blanch deadly white, 
 
 What makes him spring from where 
 
 His comrades feast within the room, 
 
 And through the darkness go — 
 What is that wailing cry of doom, 
 
 That scream of woe! 
 
 No more in sunless dell, or high 
 
 On moorland ways is heard the moan 
 
 Of the long-wandering prophecy: — 
 In moonlit nights alone 
 
 A shadowy shape is seen to stand 
 
 Beside a ruin'd place: 
 It waves a wildly threatening hand, 
 
 It hath a dreadful face. 
 
76 POEMS OF PHANTASY 
 
 THE TWIN-SOUL 
 
 In the dead of the night a spirit came: 
 Her n:ioonwhite face and her eyes of flame 
 Were known to me: — I called her name — 
 The name that shall not be spoken at all 
 Till Death hath this body of mine in thrall! 
 
 And she laughed to see me lying there, 
 Wrapped in the living-corpse bloody and fair, 
 And my soul 'mid its thin films shining bare — 
 And I rose and followed her glance so sweet 
 And passed from the house with noiseless feet. 
 
 I know not myself what I knew, what I saw: 
 I know that it filled me with trouble and awe. 
 With pain that still at my heart doth gnaw: 
 
 That she with her wild eyes witched my soul 
 And whispered the name of the Unknown Goal. 
 
 wild was her laugh, and wild was my cry 
 When with one long flash and a weary sigh 
 
 1 awoke as from sleep bewilderingly: 
 
 Her voice, her eyes, they are with me still, 
 O Spirit-Enchantress, O Demon-Will ! 
 
THE ISLE OF LOST DREAMS 77 
 
 THE ISLE OF LOST DREAMS 
 
 There is an Isle beyond our ken, 
 Haunted by Dreams of weary men. 
 Grey Hopes enshadow it with wings 
 Weary with burdens of old things: 
 There the insatiate water-springs 
 Rise with the tears of all who weep: 
 And deep within it, deep, oh deep 
 The furtive voice of Sorrow sings. 
 
 There evermore, 
 
 Till Time be o'er. 
 Sad, oh so sad, the Dreams of men 
 Drift through the Isle beyond our ken. 
 
yS POEMS OF PHANTASY 
 
 THE DEATH-CHILD 
 
 She sits beneath the elder-tree 
 
 And sings her song so sweet, 
 
 And dreams o'er the burn that darksomely 
 
 Runs by her moonwhite feet. 
 
 Her hair is dark as starless night, 
 Her flower-crown 'd face is pale, 
 But O her eyes are lit with light 
 Of dread ancestral bale. 
 
 She sings an eerie song, so wild 
 
 With immemorial dule — 
 
 Though young and fair Death's mortal child 
 
 That sits by that dark pool. 
 
 And oft she cries an eldritch scream 
 When red with human blood 
 The burn becomes a crimson stream, 
 A wild, red, surging flood: 
 
 Or shrinks, when some swift tide of tears — 
 The weeping of the world — 
 Dark eddying 'neath man's phantom-fears 
 Is o'er the red stream hurl'd. 
 
THE DEATH-CHILD 79 
 
 For hours beneath the elder-tree 
 She broods beside the stream; 
 Her dark eyes filled with mystery, 
 Her dark soul rapt in dream. 
 
 The lapsing flow she heedeth not 
 Through deepest depths she scans: 
 Life is the shade that clouds her thought, 
 As Death's the eclipse of man's. 
 
 Time seems but as a bitter thing 
 Remember'd from of yore: 
 Yet ah (she thinks) her song she'll sing 
 When Time's long reign is o'er. 
 
 Erstwhiles she bends alow to hear 
 What the swift water sings, 
 The* torrent running darkly clear 
 With secrets of all things. 
 
 And then she smiles a strange sad smile 
 And lets her harp lie long: 
 The death-waves oft may rise the while, 
 She greets them with no song. 
 
 Few ever cross that dreary moor. 
 Few see that flower-crown'd head; 
 But whoso knows that wild song's lure 
 Knoweth that he is dead. 
 
OF THE south: 
 SospiRi Di Roma 
 
' N'etre que toz, 7non Reve" 
 
SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 PRELUDE 
 
 (TO 
 
 "Supra un muntisparman stu bellu ciuri! 
 Chistu e lu ciuri di la t6 billizza." 
 
 Sicilian Canzuno. 
 
 In a grove of ilex 
 Of oak and of chestnut, 
 Far on the sunswept 
 Heights of Tusculum, 
 There groweth a blossom, 
 A snow-white bloom, 
 Which many have heard of, 
 But few have seen. 
 Oft bright as the morning, 
 Oft pale as moonlight, 
 There in the greenness. 
 In shadow and sunshine 
 It grows, awaiting 
 The hand that shall pluck it: 
 85 
 
86 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 For this blossom springeth 
 From the heart of a poet 
 And of her who loved him 
 In the long ago, 
 Here on the sunswept 
 Heights of Tusculum. , . 
 And them it awaiteth, 
 Deep lovers only, 
 Kindred of those 
 Who loved and passioned 
 There, and whose hearts'-blood 
 Wrought from the Earth 
 This marvellous blossom 
 The Shadow-Lily, 
 The Flower of Dream, 
 
 Few that shall see it, 
 
 Fewer still 
 
 Those that shall pluck it: 
 
 But whoso gathers 
 
 That snow-white blossom 
 
 Shall love for ever. 
 
 For the passionate breath 
 
 Of the Shadow-Lily 
 
 Is Deathless Joy: 
 
 And whoso plucks it, keeps it, treasures it. 
 
 Has sunshine ever 
 
 About the heart, 
 
 Deep in the heart immortal sunshine: 
 
 For this is the gift of the snow-white blossom, 
 
 This is the gift of the Flower of Dream. 
 
SUSURRO 87 
 
 SUSURRO 
 
 Breath o' the grass, 
 Ripple of wandering wind, 
 Murmur of tremulous leaves: 
 A moonbeam moving white 
 Like a ghost across the plain: 
 A shadow on the road: 
 And high up, high, 
 From the cypress-bough, 
 A long sweet melancholy note. 
 Silence. 
 
 And the topmost spray 
 Of the cypress-bough is still 
 As a wavelet in a pool: 
 The road lies duskily bare: 
 The plain is a misty gloom: 
 Still are the tremulous leaves; 
 Scarce a last ripple of wind, 
 Scarce a breath i' the grass. 
 Hush: the tired wind sleeps: 
 Is it the wind's breath, or 
 Breath o' the grass. 
 
88 SOSPIRI Dl ROMA 
 
 HIGH NOON AT MIDSUMMER 
 ON THE CAMPAGNA 
 
 High noon, 
 
 And from the purple-veiled hills 
 
 To where Rome lies in azure mist, 
 
 Scarce any breath of wind 
 
 Upon this vast and solitary waste, 
 
 These leagues of sunscorch'd grass 
 
 Where i' the dawn the scrambling goats maintain 
 
 A hardy feast, 
 
 And where, when the warm yellow moonlight floods 
 
 the flats. 
 Gaunt laggard sheep browse spectrally for hours, 
 While not less gaunt and spectral shepherds stand 
 Brooding, or with hollow vacant eyes 
 Stare down the long perspectives of the dusk. 
 Now not a breath: 
 No sound; 
 No living thing, 
 
 Save where the beetle jars his bristling shards, 
 Or where the hoarse cicala fills 
 The heavy heated hour with palpitant whirr. 
 Yet hark ! 
 
 Comes not a low deep whisper from the ground, 
 A sigh as though the immemorial past 
 
HIGH NOON AT MIDSUMMER ON THE CAMPAGNA 89 
 
 Breathed here a long, slow, breath ? 
 
 Lost nations sleep below; an empire here 
 
 Is dust; and deeper, deeper still, 
 
 Dim shadowy peoples are the mould that warms 
 
 The roots of every flower that blooms and blows: 
 
 Even as we, too, bloom and fade. 
 
 Frail human flowers, who are so bitter fain 
 
 To be as the wind that bloweth evermore. 
 
 To be as this dread waste that shroudeth all 
 
 In garments green of grass and wilding sprays, 
 
 To be as the Night that dies not, but forever 
 
 Weaves her immortal web of starry fires; 
 
 To be as Time itself. 
 
 Time, whose vast holocausts 
 
 Lie here, deep buried from the ken of men, 
 
 Here, where no breath of wind 
 
 Ruffles the brooding heat, 
 
 The breathless blazing heat 
 
 Of Noon. 
 
90 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 FIOR DI MEMORIA 
 
 '•.... edogni vento 
 Che passa accoglie sulle tepid i ali 
 I sospiri d'amor di miUe rose." 
 Enrico Nencioni. 
 
 From the swamp the white mist stealeth, 
 Wendeth slowly through the grasses, 
 Like a long lithe snake it circleth 
 Breathing from its mouth its poison, 
 Breathing fumes of the malaria. 
 Up the grassy slope it passeth. 
 Is a snake no more but changes 
 To a thin white veil of smoke-drift. 
 White as when the warm Scirocco 
 Blows across wet meadows gleaming 
 In the sudden glare of sunshine. 
 Thin and white upon the uplands; 
 Dappled, soft, as windblown swansdown. 
 In the sudden dips and hollows. 
 
 In the hollow where the ruins. 
 Immemorial ruins, columns, 
 Prostrate all, with strange devices. 
 Sculptured 'neath the yellow lichen, 
 
FIOR DI MEMORIA 9 1 
 
 In the hollow where the ruins 
 Lie as when the earthquake shook them 
 From their ancient stately beauty 
 Long ere Rome had gathered slowly 
 Round the sacred fane of Saturn, 
 There the grass is tall as wild-rice, 
 Tall as is the wind-waved bulrush 
 Rustling by the Tiber-marshes. 
 Nought is seen around but grasses. 
 Flower-filled grasses, lizard-haunted, 
 Musical with many whisperings 
 And the loud crescendo humming 
 Of the wild-bees coming, going. 
 And the myriad things that flitter. 
 Breathe, and gleam, and swift evanish 
 Mid these tortuous dim savannahs. 
 These gigantic grass-stem forests. 
 Nought above, but the blue hollow 
 With its infinite depths of azure. 
 Nought to meet the wandering vision 
 But the ruins mid the grasses, 
 But the windied grasses swaying 
 Up and billowing o'er the margins 
 Of the lone mist-haunted hollow, 
 But the wide deep dome of purple, 
 Cloudless, speckless, save when darkling 
 For a moment drifts a shadow 
 Far in the aerial distance, 
 Though no sound is borne earthward 
 Of the scream of that wild eagle 
 Whirling from his Volscian eyrie, 
 
92 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 Where the green gloom of the grasses 
 
 Turns at noon to amber dayshine. 
 
 There the fallen ruins are covered 
 
 With a wilderness of roses: 
 
 Roses, roses, in such masses 
 
 That the fangless snakes which wander 
 
 Deep within their pliant coverts 
 
 Sink and rise and glide and vanish 
 
 As though swimming in sweet waters 
 
 Where each wavelet curdles rosily 
 
 To a blossoming bud, or floateth 
 
 Calmly as a smooth soft roseleaf. 
 
 Oh, the wilderness of roses 
 
 Shrouding all the fallen columns, 
 
 All the mossy lichen'd marbles: 
 
 Fragrant depths of crimson roses. 
 
 Carmine, pink, some wanly yellow 
 
 As young lime-leaves in the dawnlight. 
 
 Some as ivory of India 
 
 Deftly wrought by patient fingers 
 
 In the dim mysterious ages; 
 
 Others wan as surf in starlight. 
 
 Dusky white as coral garnered 
 
 In the deeps where light a dream is, 
 
 Ruffling the swart glooms of Ocean: 
 
 But damask most, or crimson, blood-red. 
 
 Flushed as wine-stained, or as dawn-clouds. 
 
 Mass on mass of tangled roses. 
 
 Blossom-flames, or multitudinous 
 
 Plumes of those lost birds of Eden 
 
 Which, as in long roseate vapours, 
 
FIOR DI MEMORIA 93 
 
 With a myriad wings waft upward 
 Each new morn, and with the sunrise 
 Earthward sweep on glowing pmions, 
 Till they wheel and fade and vanish 
 On their endless quest of Eden. 
 One vast crimson flood of roses, 
 Whence a carven stone or column 
 Reareth sometimes as a boulder 
 Swart upborne o'er sunset-waters. 
 Oh the fragrance when the south-wind, 
 When the languorous Scirocco 
 Breathes with tepid breath upon them. 
 And with idle feet strays lightly 
 O'er and o'er their billowy sweetness. 
 Nought but this flushed sea of roses. 
 And the green gloom of the grasses 
 Shrouding the forgotten ruins 
 In the lone mist-haunted hollow. 
 Lost, unseen, but domed in splendour 
 By the depths of purple azure. 
 
 Lo, amidst the roses' tangle 
 
 What white sunlit beauty shineth? 
 
 Some stone goddess, nymph, or naiad,. 
 
 Carven in the bygone ages. 
 
 Wan as ivory now, and glowing 
 
 With the multitudinous breaths of sunlight.? 
 
 Nay, no marble this that gleameth 
 
 Ivory-white among the roses. 
 
 For the naked flesh moves gently 
 
 With the breath that rising, falling, 
 
94 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 Scarcely stirs the fluttered roseleaves. 
 O wild mountain-girl, whom never 
 Lover yet has won with passion, 
 But whose arms have claspt the hill-wind, 
 But whose swelling breast has quivered 
 'Neath the soft south-wind's caresses, 
 Whose white limbs have felt the kisses 
 Of the wandering wind, thy lover: 
 
 wild mountain-girl, sleep ever, 
 Naked there in all thy beauty 
 Mid the sea of clustering roses. 
 Lost within the green-glooms tender 
 Of the wind-swayed desert-grasses. 
 Dark thy cloud of hair about thee. 
 Dark thy shadowy eyes that dream 
 Far into the azure distance: 
 
 White thy limbs as sunlit ivory. 
 With stray roseleaves scattered o'er them. 
 With thy sea of roses round thee. 
 What strange dreams are thine, O Goddess- 
 Goddess, surely, for beyond thee 
 Sways a cloud of fluttering sparrows: 
 Ah, is it thou — nay, never goddess 
 Now to mortal man discloseth 
 That serene immortal beauty. 
 Which is as a draught of rapture 
 Fraught with bitterness and sorrow: 
 
 1 have tasted, quaffed it. Goddess, 
 For the soul can know and see thee. 
 For the soul can woo and win thee, 
 Thee, even thee, O Beautiful 1 
 
FIOR DI MEMORIA 95 
 
 I have drunk its perilous rapture, 
 Knowing all have quaffed and feared not, 
 And have known the bitter savour: . 
 Yet, would drink again, O Goddess ! 
 
 Nay, no goddess here, but only, 
 
 Naked, dreaming in the sunshine, 
 
 Ivory-white among the roseleaves, 
 
 With her dark hair thrown about her 
 
 Like the dusk about the morning, 
 
 Only a wild mountain-girl, 
 
 Filled with secret springs of passion. 
 
 Immemorial seeds of passion 
 
 Wrought at last through generations 
 
 In this perfect flower of beauty 
 
 To a. strange unspeakable longing. 
 
 In a blaze of heat the sunlight, 
 
 Fierce with torrid fires of Junetide, 
 
 Beats upon her white limbs gleaming 
 
 In the sunlit flames of roses: 
 
 But she moves not, though a quiver 
 
 Ofttimes passes like a tremor 
 
 Shimmering through the furthest eastward 
 
 Ere the stars grow suddenly paler. 
 
 O wild mountain-girl, sleep ever, 
 Naked there in all thy beauty 
 Mid the sea of clustering roses: 
 Deep within thy sea of roses 
 Sink to slumber, sweeter, deeper, 
 Where no waking is, but dreams are 
 
96 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 Changed to roses that shall hide thee, 
 That shall hide thee and enshroud thee 
 There within thy grassy hollow: 
 Where the winds alone shall call thee, 
 And the marish-mist shall wander 
 Like a ghost between the grasses. 
 In among the buried columns 
 Lost within thy ruin of roses. 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF THE ACQUA PAOLA 97 
 
 THE FOUNTAIN OF THE ACQUA PAOLA 
 
 Not where thy turbid wave 
 
 Flowing Maremma-ward, 
 
 Moves heavily, Tiber, 
 
 Through Rome the Eternal, 
 
 Not there her music, not there her joy is: 
 
 But rather where the tall pines 
 
 On the Janiculum heights 
 
 Sing their high song, with deeper therein, like an echo 
 
 Heard in a mountain-hollow where cataracts break, 
 
 A sound as of surge and of foaming: 
 
 Yes, there where the echoing pines 
 
 Whisper to high wandering winds 
 
 The rush and the surge and the splendour 
 
 Where the Acqua Paola thunders 
 
 Into its fount gigantic. 
 
 With noise like a tempest cleaving 
 
 With mighty wings 
 
 The norland forests. 
 
 From dayspring, yellow and green 
 And grey as a swan's breastfeather, 
 To sunset's amber and gold 
 And the white star of dusk, 
 
SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 And through the moonwhite hours 
 Till only Hesperus hangs 
 His quivering tremulous disc 
 O'er the faint-flushed forehead of Dawn- 
 All hours, all days, forever 
 Surgeth the singing flood. 
 With chant and paean glorious, 
 With foam and splash and splendour, 
 A music wild, barbaric, 
 That calleth loud over Rome, 
 Laughing, mocking, rejoicing: 
 The sound of the waves when Ocean 
 Laughs at the vanishing land 
 And, fronting her shoreless leagues. 
 Remembers the ruined empires 
 That now are the drift and shingle 
 In cavernous hollows under 
 Her zone of Oblivion, 
 Silence that nought shall break, 
 Eternal calm. 
 
 Foam, spray and splendour 
 
 Of rushing waters. 
 
 Grey-blue as the pale blue dome 
 
 That circleth the morning star 
 
 While still his fires are brighter 
 
 Than the wanwhite fire of the moon. 
 
 Foam, spray, and surge 
 
 Of rushing waters ! 
 
 O the hot flood of sunshine 
 
 Yellowly pouring 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF THE ACQUA PAOLA 99 
 
 Over and into thee, jubilant Fountain: 
 
 Thy cataracts filled 
 
 With vanishing rainbows, 
 
 Shimmering lights 
 
 As though the Aurora's 
 
 Wild polar fires 
 
 Flashed in thy happy bubbles, died in thy foam. 
 
 Ever in joyous laughter 
 
 Thy wavelets are dancing. 
 
 Little waves with crests bright with sunlight 
 
 Tossing their foamy arms, 
 
 Laughing and leaping. 
 
 Whirling, inweaving, 
 
 Rippling at last and sleepily laving 
 
 The mossed stone-barriers 
 
 That clasp them round. 
 
 Bright too and joyous. 
 
 They, in the moonshine, 
 
 When the falling waters 
 
 Are as wreaths of snow 
 
 Falling for ever 
 
 Down mountain-flanks. 
 
 Like melting snows 
 
 In the high hill-hollows 
 
 Seen from the valleys 
 
 And seeming to fall, 
 
 To fall forever 
 
 A flower of water. 
 
 Silent, and stirred not 
 
 By any wind. 
 
lOO SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 Bright too and joyous 
 
 In darkling nights, 
 
 When the moon shroudeth 
 
 Her face in a veil 
 
 Of cloudy vapours, 
 
 Or, like a flower 
 
 r the wane of its beauty, 
 
 Droopeth and falleth 
 
 Till lost to sight, 
 
 Stoopeth and fadeth 
 
 Into the dark — 
 
 Or when like a sickle 
 
 Thin and silvdrn 
 
 She moveth slowly 
 
 Through the starry fields, 
 
 Moveth slowly 
 
 Mid the flowers of the stars 
 
 In the harvest-fields 
 
 Of Eternity: 
 
 Bright too and joyous, 
 
 For then the shadows 
 
 Play with the foam-lights. 
 
 With the flying whiteness, 
 
 And snowy surging. 
 
 But brighter, more joyous, 
 
 Save when the moon-flower 
 
 In all her splendour 
 
 Floats on thy bosom, 
 
 Or, rather, dreameth 
 
 Deep in the heart of thee 
 
 O happy Fountain: 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF THE ACQUA PAOLA lOI 
 
 Brighter, more joyous. 
 
 Then, when amidst thee, 
 
 Strewn through thy waters. 
 
 The stars are sown 
 
 As seed multitudinous. 
 
 As silvern seed 
 
 In thy shadowy-furrows: 
 
 Seed of the skiey flowers 
 
 That in the heavens 
 
 Bloom forever. 
 
 Blossoms and blooms of 
 
 Eternal splendour. 
 
 Then is thy joy most, 
 
 O jubilant Fountain, 
 
 Then are thy waters 
 
 Sweetest of song. 
 
 Then do thy waters 
 
 Surge, leap, rejoicing, 
 
 Lave, and lapse slowly 
 
 To haunted stillness 
 
 And darkling dreams: 
 
 Then is thy music rarest. 
 
 Wildest and sweetest 
 
 Music of Rome — 
 
 Rome the Eternal, 
 
 Through whose heart of shadow 
 
 Moveth slowly 
 
 Flowing Maremma-ward 
 
 Thy murmur, Tiber, 
 
 Thy muffled voice. 
 
 Whom none interpreteth 
 
I02 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 But boding, ominous, 
 
 Is as the sound of 
 
 Murmurous seas 
 
 Heard afar inland — 
 
 There, where Marem ma-ward 
 
 Flowing heavily, 
 
 Moveth, Tiber, 
 
 Thy sullen wave. 
 
PRIIMO SOSPIRO DI PRIMAVERA 103 
 
 PRIMO SOSPIRO DI PRIMAVERA 
 
 {Noon : First of February : On the Corsini Terraces 
 on the Janiciduni) 
 
 Boom ! 
 
 The gun has thundered forth the hour of Noon! 
 
 High upon the wings of Tramontana 
 
 Swells a storm of bells, 
 
 From a thousand churches, convents, buildings, 
 
 Clanging, jangling, intermingling, 
 
 Softened to a joyous music 
 
 Borne upward by the wuid 
 
 To the heights already sounding 
 
 With the surge of the three fountains 
 
 Of the Acqua Paola torrent. 
 
 To the heights already echoing 
 
 With the Tramon tana's challenge 
 
 Tossed with reckless glee and laughter 
 
 Through the ilexes and stone-pines. 
 
 What a sound as of the ocean 
 
 When the tides are driving inland, 
 
 And the rampant waves are leaping 
 
I04 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 Swift before the scourging sea-wind! 
 And through all the windy tumult 
 How the bells go wildly echoing, 
 Like a storm of voices calling 
 Far o'er mist-beleaguered waters. 
 Suddenly silence: even the wind swings 
 For a brief space skyward, chasing 
 The last flying ragged cloudlets: 
 Then from out the ilex-avenue 
 Rings with palpitant, thrilling rapture, 
 Clear and sweet, the first spring-music 
 Of the speckle-breasted storm-thrush! 
 Swish-sh-sh ! the wind again, the medley 
 Of its strong wings beating wildly. 
 Spray-wet, filled with piny odours. 
 
 Silence where the herald-thrush first 
 Took the break of Spring with rapture. 
 Yet what song in all the springtide 
 Shall be sweeter, rarer, wilder. 
 Than the sudden burst of music, 
 Sung from utter joy and wonder 
 Ere the earliest limes have budded: 
 Than that momentary outburst 
 When the bells of noon had fallen 
 To an ebbing tide of music 
 Down the sounding shores of Roma, 
 And the turbulent Tramontana 
 Had far skyward swept, with pinions 
 Hawk-like spread to swoop upon the 
 
PRIMO SOSPIRO DI PRIMAVERA IO5 
 
 Flying drifts of ragged cloudlets ! 
 
 O the bells of Rome, the clamour 
 
 Of the joyous Tramontana, 
 
 O the wildness of thy music, 
 
 Rapturous thrush, last Spring remembering. 
 
 With thy lost voice freed one moment 
 
 From its long forlorn silence ! 
 
 Spring is here — and Rome — together ! 
 
Io6 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 CLOUDS 
 
 {Agro Romano) 
 
 As though the dead cities 
 
 Of the ancient time 
 
 Were builded again 
 
 In the heights of heaven, 
 
 With spires of amber 
 
 And golden domes, 
 
 Wide streets of topaz and amethyst ways; 
 
 Far o'er the pale blue waste. 
 
 Oft purple-shadowed, 
 
 Of the Agro Romano, 
 
 Rises the splendid 
 
 City of Cloud. 
 
 There must the winds be soft as the twilight 
 
 Invisibly falling when the daystar has wester'd; 
 
 There must the rainbows trail up through the sunlight, 
 
 So fair are the hues on those white snowy masses. 
 
 Mountainous glories. 
 
 They move superbly; 
 
 Crumbling so slowly, 
 
 That none perceives when 
 
 The golden domes 
 
 Are sunk in the valleys 
 
CLOUDS 107 
 
 Of fathomless snow, 
 
 Or when, in silence, 
 
 The loftiest spires 
 
 Fade into smoke, or as vapour that passeth 
 
 When the hot breath of noon 
 
 Thirsts through the firmament. 
 
 Beautiful, beautiful. 
 
 The City of Cloud, 
 
 In splendour ruinous. 
 
 With golden domes. 
 
 And spires of amber, 
 
 Builded superbly 
 
 In the heights of heaven. 
 
Io8 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 A DREAM AT ARDEA 
 
 {Maremma) 
 
 Where Ardea. the cliff-girt, 
 Looks to the Sea, 
 Dreaming forever 
 In her desert place 
 Of her vanished glory — 
 There too in the tall grass, 
 Starred with narcissus 
 And the flaming poppy, 
 1 dreamed a dream. 
 
 Not of the days when 
 The fierce trumpeting 
 Of the Asian elephants 
 Made the wild horses 
 Snort in new terror, 
 Snort and wheel wildly. 
 Till o'er the Campagna 
 They passed like a trail 
 Of vanishing smoke. 
 No, nor when 
 The brazen clarions 
 Of the Roman legion 
 Summoned the hill-folk 
 
A DREAM AT ARDEA I09 
 
 To the Punic War: 
 
 Nor yet when the shadow 
 
 Of the falHng star 
 
 Of the house of Tarquin 
 
 Swept unseen o'er the banquet, 
 
 And none, foreseeing, 
 
 Drew forth the pure sword 
 
 For the foul heart of Sextus. 
 
 Nor yet of the ancient days 
 
 When the fierce Rutuh 
 
 Laughed at the boasting of 
 
 The seven-hilled city, 
 
 And when on rude altars 
 
 White victims lay. 
 
 To appease the anger 
 
 Of barbarian Gods — 
 
 Nay, not of these, not even the far-off, 
 
 The ancient time, when the mother of Perseus, 
 
 Danae the beautiful, came hither and builded 
 
 Close to the sea the hill-town which standeth 
 
 Now amid leagues of the inland grasses. 
 
 White with the surf of the blossoming asphodels — 
 
 Nay, but only 
 
 Of the shrine of her, 
 
 Venus, the Beautiful One, 
 
 The Well-Beloved. 
 
 Lost, it lieth 
 
 Deep mid the tangle, 
 
 Deep 'neath the roots of the flowers and the grasses 
 
 Drawn like a veil o'er 
 
 The face of Maremma. 
 
no SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 Only the brown lark 
 
 Singing above it, 
 
 Only the hare 
 
 Beneath the wild olive, 
 
 Only the linnet aflit in the myrtle. 
 
 Only the spotted snake 
 
 Writhing swiftly 
 
 O'er the thyme and the spikenard, 
 
 Only the falcon 
 
 Dusking a moment the gold of the yellow broom. 
 
 Only the things of the air and the desert. 
 
 Know where deep in the maze of the undergrowth 
 
 Lieth the shrine of the sacred Goddess, 
 
 The shrine of Venus. 
 
 Up through the dark blue mist of the harebells — 
 
 All the wild glory, with trailing convolvulus, 
 
 Lenten lilies asway in the sunlight, 
 
 Wine-dark anemones, pasque-flowers of ruby, 
 
 Iris and daffodil and sweet smelling violet. 
 
 And high over all the white and gold shining 
 
 Where the wind raced o'er the asphodel meadows: 
 
 All the flower-glory of Spring in Maremma. 
 
 But here, just here, a mist of the harebells — 
 
 Up through the dark blue mist of the harebells 
 
 Rose like a white smoke hovering gently 
 
 Over the windleSs woodlands of Ostia 
 
 Where the charcoal-burners wander like shadows. 
 
 Rose a white vapour, stealthily, slowly. 
 
 Ah, but the wonder ! the wan ghost of Venus 
 Rose slowly before me: 
 
A DREAM AT ARDEA III 
 
 Dark, deep, and awful the eyes of the vision, 
 
 Sad beyond words that wraith of dead beauty. 
 
 Chill now and solemn. 
 
 Austere as the grave, 
 
 The face that had blanched 
 
 The high gods of old, 
 
 The face that had led 
 
 The heroes of men 
 
 From the heights of Caucasus 
 
 To the uttermost ends 
 
 Of Earth, as leadeth nightly 
 
 The Moon, her cohorts 
 
 Of perishing billows. 
 
 " I am she whom thou lovest ": 
 
 " Nay, whom I worship. Goddess and (2iieen! " 
 
 " I am she whom thou worshippest " : 
 
 " I^or thoii a?'/ Beauty, and Beauty I ivorship, 
 
 " And thou art Love, and Love — 
 
 " Love is Beauty. They love not nor worship, 
 
 " They who dissever the one from the other " : 
 
 " Hearken, O Goddess ! " 
 
 " Nay, shadow of shadows, why callest me Goddess ! 
 
 Far from thy world "the Goddess " is banished. 
 
 Ye have chosen the dark: the dark be with you \ 
 
 Ye have chosen sorrow: and sorrow is yours: 
 
 O fools that worship vain Gods, and know not 
 
 That life is the breath but of perishing dust — 
 
 They only live in whose hearts there hath fallen 
 
 The breath of my passion — 
 
 " O Goddess, fade not f " 
 
 " I pass, and behold. 
 
SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 With my passing goeth 
 The joy of the world." 
 
 Darkly austere 
 
 The face of the Goddess. 
 
 Then like a flame 
 
 That groweth wan 
 
 And fiickereth forth from the reach of vision, 
 
 The face of Venus 
 
 Was seen no more, 
 
 Though through the mist 
 
 Her eyes gleamed darkly, 
 
 Great fires of joy — 
 
 Of joy disherited, 
 
 But glorious ever 
 
 In their lordly scorn, 
 
 Their high disdain. 
 
 Not till the purple-hued 
 
 Wings of the twilight 
 
 Waved softly downward 
 
 From the Alban hills. 
 
 And moved stilly 
 
 Over the vast dim leagues of Maremma, 
 
 Turned I backward 
 
 My wandering steps. 
 
 Far o'er the white-glimmering 
 
 Breast of the Tyrrhene Sea 
 
 (Laid as in sleep at the feet of the hills) 
 
 Rose, dropping liquid fires 
 
 Into the wine-dark vault of the heaven, 
 
A DREAM AT ARDEA II3 
 
 The Star of Evening, 
 
 Venus, the Evening Star: 
 
 Eternal, serene, 
 
 In deathless beauty 
 
 Revolving ever 
 
 Through the stellar spheres ! 
 
 High o'er the shadowy heights 
 
 Of the Volscian summits 
 
 The full moon soared: 
 
 Soared slowly upward 
 
 Like a golden nenuphar 
 
 In a vaster Nilus 
 
 Than that which flowetn 
 
 Through the heart of Egypt. 
 
 The moon that maketh 
 
 The world so beautiful, 
 
 That moveth so tenderly 
 
 Over desolate things, 
 
 The moon that giveth 
 
 The amber light, 
 
 Wherein best blossom 
 
 The mystic flowers 
 
 Of human love. 
 
 Through the darkness 
 
 Whelming the waste, 
 
 And, like a stealthy tide 
 
 Rising around 
 
 Ardea, the clifT-girt, 
 
 Wavered the sound of joyous laughter. 
 
114 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 Sweet words and sweeter 
 Fell where the lentisc 
 Bloomed, and the rosemary: 
 Loving caresses 
 Lost in a rustle 
 Where the hawthorn-bushes 
 Loomed large in the twilight 
 Of the fireflies' lanterns. 
 
 Deep in the heart of 
 
 A myrtle-thicket 
 
 A nightingale stirred: 
 
 With low sweet note, 
 
 Thrilling strangely, 
 
 And as though moving 
 
 With the breath of her passion 
 
 The midmost leaves. 
 
 But once her plaint : — 
 
 Then wild and glad, 
 
 In a free ecstasy. 
 
 In utter bliss, 
 
 In one high whirl of rapture, sang 
 
 His answering song 
 
 Her mate, low swaying upon a bough, 
 
 With throat full-strained, and quivering wings 
 
 Beating with tremulous whirr. 
 
 Then I was glad, 
 
 For surely I knew 
 
 I had dreamed a dream 'neath the spell of Maremma. 
 
 Not sunk in the drift 
 
A DREAM AT ARDEA I 
 
 Of antique dust, 
 
 Lost from the ken of Earth 
 
 Within her shrine, 
 
 Venus, the Beautiful, 
 
 The Queen of Love ! 
 
 But though no longer 
 
 Beheld of man, 
 
 Still living and breathing 
 
 Through the heart of the world — 
 
 Whether in the song, 
 
 Passionate, beautiful, 
 
 Of the nightingale; 
 
 Or in the glad rapture 
 
 Of lovers meeting, 
 
 With soft caresses 
 
 Hid in the dusk; 
 
 In the fair flower of the vast field of heaven: 
 
 Or in the glow, 
 
 The pulsing splendour, 
 
 Of the white star of joy, 
 
 The Star of Eve. 
 
Il6 SOSPIRI Dl ROMA 
 
 RED POPPIES 
 
 {In the Sabine valleys near Rome) 
 
 Through the seeding grass, 
 
 And the tall corn, 
 
 The wind goes: 
 
 With nimble feet, 
 
 And blithe voice, 
 
 Calling, calling, 
 
 The wind goes 
 
 Through the seeding grass. 
 
 And the tall corn. 
 
 What calleth the v/ind, 
 
 Passing by— 
 
 The shepherd-wind ? 
 
 Far and near 
 
 He laugheth low. 
 
 And the red poppies 
 
 Lift their heads 
 
 And toss i' the sun. 
 
 A thousand thousand blooms 
 
 Tost i' the air. 
 
RED POPPIES 117 
 
 Banners of joy, 
 
 For 'tis the shepherd-wind 
 
 Passing by, 
 
 Singing and laughing low 
 
 Through the seeding grass 
 
 And the tall corn. 
 
ri8 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 THE WHITE PEACOCK 
 
 Here where the sunhght 
 
 Floodeth the garden. 
 
 Where the pomegranate 
 
 Reareth its glory 
 
 Of gorgeous blossom; 
 
 Where the oleanders 
 
 Dream through the noontides; 
 
 And, like surf o' the sea 
 
 Round cliffs of basalt. 
 
 The thick magnolias 
 
 In billowy masses 
 
 Front the sombre green of the ilexes: 
 
 Here where the heat lies 
 
 Pale blue in the hollows, 
 
 Where blue are the shadows 
 
 On the fronds of the cactus, 
 
 Where pale blue the gleaming 
 
 Of fir and cypress, 
 
 With the cones upon them 
 
 Amber or glowing 
 
 With virgin gold: 
 
 Here where the honey-flower 
 
 Makes the heat fragrant, 
 
 As though from the gardens 
 
 Of Gulistan, 
 
THE WHITE PEACOCK IIQ 
 
 Where the bulbul singeth 
 Through a mist of roses, 
 A breath were borne: 
 Here where the dream-flowers, 
 The cream-white poppies 
 Silently waver, 
 And where the Scirocco, 
 Faint in the hollows, 
 
 Foldeth his soft white wings in the sunlight, 
 And lieth sleeping 
 Deep in the heart of 
 A sea of white violets: 
 
 Here, as the breath, as the soul of this beauty 
 Moveth in silence, and dreamlike, and slowly. 
 White as a snow-drift in mountain-valleys 
 When softly upon it the gold light lingers: 
 White as the foam o' the sea that is driven 
 O'er billows of azure agleam with sun-yellow: 
 Cream-white and soft as the breasts of a girl. 
 Moves the White Peacock, as though through the 
 
 [noontide 
 A dream of the moonlight were real for a moment. 
 Dim on the beautiful fan that he spread eth, 
 Foldeth and spreadeth abroad in the sunlight, 
 Dim on the cream-white are blue adumbrations. 
 Shadows so pale in their delicate blueness 
 That visions they seem as of vanishing violets. 
 The fragrant white violets veined with azure. 
 Pale, pale as the breath of blue smoke in far woodlands. 
 Here, as the breath, as the soul of this beauty, 
 White as a cloud through the heats of the noontide 
 Moves the White Peacock. 
 
I20 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 THE SWIMMER OF NEMI 
 
 ( The Lake of N'emi: September) 
 
 White through the azure, 
 
 The purple blueness, 
 
 Of Nemi's waters 
 
 The swimmer goeth. 
 
 Ivory-white, or wan white as roses 
 
 Yellowed and tanned by the suns of the Orient, 
 
 His strong limbs sever the violet hollows; 
 
 A shimmer of white fantastic motions 
 
 Wavering deep through the lake as he swimmeth. 
 
 Like gorsc in the sunlight the gold of his yellow hair, 
 
 Yellow with sunshine and bright as with dew-drops. 
 
 Spray of the waters flung back as he tosseth 
 
 His head i' the sunlight in the midst of his laughter: 
 
 Red o'er his body, blossom-white mid the blueness, 
 
 And trailing behind him in glory of scarlet, 
 
 A branch of the red-berried ash of the mountains. 
 
 White as a moon-beam 
 
 Drifting athwart 
 
 The purple twilight, 
 
 The swimmer goeth — 
 
 Joyously laughing, 
 
 With o'er his shoulders. 
 
THE SWIMMER OF NEMI 121 
 
 Agleam in the sunshine 
 The trailing branch 
 With the scarlet berries. 
 
 Green are the leaves, and scarlet the berries, 
 White are the limbs of the swimmer beyond them, 
 Blue the deep heart of the still, brooding lakelet. 
 Pale-blue the hills in the haze of September, 
 The high Alban hills in their silence and beauty, 
 Purple the depths of the windless heaven 
 Curv'd like a flower o'er the waters of Nemi. 
 
122 SOSPJRl Dl ROMA 
 
 AL FAR DELLA NOTTE 
 
 Hark! 
 
 As a bubbling fount 
 
 That suddenly wells 
 
 And rises in tall spiral waves and flying spray, 
 
 The high, sweet, quavering, throbbing voice 
 
 Of the nightingale ! 
 
 Not yet the purple veil of dusk has fallen. 
 
 But o'er the yellow band 
 
 That binds the west 
 
 The vesper star beats like the pulse of heaven. 
 
 Up from the fields 
 
 The peasants troop, 
 
 Singing their songs of love: 
 
 And oft the twang of thin string'd music breaks 
 
 High o'er the welcoming shouts. 
 
 The homing laughter. 
 
 The whirling bats are out. 
 
 And to and fro 
 
 The blue swifts wheel 
 
 Where, i' the shallows of the dusk, 
 
 The grey moths flutter 
 
 Over the pale blooms 
 
 Of the night-flowering bay. 
 
AL FAR DELLA NOTTE 123 
 
 Softly adown the slopes, 
 And o'er the plain, 
 Ai^e Alarm 
 Solemnly soundeth. 
 The long day is over. 
 Dusk, and silence now: 
 And Night, that is as dew 
 On the Flower of the World. 
 
124 
 
 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 THISTLEDOWN 
 
 {Spring on the Campagnd) 
 
 Bloweth like snow 
 
 From the grey thistles 
 
 The thistledown: 
 
 And the fairy-feathers 
 
 O' the dandelion 
 
 Are tossed by the breeze 
 
 Hither and thither: 
 
 Over the grasses, 
 
 The seeding grasses 
 
 Where the poppies shake 
 
 And the campions waver, 
 
 And where the clover. 
 
 Purple and white. 
 
 Fills leagues with the fragrance 
 
 Of sunsweet honey; 
 
 Hither and thither 
 
 The fairy-feathers 
 
 O' the dandelion. 
 
 And white puff-balls 
 
 O' the thistledown, 
 
 Merrily dancing, 
 
 Litrht on the breeze, 
 
THISTLEDOWN 1 25 
 
 Wheeling and sailing, 
 And laughing to scorn 
 The butterflies 
 And the moths of azure; 
 Blowing like snow 
 Or foam o' the sea. 
 Hither and thither 
 Upward and downward. 
 
 Now for a moment 
 
 A thistledown 
 
 On a white ball resteth, 
 
 Sunbleached and hollow; 
 
 A human skull 
 
 Of the ancient days, 
 
 When Sabines and Latins 
 
 Made all the land here 
 
 As red with blood 
 
 As it now is scarlet 
 
 With flaming poppies. 
 
 Now the feathers 
 
 O' the dandelion, 
 
 Like sunlit swansdown 
 
 Long tost by the wind 
 
 O'er the laughter of waters, 
 
 Are blown like surf 
 
 On a hidden rock — 
 
 A broken arch 
 
 Of a Roman temple, 
 
 Where long, long ago. 
 
 The swarthy priests 
 
126 SOSPIRl 1)1 ROMA 
 
 Worshipped their Gods, 
 
 The Gods now less than 
 
 The very dust 
 
 Whence the green grass springeth. 
 
 But for a moment, then the wind takes them, 
 
 Blows them, plays with them, 
 
 Tosses them high through the gold of the sunshine. 
 
 Wavers them upward, wavers them downward. 
 
 Hither and thither among the white butterflies, 
 
 Over and under the blue-moths and honey-bees, 
 
 Over the leagues of blossoming clover. 
 
 Purple and white, the sweet-smelling clover. 
 
 Far o'er the grasses. 
 
 And grey hanging thistles, 
 
 Hither and thither 
 
 Are floating and sailing 
 
 The fairy-feathers 
 
 O' the dandelion, 
 
 Bloweth like snow 
 
 The joy o' the meadows. 
 
 The thistledown. 
 
THE TWO RUINS I27 
 
 THE TWO RUINS 
 
 A SEA of moonlight. 
 
 And in the sea an isle 
 
 Black, rugged, tempest-torn, vast : 
 
 O mighty Colosseum 
 
 More grand in this thy ruin 
 
 Than when proud Caesar smiled, and all thy walls 
 
 Rang with tumultuous acclaim, 
 
 While round thy dark foundations moaned 
 
 A wind of alien pain. 
 
 Terrible thou, O splendour of the Past. 
 
 How great the Rome that knew thee, and how dread! 
 
 Proud Roman, thine inheritance 
 
 Is as a deathless crown. 
 
 Yea, as a crown deep-set upon the brows. 
 
 The unfurrowed front of Time that is to be. 
 
 Hark, that low whine ! 
 
 What crippled thing is this, 
 
 This spume of vice. 
 
 This wreck of high estate? 
 
 What ruin this that rises gaunt and wild : 
 
 Thou, thou art Rome, the Past, 
 
 The Rome that is ! 
 
128 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 Not here a venerable age, 
 
 But dull decay, 
 
 Slow death, and utter weariness. 
 
 Yon vast forlorn walls are but the frozen surf 
 
 Of tides long ages ebbed : 
 
 In thee Ruin is, in thee and such as thee. 
 
THE SHEPHERD i^9 
 
 THE SHEPHERD 
 
 ( N^ar the Theatre of Marcellits : Piazza Montaiiara) 
 
 Solitary he stands, 
 
 Clad in his goat-skins, 
 
 Though all about him 
 
 The busy throng 
 
 Cometh and goeth. 
 
 Overhead, the vast ruin, 
 
 Wind-worn, time-wrought, 
 
 Gloomily rises. 
 
 Scarce doth he note it, 
 
 Yet doth it give him 
 
 The touch of nearness, 
 
 Which the soul craves for 
 
 In alien places : 
 
 As the strayed mariner, 
 
 Yearning, far inland. 
 
 For sight of the sea. 
 
 Smiles when he fingers a rope, or 
 
 Heareth the wind 
 
 Surge round the hedgerows 
 
 As erst through the cordage ; 
 
 Or, on the endless, dusty, white high-road. 
 
130 SOSPIRI Dl ROMA 
 
 Puts his ear to the pole 
 Vibrating with song, as the mast 
 Erewhile rang with the hum 
 Of the hurricane. 
 
 What doth he here, 
 
 Away from the pastures 
 
 On the desolate Campagna ? 
 
 From his haggard face 
 
 Sorrowfully his wild black eyes 
 
 Stare on the weariness, 
 
 The noise, and hurry, 
 
 And surge of the traffic. 
 
 Sometimes, a faint smile 
 
 Flitteth athwart his face, 
 
 When a woman, from the well, 
 
 Passeth by with a conca 
 
 Poised on her head : 
 
 Thus oft hath he seen 
 
 The peasant girls 
 
 In the little hamlets 
 
 Far out on the plain : 
 
 Or when a wine-cart 
 
 With its tall cappoto 
 
 A-swing like a high tent windswa3^ed sidewise, 
 
 Rattles in from the Appian highway. 
 
 White with the dust of the Alban hills. 
 
 What doth he here. 
 
 He in whose eyes are 
 
 The passion of the desert : 
 
 He in whose ears rings 
 
THE SHEPHERD I3I 
 
 The free music 
 Of the winds that wander 
 Through the desert-ruins? 
 Not here, O Shepherd, 
 Would'st thou fain dwell, 
 Though in the Holy City- 
 God's Regent lives : 
 Better the desolate waste, 
 Better the free lone life, 
 For there thou canst breathe, 
 There silence abideth, 
 There, not the Regent, 
 But God himself 
 Dwelleth and speaketh. 
 
132 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 ALL' ORA DELLA STELLA 
 
 ( Bells of Evening) 
 
 Ring the bells of evening, through the gathering dusk; 
 
 Ring the bells upon the plain ; 
 
 Rings the bell from out the tower against the light, 
 
 Black against the west aflame, against 
 
 The sea of deepening orange, purple, yellow 
 
 (O the pale green cowslip-yellow where the crows 
 
 Fly swiftly from the dim Campagna homeward); 
 
 Ring the bells from out the little chapel yonder. 
 
 In the tiny hill-town nestling on its craggy steep. 
 
 From this lonely height where, half forgotten, 
 Life still lingers in unvarying round. 
 Can they ring away the evil sloth that broodeth 
 As a bat gigantic broodeth over 
 
 The low-breathing bust wherefrom it draws the life- 
 
 [blood ''. 
 Can they ring away the dark and stagnant vapours 
 That abide with men, here, on this height — 
 On this height now flaming in the sunset 
 Like a vast carbuncle on a burning desert ? 
 Ring, O ring, O bells, ring, ring. 
 
ALL' ORA BELLA STELLA 1 33 
 
 Not for peace, or rest that sweet is, 
 Not for happy glooms and tender. 
 But for storm and tempest rather, 
 For a fierce and surging tempest 
 That shall wake the mountain-hollows 
 With the cry of Life arising ! 
 
 Rings the solitary bell upon the tower. 
 
 Where the fever-stricken monks 
 
 Kneel and pray : 
 
 Where the monks within the black and lonely tower 
 
 Dream that heaven lies yonder, 
 
 Where through seas of wondrous living yellow 
 
 The star of eve swims forth in silvern fire : 
 
 Ah, the heaven that dwelleth yonder ! 
 
 Ring, O solitary bell, thy vesper. 
 
 Toll thy hymn of hopes that are as vapours, 
 
 Vapours lit a moment with strange glory 
 
 Ere they fade into the darkness following after ! 
 
 Ring the bells upon the plain. 
 
 All along the misty, vague Campagna : 
 
 Unseen hamlets in the hollows, lonely dwellings 
 
 Where gaunt hermits kneel and mutter, 
 
 Scattered villages, and ruined places 
 
 Where the shepherd only sleeps and hears nought ever 
 
 Save the wild wind sweeping o'er the grasses. 
 
 Or the soft Scirocco gliding stilly 
 
 O'er the fallen columns, broken arches, 
 
 Whereamong his sheep go wandering vaguely. 
 
 Hears but these, or cry of hawk or raven. 
 
134 SOSriRI DI ROMA 
 
 Nightjar swooping through the moonless dusk — 
 
 Hears nought else, save in the lonely distance 
 
 The fierce sheepdogs snarling as they watch and prowl. 
 
 Softly, slow, the vesper bells are ringing 
 
 For all desolate haunts upon the waste, 
 
 For all dreary lives upon the lone Campagna, 
 
 Lives now spent like spume from ebbing waters, 
 
 Spume thrown waste to swelter in the sun, 
 
 Spume cast up and left by ebbing waters. 
 
 Ring the bells of evening through the gathering dusk : 
 
 Ring the bells upon the plain, 
 
 PVom the tower looming black against the light, 
 
 From the hill-town all aflame upon its steep. 
 
 Ring the bells : 
 
 Clamorous voices they, loud prayers crying 
 
 That of the perishing flames of sunset burning, 
 
 Of these red and yellow flames swift-fading yonder, 
 
 God will make new fires of sunrise splendid, 
 
 God will recreate a glorious morning. 
 
THE MAI^DOLIN I35 
 
 THE MANDOLIN 
 
 Tinkle-trink, tinkle-trink, trinkle-trmkle, trink / 
 Hark, the mandolin ! 
 
 Through the dusk the merry music falleth sweet. 
 Where the fountain falls, 
 
 Where the fountain falls all shimmering in the moon- 
 
 [shine white, 
 Tinkle-trink, tinkle-trink, trinkle-tr inkle, trink! 
 Where the wind-stirred olives quiver. 
 Quiver, quiver, leaves a-quiver. 
 
 White as silver in the moonlight but like bat-wings in 
 
 [the dusk, 
 Where the great grey moths sail slowly 
 Slowly, slowly, like faint dreams 
 In the wildering woods of Sleep, 
 Where no night or day is, 
 But only, in dim twilights, the wan sheen 
 Of the Moon of Sleep. 
 
 Hark, the mandolin ! 
 
 Where the dark-coned cypress rises, 
 
 Thin, more thin, till threadlike, wavering 
 
 The last spray soars up as smoke. 
 
 As a vanishing breath of incense. 
 
 To the silent stars that lilimmer 
 
136 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 In the veil of purple darkness, 
 The deep vault of heaven that seemeth 
 As a veil that falleth, 
 A dark veil that foldeth gently 
 
 The tired day-worn world, breathing stilly as a sleep- 
 
 [ing child. 
 Hark, the mandolin: 
 And a soft low sound of laughter ! 
 Tinklc-irink, iinkle-trink, i7'inklc-trinkle, triiik ! 
 
 Hush: from out the cypress standing 
 Black against the yellow moonlight 
 What a thrill, what a sob, what a sudden rapture flung 
 Athwart the dark ! 
 Passion of song ! 
 
 Silence again, save mid the whispering leaves 
 The unquiet wind, that as the tide 
 Cometh and goeth. 
 
 Now one long thrilling note, prolonged and sweet, 
 And then a low swift stir, 
 A whirr of fluttering wings, 
 
 And, in the laurels near, two nested nightingales ! 
 Loud, loud, the mandolin, 
 
 Tinkle-U'mk, tinkle-trink, t7'inklc-t7' inkle, /rink, 
 Trink, irink, irinkle-trmk / 
 
 Through the fragrant silent night it draweth near, 
 Ah, the low cry, the little laugh, the rustle: 
 Tinkle - h'ink — hush, a kiss — tinkle-trink — hush — 
 
 [hush — 
 Tinkle-trink, tinkle-trink, trinkle-tr inkle, trink ! 
 Where the shadows massed together 
 
THE MANDOLIN 137 
 
 Make a hollow darkness, girt 
 
 By the yellow flood of moonshine floating by, 
 
 Where the groves of ilex whisper 
 
 In the silence, fragrant, sweet. 
 
 Where the ilexes are dreaming 
 
 In their depths of darkest shadow, 
 
 Move the fireflies slowly, 
 
 Mazily inweaving. 
 
 Interweaving, interflowing; 
 
 Wandering fires, like little lanterns 
 
 Borne by souls of bh-ds and flowers 
 
 Seeking ever resurrection 
 
 In the gladsome world of sunshine; 
 
 Seeking vainly through the darkness 
 
 In beneath the ilex-branches 
 
 Where the very moonshine faileth, 
 
 And the dark grey moths wave wanly 
 
 Flitting from the outer gloaming. 
 
 Oh, the fragrance, and the mystery, and the silence ! 
 
 Where the fireflies, mid the ilex, 
 
 Rise and fall, recross, inweave 
 
 In an endless wavy motion, 
 
 In a slow aerial dancing 
 
 In a maze of little flames 
 
 In and out the ilex-branches: 
 
 Hush ! the mandolin ! 
 
 Louder still, and louder, louder: 
 
 Ah, the happy laugh, and rustle, 
 
 Rustle, rustle, 
 
 Ah the kiss, the cry, the rapture. 
 
 Silence, where the ilex-branches 
 
138 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 Loom out faintly from their darkness 
 Where, slow-wandering flames, the fireflies 
 Rise and fall, recross, inweave 
 In an endless wavy motion, 
 In a slow aerial dancing. 
 
 Silence: not a breath is stirring: 
 Not a leaflet quivers faintly. 
 Silence: even the bats are silent 
 Wheeling swiftly through the upper air, 
 Where the gnat's thin shrilling music 
 Fades into the flooding moonlight: 
 Hush, low whispered words and kisses, 
 Hush, a cry of pain, of rapture. 
 Not a sound, a sound thereafter, 
 But a low sweet sigh of breathing. 
 And, from out the flowering' laurel, 
 Just a twittering breath of music. 
 Just a long-drawn pulsing note 
 Of a sweet and passionate answer. 
 Silence: hark, a stir — low laughter — 
 Whispered words — and rustle — rustle — 
 Tri7ik — trink — the mandolin ! 
 Hark, it trinkles down the valley, 
 Trink-trink, tj^inJde-triiik, trinkle-ii'ink f 
 Past the cistus, blooming whitely. 
 Past the oleander-bushes, 
 Past the ilexes and olives. 
 Where the two tall pines are whispering 
 With the sleepy wind that foldeth 
 
THE MANDOLIN 139 
 
 His tired pinions ere he sleepeth 
 On the flood of amber moonlight. 
 Wind o' the night, tired wind o' night — 
 Tinkle-trink, trink, trinkle-trmk, 
 Trmk, trinkle-trink, 
 TriJik / 
 
I40 SOSPIRT DI ROMA 
 
 BAT-WINGS 
 
 Flitter, flitter, through the twilight, 
 
 Pipistrello: 
 
 Where the moonshine ghtters 
 
 Waver thy swart wings, 
 
 Darting hither, thither. 
 
 Swift as wheeHng swallow. 
 
 Where the shadows gather 
 
 In and out thou flittest, 
 
 Flitter, flitter, 
 
 Waver, waver, 
 
 Pipistrello. 
 
 Thin thy faint aerial song is. 
 
 Thin and fainter than the shrilling 
 
 Of the gnats thou chasest wildly, 
 
 But how delicately dainty — 
 
 Thin and faint and wavering also, 
 
 In the high sweet upper air. 
 
 Where the gnats weave endless mazes 
 
 In their pyramidal dances — 
 
 And thy dusky wings go flutter, 
 
 Flutter, flutter. 
 
 Waver, waver. 
 
 But without a sound or rustle 
 
 Through the purple air of twilight. 
 
 Flitter, flitter, flutter, flitter, 
 
 Pipistrello. 
 
LA VELIA 141 
 
 LA VELIA 
 
 {The Sea-Gidl : PoJttme Marshes) 
 
 Here where the marsh 
 
 Waves white with ranunculus, 
 
 Where the yellow daffodil 
 
 Flieth his banner 
 
 In the fetid air, 
 
 And oft mid the bulrushes 
 
 Rustleth the porcupine 
 
 Or surgeth the boar — 
 
 Though bloweth rarely 
 
 The fresh wind. 
 
 The Tramontana, 
 
 And only Scirocco 
 
 Heavily lifts 
 
 The feathery plumes the tall canes carry: 
 
 What dost thou here, 
 
 O bird of the ocean ? 
 
 Here, where the marshes 
 
 Are never stirred 
 
 By the pulse of the tides; 
 
 Here where the white mists 
 
 Crawl on the swamp, 
 
142 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 But never the rush and the surge of the billows ? 
 
 White as a snowflake thou gleamest, and passest: 
 
 Drearier now the chill waste of the Stagno, 
 
 Wearier now the dull silence and boding. 
 
 Would that again 
 
 Thy glad presence were gleaming 
 
 Here where the marsh 
 
 Steams white in the sunshine; 
 
 For swift on my sight, 
 
 As thy white wings wavered, 
 
 Broke the sea in its beauty, 
 
 With foam, and splendour 
 
 Of rolling waves: 
 
 And loud on my ears (O the longing, the yearning) 
 
 When thy cry filled the silence, 
 
 Came the surge of the sea 
 
 And the tumult of waters. 
 
SPUMA DAL MARE 1 43 
 
 SPUMA DAL MARE 
 {On the Latin Coast) 
 
 Flower o' the wave, 
 
 White foam of the waters, 
 
 The many-coloured: 
 
 Here blue as a harebell. 
 
 Here pale as the turquoise; 
 
 Here green as the grasses 
 
 Of mountain hollows, 
 
 Here lucent as jade when wet in the sunshme. 
 
 Here paler than apples ere ruddied by autumn. 
 
 Depths o' the purple! 
 
 Amethyst yonder, 
 
 Yonder as ling on the hills of October 
 
 With shadows as deep, 
 
 Where islets of sea-wrack 
 
 Wave in the shallows. 
 
 As the sheen of the feathers 
 
 On the blue-green breast 
 
 Of the bird of the Orient, 
 
 The splendid peacock. 
 
 Foam o' the waves. 
 
 White crests ashine 
 
 With a dazzle of sunlight! 
 
144 SOSPIRl DI ROMA 
 
 Here the low breakers are rolling through shallows, 
 
 Yellow and muddied, the hue of the topaz 
 
 Ere cut from the boulder; 
 
 Save when the sunlight swims through them slantwise, 
 
 When inward they roll 
 
 Long billows of amber, 
 
 Crowned with pale yellow 
 
 And grey-green spume. 
 
 Here wan grey their slopes 
 
 Where the broken lights reach them. 
 
 Dull grey of pearl, and dappled, and darkling, 
 
 As when mid the high 
 
 Northward drift of the clouds, 
 
 Scirocco bloweth 
 
 With soft fanning breath. 
 
 Foam o' the waves, 
 Blown blossoms of ocean. 
 White flowers of the waters, 
 The many-coloured. 
 
A WINTER EVENING 
 
 145 
 
 A WINTER EVENING 
 
 {An Hoii7' after Nightfall, on Saturday , January ly, 
 i8g[) 
 
 [To E. W. R.] 
 
 The wild wind in the pines 
 
 Surgeth and moaneth, 
 
 And the flying snow 
 
 Whirls hither and thither, 
 
 Tost from the sprays of the firs on the Pincio. 
 
 Here, in the dim gloomy Via dell' Mura, 
 
 Dark as a torrent in mountainous chasms. 
 
 Not a breath of the tempest waves downward upon us: 
 
 Straight down the vast mighty walls hang in silence 
 
 Ice-spears and ice-shafts, rigid, unyielding: 
 
 Here all the snow-drift lies thick and untrodden. 
 
 Cold, white, and desolate save where the red light 
 
 Gleams from a window in yonder high turret. 
 
 Loud mid the trees of the Medici gardens, 
 
 Surgeth the wind, and over the Pincio 
 
 Sweeps to the southward the drift of the snowstorm: 
 
 Clear to the northward the wan wintry moonshine 
 
 Showeth the last pines silent and moveless. 
 
 Untouched by the wild sweeping 
 
 of the tempest. 
 
146 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 Swift in the skies o'er the heights of the Vatican 
 Flash upon flash, long pulsations of lightning, 
 And borne afar from the distant Campagna 
 The long low muttering growls of the thunder. 
 Wild night of the tempest, with lightning and moon- 
 
 [shine, 
 Thunder afar and the surge of the snow-blast. 
 The whisper of pines and the glimmer of starlight, 
 The voice of the wind in the woods of Borghese, 
 These, these together, and here in the darkness 
 Here in the dim, gloomy Via dell' Mura, 
 Nought but the peace of the snow-drift unruffled, 
 Whitely obscure, save where from the window 
 High in the walls of the Medici gardens 
 Glows a red shining, fierily bloodred. 
 What lies in the heart of thee, Night, thus so ominous? 
 What is thy secret, strange joy or strange sorrow ? 
 
THE BATHER 147 
 
 THE BATHER 
 
 Where the sea-wind ruffles 
 The pale pink blooms 
 Of the fragrant Daphne, 
 And passeth softly- 
 Over the sward 
 Of the cyclamen-blossoms. 
 The Bather stands. 
 
 Rosy white, as a cloud at the dawning, 
 Silent she stands, 
 And looks far seaward, 
 
 As a seabird, dreaming 
 
 On some lone rock, 
 
 Poiseth his pinions 
 
 Ere over the waters 
 
 He moves like a vision 
 
 On motionless wings. 
 
 Beautiful, beautiful, 
 
 The sunlit gleam of her naked body, 
 
 Ivorywhite mid the cyclamen-blossoms, 
 
 A wave o' the sea mid the blooms of the Daphne 
 
 Blue as the innermost heart of the ocean 
 
148 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 The arch of the sky where the wood runneth seaward, 
 
 Blue as the depths of the innermost heaven 
 
 The vast heaving breast of the slow-moving waters : 
 
 Green the thick grasses that run from the woodland, 
 
 Green as the heart of the foam-crested billows 
 
 Curving a moment ere washing far inland 
 
 Up the long reach of the sands gleaming golden. 
 
 The land-breath beareth 
 
 Afar the fragrance 
 
 Of thyme and basil 
 
 And clustered rosemary ; 
 
 And o'er the fennel, 
 
 And through the broom, 
 
 It fioateth softly, 
 
 As the wind of noon 
 
 That Cometh and goeth 
 
 Though none hearkens 
 
 Its downy wings. 
 
 And keen, the seawind 
 
 Bears up the odours 
 
 Of blossoming pinks 
 
 And salt rock-grasses, 
 
 Of rustling seaweed 
 
 And mosses of pools 
 
 Where the rosy blooms 
 
 Of the sea-flowers open 
 
 Mid stranded waves. 
 
 As a water-lily 
 
 Touched by the breath 
 
 Of sunrise-glory, 
 
 Moveth and swayeth 
 
THE BATHER 149 
 
 With tremulous joy, 
 
 So o'er the sunlit 
 
 White gleaming body 
 
 Of the beautiful bather 
 
 Passeth a quiver. 
 
 Rosy-white, as a cloud at the dawning, 
 
 Poised like a swallow that meeteth the wind, 
 
 For a moment she standeth 
 
 Where the seawind softly 
 
 Moveth over 
 
 The thick pink sward of the cyclamen-blossoms. 
 
 Moveth and rustleth 
 
 With faint susurrus 
 
 The pale pink blooms 
 
 Of the fragrant Daphne. 
 
150 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 AT VEII 
 
 (" Crown of Etruria ") 
 
 Loud bloweth the Tramontana 
 
 O'er the uplands of Veii: 
 
 Shrill through the grasses 
 
 It whistles blithely, 
 
 Tossing the thistle-foam 
 
 Far o'er the pastures 
 
 Where the goat-skinn'd shepherd 
 
 Tendeth his sheep, 
 
 And the high hawk, swooping, 
 
 Drifteth his shadow 
 
 From slope to slope. 
 
 Here, when Rome lay 
 
 Crouch'd in her hollows 
 
 Where the Tiber lapped 
 
 The Hill of Saturn, 
 
 Veii the beautiful gleamed in the sunlight. 
 
 Here, in the springs 
 
 That bloomed as sweetly 
 
 Two thousand years since, 
 
AT VEII 
 
 151 
 
 As now when the blackbird 
 
 Calleth loudly 
 
 Where the Cremera surgeth 
 
 Through her hollow glen, 
 
 And rainbows are woven 
 
 Where the torrents vanish 
 
 Over mossed ledges. 
 
 White sheets of water 
 
 With emerald hearts: 
 
 Here, the Etrurian 
 
 Banner waved proudly. 
 
 Lordly and glorious, 
 
 Sovereign ever 
 
 From sea to sea. 
 
 Here the proud hosts 
 
 Laughed when the battle-cry 
 
 Rang through the highways. 
 
 And when from the towers 
 
 Of Veil the mighty 
 
 The herald-clarions 
 
 Sent a wild blast 
 
 On the wind of the morning, 
 
 A tumult of summons 
 
 To the flashing swords. 
 
 And the merciless rain 
 
 Of spears gleaming white 
 
 As hail on the hill-sides. 
 
 Here the fair city was decked as a maiden 
 
 Led forth as a bride, 
 
 With sunlit towers 
 
 And banners yellow 
 
152 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 With virgin gold, 
 
 And shrines of the holy ones 
 
 Aflame in the sun, 
 
 As the waters of ocean 
 
 When the blossom of morning 
 
 Swiftly unfolds in a myriad wavelets 
 
 Leaping and laughing in shining splendour. 
 
 Here now the dust bloweth 
 
 Where the Gods stood proudly, 
 
 Staring undaunted 
 
 Through the shadows of Tiber: 
 
 Here now the grasses 
 
 Wave, where the banners 
 
 Of ancient Etruria 
 
 Tossed i' the sun: 
 
 And where the clarions 
 
 Of the heralds rang. 
 
 The jay screameth 
 
 From her swaying bough. 
 
 Slowly the shepherd, 
 
 Like the moving shadow 
 
 Cast by the flock that followeth after, 
 
 Wandereth, heedless, 
 
 O'er the vast spaces: 
 
 Nor dreameth ever 
 
 Of what lies buried 
 
 Beneath the waste, 
 
 Though oft he wonders 
 
 When his foot striketh 
 
AT VEII 153 
 
 A rusty spear-head ; 
 
 Or when, from the mould, 
 
 A stone hand cometh. 
 
 As though the dead 
 
 Were stirring again 
 
 Where now the windblown foam of the thistles 
 
 Whitens the pastures of what was Veii. 
 
154 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 THE WILD MARE 
 
 Like a breath that comes and goes 
 
 O'er the waveless waste 
 
 Of sleeping Ocean, 
 
 So sweeps across the plain 
 
 The herd of wild horses. 
 
 Like banners in the wind 
 
 Their flying tails, 
 
 Their streaming manes: 
 
 And like spume of the sea 
 
 Fang'd by breakers, 
 
 The white froth tossed from their bloodred nostrils. 
 
 Out from the midst of them 
 
 Dasheth a white mare, 
 
 White as a swan in the pride of her beauty: 
 
 And, like the whirlwind, 
 
 Following after, 
 
 A snorting stallion, 
 
 Swart as an Indian 
 
 Diver of coral ! 
 
 Wild the gyrations, 
 
 The rush and the whirl; 
 
 Loud the hot panting 
 
 Of the snow-white mare. 
 
 As swift upon her 
 
THE WILD MARE 
 
 155 
 
 The stallion gaineth: 
 Fierce the proud snorting 
 Of him, victorious: 
 
 And loud, swelling loud on the wind from the mountains. 
 The hoarse savage tumult of neighing and stamping 
 Where, wheeling, the herd of wild horses awaiteth — 
 Ears thrown back, tails thrashing their flanks or swept 
 
 [under — 
 The challenging scream of the conqueror-stallion. 
 
156 SOSPIKI Dl ROMA 
 
 AUGUST AFTERNOON IN ROME 
 
 (From the Trastevere) 
 [To Theodore Roussel] 
 
 Dull yellow shot with molten gold 
 
 The Tiber flows. 
 
 Beneath the walls the flood moves azurely, 
 
 With purplish shadows where the bridge 
 
 Spans triple-arch'd the stream: 
 
 Brown on the hither bank an idle barge, 
 
 With tawny sails still damp with spray 
 
 Blown from Ligurian seas: 
 
 And far, in the middle-flood, adrift, unoar'd, 
 
 A narrow boat, swift-moving, black. 
 
 Follows the flowing wave like a living thing. 
 
 Full-flooded by the sun the houses lie 
 
 Across the stream. 
 
 Pale pink their walls, or touched to paler blue. 
 
 But wanly yellow most, or soft as cream 
 
 Brown-curdled in the heat. 
 
 Oft, too, the tall fagades asleep in the glow, 
 
 Are dusk'd by violet shadows, delicate 
 
 As the pale sheen of hyacinth-meadows where 
 
AUGUST AFTERNOON IN ROME 1 5 7. 
 
 The hills are glad with April wandering by. 
 Enmassed they stand, aglow, asleep: 
 The green blinds dosed, like folded leaves, 
 Like ivy-leaves close-cluster'd to the pale white bark 
 Of the tall Austral trees belov'd of those 
 Who dwell where the Three Fountains rise from 
 
 [deathly soil. 
 Hot in the yellow glare of the sun they stand, 
 The myriad houses, with their infinite hues. 
 
 The green blinds here loom dark: 
 
 Here emerald-bright as the young grass that springs 
 
 Beneath the blackthorn-blossoms snowing down. 
 
 Brown-black the flat bare roofs. 
 
 Save where, like floating flower-clouds, gardens glow 
 
 High-perch'd mid perilous ravines of wall. 
 
 With scarlet, orange, white, and fleeting gold. 
 
 In the deserted streets no passer-by 
 
 Throws a distorted phantom o'er the way. 
 
 Though in the. deep-blue shadow-side there drifts 
 
 A trickling stream of life. 
 
 Dim drowsy silence holds the day, for all 
 
 The water-seller sounding hollowly 
 
 His Fresca, acqiia f7-csca, frcd' e fresc! 
 
 Or melon-merchant shrilling loud and thin 
 
 His long fantastic cry. 
 
 Here, silence too: 
 
 Only the long slow wash 
 
 Of the dull wave of Tiber's murmurous flood. 
 
 At times a far-off bell 
 
158 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 Clangs, 
 
 And stillness comes again, as mists draw in. 
 
 Only the muffled voice 
 
 Of the wan, yellow, listless-moving stream — 
 
 And, hark, from yonder osteria, dim in shade, 
 
 The sudden, harsh, and dissonant jarring chords 
 
 Of a loose-strung guitar, 
 
 Twang'd idly for a few brief moments, ere 
 
 The half-sung song grows drowsier, and still. 
 
THE OLIVES OF TIVOLI 159 
 
 THE OLIVES OF TIVOLI 
 
 Grey as the swirl 
 
 Of spindrift flying 
 
 O'er windblown ice, 
 
 Gleam the myriad leaves of the olives, 
 
 When, surging from under, 
 
 The wind leapeth 
 
 And laughs amongst them. 
 
 Like the sea when the tides 
 
 Are lifting and rippling 
 
 The restless wavelets 
 
 Wandering shoreward, 
 
 When over them breaketh 
 
 In a glittering shining 
 
 The flood of moonlight. 
 
 So are the wind-twisted olives of Tivoli. 
 
 Green as the grasses 
 
 When Scirocco bloweth 
 
 Palely upon them, 
 
 The lower leaves: 
 
 But soft and white 
 
 As the down of an owlet. 
 
 Or wan grey feathery plumes of the snow-flakes, 
 
 The myriad upper 
 
 Shimmering wings 
 
l6o SOSPIRl DI ROMA 
 
 That wave like surf o'er the sea of the olives, 
 
 When, surging from under. 
 
 Where the plain darkles 
 
 In purpling mist, 
 
 The wind laughs 
 
 As he leapeth among them. 
 
SCIROCCO i6i 
 
 SCIROCCO 
 
 {Ju7ie) 
 
 Softly as feathers 
 
 That fall through the twilight 
 
 When wild swans are winging 
 
 Back to the northward : 
 
 Softly as waters, 
 
 Unruffled, and tideless. 
 
 Laving the mosses 
 
 Of inland seas: 
 
 Soft through the forest, 
 
 And down through the valley. 
 
 Light as a breath o'er the pools of the marish, 
 
 Still as a moonbeam over the pastures, 
 
 Goeth Scirocco. 
 
 Warm his breath: 
 
 The night-flowers know it, 
 
 Love it, and open 
 
 Their blooms for its sweetness: * 
 
 Warm the tender low wind of his pinions 
 
 Scarce brushing together the spires of the grasses: 
 
 Ah, how they whisper, the little green leaflets 
 
 Black in the dusk or grey in the moonlight: 
 
1 62 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 Ah, how they whisper and shiver, the tremulous 
 Leaves of the poplar, and shimmer and rustle 
 When soft as a vapour that steals from the marshes 
 The wings of Scirocco fan silently through them. 
 
 Ofttimes he lingers 
 
 By ruined nests 
 
 Deep in the hedgerows, 
 
 And bloweth a feather 
 
 In little eddies, 
 
 A yellow feather 
 
 That once had fluttered 
 
 On a breast alive with 
 
 A rapture of song: 
 
 But slowly ceaseth, 
 
 And passeth sadly. 
 
 Ofttimes he riseth 
 
 Up through the branches 
 
 Where the fireflies wander. 
 
 Up through the branches 
 
 Of oak and chestnut. 
 
 And stirs so gently 
 
 With sway of his wings 
 
 That the leaves, dreaming, 
 
 Think that a moonbeam 
 
 Only, or moonshine. 
 
 Moves through the heart of them. 
 
 Upward he soareth 
 
 Oft, silently floating 
 
 Through the purple ether. 
 
 Still as the fern-owl over the covert. 
 
SCIROCCO 163 
 
 Or as allocco haunting the woodland, 
 
 Up to the soft curded foam of the cloudlets, 
 
 The white dappled cloudlets the south-wind bringeth. 
 
 There, dreaming, he moveth 
 
 Or sails through the moonlight, 
 
 Till chill in the high upper air and the silence, 
 
 Slowly he sinketh 
 
 Earthward again. 
 
 Silently fioateth 
 
 Down o'er the woodlands: 
 
 Foldeth his wings and slow through the branches 
 
 Drifts, scarcely breathing, 
 
 Till tired, mid the flowers or the hedgerows he creepeth, 
 
 Whispers alow mid the spires of the grasses, 
 
 Or swooning at last to motionless slumber 
 
 Floats like a shadow adrift on the pastures. 
 
164 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 THE WIND AT FIDENAE 
 {To D. H. In Reinembrance) 
 
 Fresh from the Sabines, 
 
 The Beautiful Hills, 
 
 The wind bloweth. 
 
 Down o'er the slopes. 
 
 Where the olives whiten 
 
 As though the feet 
 
 Of the wind were snow-clad: 
 
 Out o'er the plain 
 
 Where a paradise 
 
 Of wild blooms waveth, 
 
 And where, in the sunswept 
 
 Leagues of azure, 
 
 A thousand larks are 
 
 As a thousand founts 
 
 Mid the perfect joy of 
 
 The depths of heaven. 
 
 Swift o'er the heights, 
 
 And over the valleys 
 
 Where the grey oxen sleepily stand, 
 
 Down, like a wild hawk swooping earthward, 
 
 Over the winding reaches of Tiber, 
 
 Bloweth the wind! 
 
THE WIND AT FIDENAE 1 65 
 
 How the wind bloweth, 
 
 Here on the steeps of 
 
 Ancient Fidenae, 
 
 Where no voice soundeth 
 
 Now, save the shepherd 
 
 Calling his sheep; 
 
 And where none wander 
 
 But only the cloud-shadows, 
 
 Vague ghosts of the past. 
 
 Sweet and fresh from the Sabincs, 
 
 Now as of yore, 
 
 When Etruscan maidens 
 
 Laughed as their lovers 
 
 Mocked the damsels 
 
 Of alien Rome, 
 
 Sweet with the same young breath o' the world 
 
 Bloweth the wind. 
 
l66 SOSPIRl DI ROMA 
 
 SORGENDO LA LUNA 
 
 No sound, 
 
 Save the hush'd breath, 
 
 The slowly flowing, 
 
 The long and low withdrawing breath of Rome. 
 
 Not a leaf quivers, where the dark. 
 
 With eyes of rayless shadow and moonlit hair. 
 
 Dreams in the black 
 
 And hollow cavernous depth of the ilex-trees. 
 
 No sound, 
 
 Save the hush'd breath of Rome, 
 
 And sweet and fresh and clear 
 
 The bubbling, swaying, ever quavering jet 
 
 Of water fill'd with pale nocturnal gleams. 
 
 That, in the broad low fount, 
 
 Falleth, 
 
 Falleth and riseth, 
 
 Riseth and falleth, swayeth and surgeth, ever 
 
 A spring of life and joy where ceaselessly 
 
 The shadow of two sovran powers make 
 
 A terror without fear, a night that hath no dark. 
 
 Time, with his sunlit wings. 
 
 Death, with his pinions vast and duskily dim: 
 
 Time, breathing vanishing life: 
 
 Death, breathing low 
 
 From twilicfhts of Oblivion whence Time rose 
 
SORGENDO LA LUNA 167 
 
 A wild and wandering star forlornly whirled, 
 
 Seen for a moment, ere for ever lost. 
 
 Up from the marble fount 
 
 The water leaps, 
 
 Sways in the moonshine, springeth, springeth, 
 
 Falleth and riseth, 
 
 Like sweet faint lapping music, 
 
 Soft gurgling notes of woodland brooks that wander 
 
 Low laughing where the hollowed stones are green 
 
 With slippery moss that hath a trickling sound: 
 
 Leapeth and springeth, 
 
 Singing forever 
 
 A wayward song. 
 
 While the vast wings of Time and Death drift slowly, 
 
 While, faint and far, the tides of life 
 
 Sigh in a long scarce audible breath from Rome, 
 
 Or faintlier still withdraw down shores of dusk; 
 
 For ever singing 
 
 It leapeth and falleth: 
 
 Falleth and leapeth, 
 
 Falleth, 
 
 And falleth. 
 
1 68 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 IN JULY 
 
 {South of Ro7ne) 
 
 Pale-rose the dust lying thick upon the road: 
 
 Grey-green the thirsty grasses by the way. 
 
 The long flat silvery sheen of the vast champaign 
 
 Shimmers beneath the blazing tide of noon. 
 
 The bloodred poppies flame 
 
 Like furnace-breaths: 
 
 Like wan vague dreams the misty lavender 
 
 Drifts greyly through the quivering maze, or seems 
 
 Thus through the visionary glow to drift. 
 
 On the far slope, beyond the ruin'd arch, 
 
 A grey-white cloudlet rests, 
 
 The cluster'd sheep alow: close, moveless all, 
 
 And silent, save when faintly from their midst 
 
 A slumberous tinkle comes, 
 
 Cometh, and goeth. 
 
 Low-stretch'd in the blue shade. 
 
 Beneath the ruin, 
 
 The shepherd sleeps. 
 
 Nought stirs. 
 
 The wind moves not, nor with the faintest breath 
 
 Toucheth the half-fallen blooms of the asphodels. 
 
 Here only, where the pale pink ash 
 
 Of the long road doth slowly flush to rose, 
 
 A bronze-wing'd beetle moveth low, 
 
 And sends one tiny puff of smoke-like dust 
 
 Faint through the golden glimmer of the heat. 
 
THE NAKED RIDER 1 69 
 
 THE NAKED RIDER 
 
 Through the dark gorge 
 With its diffs of basalt, 
 The rider conies. 
 The sunlight floodeth 
 The breast of the hill. 
 And all the mouth 
 Of the sullen pass 
 Is light with the foam of 
 A thousand blooms 
 Of the white narcissi, 
 With a waving sea 
 Of asphodels. 
 
 On a white horse, 
 
 A cream-white stallion 
 
 With bloodred nostrils 
 
 And wild dark eyes, 
 
 The naked rider 
 
 Laughs as he cometh. 
 
 And hails the sunlight breaking upon him. 
 
 Full breaks the flood 
 
 Of the yellow light 
 
 On the naked youth. 
 
lyo SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 Glowing, as ivory 
 
 In the amber of moonrise 
 
 In the violet eves 
 
 Of August-tides. 
 
 Dark as the heart of a hill-lake his tresses, 
 
 Scarlet the crown of the poppies inwoven 
 
 r the thick wavy hair that crowneth his whiteness, 
 
 Strong the white arms, 
 
 The broad heaving breast. 
 
 The tent thighs guiding 
 
 The mighty stallion. 
 
 Out from the gloom 
 
 Of the mountain valley, 
 
 Where cliffs of basalt 
 
 Make noontide twilight. 
 
 And where the grey bat 
 
 Swingeth his heavy wings, 
 
 And echo reverberates 
 
 The screams of the falcons: 
 
 Where nought else soundeth 
 
 Save the surge or the moaning 
 
 Of mountain-winds. 
 
 Or the long crash and rattle 
 
 Of falling stones 
 
 Spurned by the hill fox 
 
 Seeking his hollow lair: 
 
 Out from the gorge 
 
 Into the sunlight, 
 
 To the glowing world. 
 
 To the flowers and the birds 
 
THE NAKED RIDER I? I 
 
 And the west wind laden 
 
 With the breaths of rosemary, basil, and thyme — 
 
 Comes the white rider. 
 
 The naked youth 
 
 Glowing like ivory 
 
 In the yellow sunshine. 
 
 Beautiful, beautiful, this youth of the mountain, 
 
 Laughing low as he rideth 
 
 Forth to the sunlight. 
 
 The scarlet poppies agleam in his tresses 
 
 Dark as the thick-cluster'd grapes of the ivy; 
 
 While over the foam 
 
 Of the sea of narcissi. 
 
 And high through the surf 
 
 Of the asphodels, 
 
 Trampleth, and snorteth 
 
 From his bloodred nostrils, 
 
 The cream-white stallion. 
 
172 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 THE FALLEN GODDESS 
 
 {On a Statue of Vemis, found ttear Ansio (Antium) on the 
 Latin Coast, and now in a Church as the Aladonna 
 of the Seven Sorrows) 
 
 Not here, O Goddess, 
 
 In these chill glooms 
 
 With silence about thee — 
 
 Save when at matins or dusk o' the evensong 
 
 The priests mutter 
 
 Or chant the Mass, 
 
 And the few tired peasants 
 
 Pray with bent heads, 
 
 Lost in the stillness. 
 
 Lost in the gloom — y^ 
 
 Not here, O Goddess, 
 
 Thy resting-place. 
 
 Who, ages ago. 
 
 When the world was young. 
 
 Stood where the myrtles and roses were blooming. 
 
 Stood where the dayshine was rising and flooding 
 
 Up from the purple-blue flower of the ocean, 
 
 Flooding and rising till all of the inland 
 
 Glowed in the splendour, and valley and mountain 
 
 Laughed with the joy of the world's young laughter. 
 
THE FALLEN GODDESS 1 73 
 
 Ah, when about thee. 
 
 The roses were twined, 
 
 When thy feet were covered 
 
 With roses and HHes, 
 
 When low before thee, 
 
 Fresh pluckt by thy fountain, 
 
 Lay sweet-smelHng violets — 
 
 And, kneeling before thee. 
 
 The lovers prayed. 
 
 He wan as ivory 
 
 Found where the sources 
 
 Of Nilus wander 
 
 In swart Ethiopia, 
 
 She as the nenuphar 
 
 Waked by the moonlight 
 
 Flooding the river, as 
 
 Duskily moving 
 
 In coils gigantic 
 
 It flows through the desert, 
 
 Where the Sphinx broodeth 
 
 And where, at dawn. 
 
 The voice of Memnon 
 
 Solemnly calls — 
 
 Ah, when beside thee, 
 
 The lovers prayed, 
 
 And thy heart was stirred 
 
 With the wind of their love. 
 
 With passion and longing 
 
 And sweet desire — 
 
 Ah, in that moment. 
 
 Did some dark shadow 
 
74 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 From Time unborn 
 
 Dusk thy glad vision ? 
 
 Didst tliou, upon them, 
 
 Kneeling before thee. 
 
 Frown, and heed not 
 
 The prayer they made: 
 
 In thy heart the ache 
 
 And a deathless sorrow 
 
 That made their passion 
 
 A bitter folly? 
 
 What unto thee, then, 
 
 O Venus, Goddess, 
 
 The roses and lilies 
 
 Entwined about thee, 
 
 The fragrant violets 
 
 Freshly gathered 
 
 With the spray o' thy fountain 
 
 Dew-sprent o'er them; 
 
 What then to thee 
 
 Thy myrtle-grove, 
 
 Thy doves and sparrows 
 
 Fluttering about thee. 
 
 Fluttering, flying 
 
 Through the azure air — 
 
 What, O Goddess, 
 
 Thy worshippers pale, 
 
 He with the passion 
 
 Aflame in his eyes. 
 
 She with the longing 
 
 Astir in her bosom, 
 
 Whose two white flowers 
 
THE FALLEN GODDESS 1 75 
 
 Are pressed against thee 
 
 Where the violets cover 
 
 And cloud thy feet ? 
 
 Foresawest thou ever. 
 
 At morn or dusk, 
 
 With lovers praying 
 
 And garlanding thee 
 
 With the flowers thou lovest. 
 
 Or when in the silent 
 
 Depths o' the night 
 
 Thy vigils knew not 
 
 A stir, a whisper. 
 
 But all was darkness 
 
 And brooding peace, 
 
 Forsawest thou ever 
 
 Thy doom to be ? 
 
 The veils of darkness 
 
 That yet would cover 
 
 The earth thou lovest, 
 
 The passing of all 
 
 The joyous gods. 
 
 And slowly, slowly 
 
 Across the world 
 
 The chilling shadow 
 
 Fall of the Cross ? 
 
 Ah, better that after 
 Thy doom had fallen 
 And thenceforth lovers 
 Sought thee no more, 
 And only the wild doves 
 
176 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 Hovered about thee, 
 
 Only the sparrows 
 
 Out of the wildwood 
 
 Fluttered about thine uncrown'd forehead, 
 
 Only the wild-rose clambered around thee, 
 
 Only the hyacinths out of the woodland 
 
 Stole through the grasses 
 
 And decked thee and girt thee — 
 
 Better that after 
 
 The fierce barbarians 
 
 Thrust thee prostrate 
 
 With laughter and mocking. 
 
 And left thee, there, 
 
 In the Groves of Venus, 
 
 A thing dishonoured, 
 
 A Fallen Goddess, — 
 
 Better that then 
 
 The weeds had gathered 
 
 And swift o'ergrown thee, 
 
 And leaves of autumn. 
 
 And dust o' the wind. 
 
 And earth and mosses, 
 
 Had swallowed thee up. 
 
 Had hidden thee ever. 
 
 There in thy sorrow. 
 
 There in thy dream. 
 
 With none to know of thee. 
 
 None to mourn, 
 
 Save only the wild-dove brooding alone. 
 
 Only the song-birds lost in the thicket. 
 
 Only the hyacinths, lilies, and roses. 
 
 Only the grasses that wave round thy fountain, 
 
THE FALLEN GODDESS 177 
 
 Only the violets, purple, sweet-smelling, 
 
 Deep in the heart of them, lost in their twilight. 
 
 Harsh fate for thee, 
 
 Goddess, not thus to have lain 
 
 In the mould and the darkness 
 
 Till at last, in the far-off. 
 
 The slow revolution 
 
 Of ages or eons 
 
 Should bring thee, awaking, 
 
 The sound of rejoicing ! 
 
 When all thy white kindred 
 
 Should gather about thee. 
 
 With songs and laughter. 
 
 And greet thee, and bless thee, 
 
 And woo thee with longing and rapture and kisses. 
 
 While joyous behind them, 
 
 From mountain and valley 
 
 And up from the shores of 
 
 The vast flower of Ocean, 
 
 White-robed lovers should hasten and follow, 
 
 Hands claspt in hands, 
 
 With baskets of roses 
 
 And lilies for thee, 
 
 And doves soft and snowwhite 
 
 As these, thy white breasts, 
 
 And prayers, and incense 
 
 Of violets fragrant, 
 
 Fresh-gathered violets smelling of thee: 
 
 Then, then, would'st thou stir 
 
 In the dark mould about thee, 
 
178 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 And sweet in the woodland 
 
 The wild-doves would murmur, 
 
 And swift in the thicket the song-birds would gather, 
 
 And all from about thee the darkness would lessen. 
 
 Up through the grasses, and where the wild hyacinths 
 
 Cluster en massed in a hollow of blueness. 
 
 And where the wild-roses are raining their petals 
 
 Down through the fragrant green boughs of their tangle 
 
 Up through the midst of them, white as a seabird 
 
 Rising from out of the joy of the billows, 
 
 Swift would arise, like a flower too, thine arm: 
 
 Then from the tangle of roses and grasses — 
 
 O but the joy of it ! white gleaming shoulders. 
 
 Head with the halo of empire about it. 
 
 Eyes deep with the dream of the secrets of life. 
 
 And firm breasts white as the milk held within 
 
 [them — 
 O body of beauty, O Venus, O Goddess 
 Thus, thus would thy birth be, thy glad resurrection ! 
 
 Ah better that after 
 
 Thy doom had fallen 
 
 Thou hadst not waken'd, 
 
 O Goddess, more! 
 
 Better that never 
 
 The Roman warriors 
 
 Staring upon thee 
 
 Beheld thy beauty 
 
 And laughed to see it. 
 
 And took thee and haled thee 
 
 Far from thy grove, 
 
THE FALLEN GODDESS 1 79 
 
 And girt thee with rushes and flags from the sea-shore, 
 And laid thee a captive deep down in a war-boat, 
 And heedless of wrath or of vengeance from heaven 
 Carried thee far through the waters Ionian, 
 Up through the wide lonely waste of the Tyrrhene, 
 Till dim through the haze, like a cloud at the dawning. 
 The low shores of Latium 
 Blue rose before thee. 
 
 Was it for this, 
 
 O Venus, Goddess, 
 
 That thou hast passioned ? 
 
 O bitter lust 
 
 Of a joyless faith, 
 
 That mocketh beauty 
 
 And laudeth the grave : 
 
 What thing is this, 
 
 What bitter mocking. 
 
 That thou hast taken 
 
 The sacred Goddess 
 
 And raised her darkling 
 
 Here in thy temple. 
 
 Midst tawdry idols 
 
 And childish things — 
 
 Hast placed upon her 
 
 Immaculate brows 
 
 This tinsel crown; 
 
 And hung about her 
 
 These pitiful robes 
 
 That a slave would have scorned 
 
 In the olden days 
 
l8o SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 When men loved beauty 
 
 For beauty's sake: 
 
 Hast decked her bosom 
 
 (O Heart of Love!) 
 
 With a thing shaped heart-wise 
 
 And seven times pierced 
 
 With brazen arrows. 
 
 Hast stolen thy name, even, Goddess, Venus, 
 
 And called thee Mother 
 
 Of a God thou know'st not. 
 
 Called thee Madonna, the Mother of Sorrows, 
 
 Called thee the Virgin of Sorrows Seven — 
 
 Was it for this — 
 
 Ah, better a thousand times 
 
 They had wrought thy havoc, 
 
 There, in the heart of 
 
 Thy sacred grove: 
 
 Better — O bitterness 
 
 Of things that are, 
 
 Goddess, and Queen! 
 
DE PROFUNDIS l8l 
 
 DE PROFUNDIS 
 
 Whence hast thou gone, 
 O vision beloved ? 
 There is silence now 
 In thy groves, and never 
 A voice proclaimeth 
 Thy glory come, 
 Thy joy rearisen! 
 
 O passion of beauty. 
 
 Forsake not thus 
 
 Those who have worshipped theie. 
 
 Body and soul ! 
 
 Come to us, come to us. 
 
 Inviolate, Beautiful, 
 
 Thou whose breath 
 
 Is as Spring o'er the world. 
 
 Whose smile is the flowering 
 
 Of the wide green Earth! 
 
 Deep in the heart of thee. 
 
 Like a moonbeam moving 
 
 Through the heart of a hill-lake, 
 
 Moveth Compassion: 
 
 O Beloved, 
 
 Be with us ever, 
 
 Thou, the Beautiful, 
 
 Passion of Beauty, 
 
 Alma Victrix! 
 
[82 SOSPIRI DI ROMA 
 
 ULTIMO SOSPIRO 
 
 O dolce primavera pien' di olezzo e amor! 
 Che fai tu che fai fra tanti fior? 
 
 Colgo le rose amabili dei piu soavi odori; 
 Colgo le rose affabili e i lunghi gelsomini, 
 Nei olenti miei giardini io vi tengo al cor. 
 
 Roman Folksong. 
 
 Joy of the world, 
 O flower-crown 'd Spring, 
 
 With thine odorous breath and thy heart of love. 
 Breathe through this verse thy sweet message of longing. 
 Lo, in the groves of Dream, whose lovers 
 Die gladly in worship, but fail not ever. 
 Oft have I strayed. 
 Oft have I lingered 
 
 When high through the noon the lost lark has been 
 
 [singing. 
 Or when in the moonlight 
 
 Soft through the silence has whispered the ocean, 
 Or when, in the dark 
 Of the ilex-woods, 
 Where the fireflies wavered 
 Frail wandering stars, 
 Not a sound has been heard 
 But Scirocco rustling 
 The midmost leaves 
 Of the trees where he sleepeth. 
 
ULTIMO SOSPIRO 1 83 
 
 Roses of love, 
 
 White lilies of dream, 
 
 Frail blooms that have blossom 'd 
 
 Into life with thy breathing: 
 
 Blow them, O wind. 
 
 West wind of the Spring, 
 
 Lift them and take them where gardens await them, 
 
 Lift them and take them to those who hearken, 
 
 Facing the dawn, for the sounds of the morning, 
 
 W^ith wide eyes glad with the beautiful vision, 
 
 O whispers of joy, 
 
 O breaths of passion, 
 
 O sighs of longing. 
 
1 84 EPILOGUE 
 
 Epilogue 
 IL BO SCO SACRO 
 
 (TO 
 
 Ah, the sweet silence : 
 Not a breath stirreth : 
 Scarce a leaf moveth. 
 
 The Dusk, as a dreain. 
 Steals slowly, slowly. 
 With shadowy feet 
 Ujider the branches 
 Here, in the woodland. 
 Hushfully seeking 
 The Night, her lover. 
 
 Sweet are the odours 
 Breathed through the twilight. 
 Lovely spirits 
 Of lo7iely things. 
 One by one 
 
 Forth-shimjner white stars 
 Beyo7id the skiey 
 Boughs of the chestnuts. 
 Pale phosphorescence 
 
IL BOSCO SACRO 1 85 
 
 Gleaiimig and glancing 
 As in the wake 
 Of a windspent vessel 
 That, vioonlike, drifts 
 With motionless motion. 
 
 Peace : utter peace. 
 
 Not a sou7id riseth 
 
 From where in the hollow 
 
 The town lies dreaming : 
 
 Not a cry from the pastifres 
 
 That far below 
 
 Are drowsed in the shadozus. 
 
 Only afar. 
 
 On the dim Campagna, 
 
 Peace, titter peace : 
 
 On the pastures, peace ; 
 
 Low in the hollows. 
 
 Deep i7L the ivoodlands. 
 
 High 071 the hill-slopes. 
 
 Rest, utter rest. 
 
 Utter peace. 
 
 Suddenly thrilli7ig 
 
 Long-draw7i vibratio7is ! 
 
 Passio7iate preludes 
 
 Of passio7iate song / 
 
 O the wild 77iusic ^ 
 
 To9t through the sile7ice. 
 
 As a swayi7ig fou7ttai7i 
 
 Is swept by the wi7id's wings 
 
 Far through the simshi7ie. 
 
l86 EPILOGUE 
 
 A mist of fiashing 
 Andfalliug spray. 
 How the hush of the stillness 
 
 Deepeiieth sloiuly 
 
 Till never, never 
 
 Can pain and rapture 
 
 So wild a music. 
 
 So sweet a song. 
 
 List in the moonlight — 
 
 Listen agaiji 
 
 O 7iever, tiever ! 
 
 O heart, still thy beating : 
 O bird, thy song I 
 Too deep the rapture 
 Of this new sorrow. 
 White falls the moonshine 
 Here, where we gather d 
 The snow-ptire blossoms. 
 The Flowers of Dream : 
 Here, when the sunlight 
 On that glad day 
 Flooded the mosses 
 
 With golden wine. 
 And deep in the forest 
 Joy passed us, laughing. 
 Laughing low. 
 
 While ever behind her 
 Rose lovely, delicate, 
 Beazctiful, beautiful, 
 
 The fadeless blossoms. 
 
 The Flowers of Drea7n. 
 
£L BOSCO SACRO 1 87 
 
 Be still, O beating, 
 O yearning heart / 
 Here there is silence . . 
 
 Silence Silence 
 
 O beating heart / 
 
 Here, in the sunshine. 
 Together we gather d 
 The perfect blooms : 
 And now in the gloaming. 
 Here, where the moo7ilight. 
 Lies like white foant o?t 
 The dark tides of night. 
 Here is one only, 
 Lo7iging forever. 
 Longing, longing 
 With passion aiid pain. 
 
 Co7ne, O Beloved ! 
 
 O heart, be still I 
 
 Nay, through the silence 
 
 Cometh no answer. 
 
 But 07ily, only 
 
 The sweet subsiding 
 
 Of this wild strain 
 
 Now lost in the thickets 
 
 Doivn in the hollows. 
 
 Hark rapture out7vclling / 
 
 O song of joy / 
 
 Glad voice of my passion 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 Singing there 
 Out of the heart of 
 The fragrant darkjiess! 
 O flowers at my feet. 
 White beautiful flowers. 
 That whisper, whisper 
 My soul's desire / 
 O never, nen/er 
 Lost though afar. 
 My Joy, my Dreain ! 
 
 Too deep the rapture 
 Of this sweet sorrow, 
 Of this glad paiti : 
 O heart, still thy beating, 
 O bird, thy song !