Stay then, stoop, since I cannot climb,
You, great shapes of the antique time!
How shall I fix you, fire you, freeze you,
Break my heart at your feet to please you?
O to possess, and be possessed!

Hearts that beat 'neath each pallid breast!
But once of love, the poesy, the passion,

Drink once and die! — In vain, the same fashion,
They circle their rose on my rose-tree.

Dear rose, thy joy's undimmed;
Thy cup is ruby-rimmed,

Thy cup's heart.nectar-brimmed.

Deep as drops from a statue's plinth
The bee sucked in by the hyacinth,
So will I bury me while burning,
Quench like him at a plunge my yearning,
Eyes in your eyes, lips on your lips!
Fold me fast where the cincture slips,

Prison all my soul in eternities of pleasure!

Girdle me once! But no,- in their old measure

They circle their rose on my rose-tree.

Dear rose without a thorn,

Thy bud's the babe unborn,

First streak of a new morn.

Wings, lend wings for the cold, the clear!
What's far conquers what is near.

Roses will bloom nor want beholders,

Sprung from the dust where our own flesh moulders. What shall arrive with the cycle's change?

A novel grace and a beauty strange.

I will make an Eve, be the artist that began her, Shaped her to his mind! - Alas! in like manner They circle their rose on my rose-tree.

THE GUARDIAN-ANGEL.

75

THE GUARDIAN-ANGEL:

A PICTURE AT FANO.

EAR and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave

DE

That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!

Let me sit all the day here, that when eve

Shall find performed thy special ministry
And time come for departure, thou, suspending
Thy flight, may'st see another child for tending,
Another still, to quiet and retrieve.

Then I shall feel thee step one step, no more,
From where thou standest now, to where I gaze,
And suddenly my head be covered o'er

With those wings, white above the child who prays
Now on that tomb, - and I shall feel thee guarding
Me, out of all the world; for me, discarding

Yon heaven thy home, that waits and opes its door!

I would not look up thither past thy head

Because the door opes, like that child, I know,
For I should have thy gracious face instead,

Thou bird of God! And wilt thou bend me low
Like him, and lay, like his, my hands together,
And lift them up to pray, and gently tether

Me, as thy lamb there, with thy garment's spread?

If this was ever granted, I would rest

My head beneath thine, while thy healing hands Close-covered both my eyes beside thy breast,

Pressing the brain, which too much thought expands,

Back to its proper size again, and smoothing

Distortion down till every nerve had soothing,

And all lay quiet, happy, and supprest.

How soon all worldly wrong would be repaired!
I think how I should view the earth and skies
And sea, when once again my brow was bared
After thy healing, with such different eyes.
O world, as God has made it! all is beauty:
And knowing this, is love, and love is duty.
What further may be sought for or declared?

Guercino drew this angel I saw teach

(Alfred, dear friend,) — that little child to pray, Holding the little hands up, each to each

-

Pressed gently, with his own head turned away
Over the earth where so much lay before him
Of work to do, though heaven was opening o'er him,
And he was left at Fano by the beach.

We were at Fano, and three times we went
To sit and see him in his chapel there,

And drink his beauty to our soul's content,

- My angel with me too: and since I care

For dear Guercino's fame, (to which in power
And glory comes this picture for a dower,
Fraught with a pathos so magnificent,)

And since he did not work so earnestly

At all times, and has else endured some wrong, I took one thought his picture struck from me, And spread it out, translating it to song. My Love is here. Where are you, dear old friend? How rolls the Wairoa at your world's far end? This is Ancona, yonder is the sea.

TWO IN THE CAMPAGNA.

T

TWO IN THE CAMPAGNA.

WONDER do you feel to-day

As I have felt, since, hand in hand,

We sat down on the grass, to stray

In spirit better through the land,
This morn of Rome and May?

For me, I touched a thought, I know,
Has tantalized me many times,
(Like turns of thread the spiders throw
Mocking across our path) for rhymes
To catch at and let go.

Help me to hold it: first it left

The yellowing fennel, run to seed

There, branching from the brickwork's cleft,
Some old tomb's ruin: yonder weed

Took up the floating weft,

Where one small orange cup amassed

Five beetles, -blind and green they grope Among the honey-meal, and last

-

Everywhere on the grassy slope

I traced it. Hold it fast!

The champaign with its endless fleece
Of feathery grasses everywhere!
Silence and passion, joy and peace,
An everlasting wash of air,

Rome's ghost since her decease.

Such life there, through such lengths of hours,
Such miracles performed in play,

Such primal naked forms of flowers,
Such letting Nature have her way
While Heaven looks from its towers.

How say you? Let us, O my dove,
Let us be unashamed of soul,
As earth lies bare to heaven above.
How is it under our control

To love or not to love?

I would that you were all to me,
You that are just so much, no more,
Nor yours, nor mine, -nor slave, nor free!
Where does the fault lie? what the core
Of the wound, since wound must be?

I would I could adopt your will,

See with your eyes, and set my heart Beating by yours, and drink my fill

At your soul's springs, - your part, my part In life, for good and ill.

No. I yearn upward, — touch you close, Then stand away. I kiss your cheek, Catch your soul's warmth, — I pluck the rose And love it more than tongue can speak, — Then the good minute goes.

Already how am I so far

Out of that minute?

Must I go

Still like the thistle-ball, no bar,

Onward, whenever light winds blow,

Fixed by no friendly star?

Just when I seemed about to learn!

Where is the thread now? The old trick! Only I discern

Infinite passion and the pain of finite hearts that yearn.

Off again!