IN ev'ry age, at Naples, we are told,
Intrigue and gallantry reign uncontrolled;
With beauteous objects in abundance blessed.
No country round so many has possessed;
Such fascinating charms the FAIR disclose,
That irresistibly soft passion flows.

'MONG these a belle, enchanting to behold,
Was loved by one, of birth and store of gold;
Minutolo (and Richard) was his name,
In Cupid's train a youth of brilliant fame:
'Tween Rome and Paris none was more gallant,
And num'rous hearts were for him known to pant.

CATELLA (thus was called our lady fair,)
So long, howe'er, resisted Richard's snare,
That prayers, and vows, and promises were vain;
A favour Minutolo could not gain.
At length, our hero weary, coldness showed,
And dropt attendance, since no k...

O Love Divine, that stooped to share
Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear,
On Thee we cast each earth-born care,
We smile at pain while Thou art near!

Though long the weary way we tread,
And sorrow crown each lingering year,
No path we shun, no darkness dread,
Our hearts still whispering, Thou art near!

When drooping pleasure turns to grief,
And trembling faith is changed to fear,
The murmuring wind, the quivering leaf,
Shall softly tell us, Thou art near!

On Thee we fling our burdening woe,
O Love Divine, forever dear,
Content to suffer while we know,
Living and dying, Thou art near!

I now will endeavor, while fresh in my mind,
My Sabbath School Class to portray;
The theme's furnished for me, I've only to find
Colors to blend, their forms to display.

And first on the canvass we'll Adeline place,
With her full and expressive dark eye;
Decision of purpose is stamped on that face,
And good scholarship too we descry.

Next in order comes Alice, with bright sunny smile,
That does one's heart good to behold;
May the sorrows of life ne'er that young spirit blight,
Nor that heart be less cheerful when old.

But who's this that we see, with that mild pensive air,
And a look so expressively kind?
It is Ann, gentle Ann, before whom we pass by,
We will add - 't would be useless in any to try
Disposition more lovely to find.

...

The young see heaven - but to the old who wait
    The final call, the hills of youth arise
    More beautiful than shores of Paradise.
Beside a glowing and voracious grate
    A dozing couple dream of yesterday;
The islands of a vanished past appear,
Bringing forgotten names and faces near;
    While lost in mist, the present fades away.
The fragrant winds of tender memories blow
    Across the gardens of the "Used-to-be!"
    They smile into each other's eyes, and see
The bride and bridegroom of the long ago.
    And tremulous lips, pressed close to faded cheek
    Love's silent tale of deathless passion speak.

Dear love, if you and I could sail away,
    With snowy pennons to the winds unfurled,
Across the waters of some unknown bay,
    And find some island far from all the world;

If we could dwell there, evermore alone,
    While unrecorded years slip by apace,
Forgetting and forgotten and unknown
    By aught save native song-birds of the place;

If Winter never visited that land,
    And Summer's lap spilled o'er with fruits and flowers,
And tropic trees cast shade on every hand,
    And twined boughs formed sleep-inviting bowers;

If from the fashions of the world set free,
    And hid away from all its jealous strife,
I lived alone for you, and you for me -
    Ah! then, dear love, how sweet were wedded life.

But since we dwell here in th...

A sense of sadness in the golden air;
A pensiveness, that has no part in care,
As if the Season, by some woodland pool,
Braiding the early blossoms in her hair,
Seeing her loveliness reflected there,
Had sighed to find herself so beautiful.

A breathlessness; a feeling as of fear;
Holy and dim, as of a mystery near,
As if the World, about us, whispering went
With lifted finger and hand-hollowed ear,
Hearkening a music, that we cannot hear,
Haunting the quickening earth and firmament.

A prescience of the soul that has no name;
Expectancy that is both wild and tame,
As if the Earth, from out its azure ring
Of heavens, looked to see, as white as flame, -
As Perseus once to chained Andromeda came, -
The swift, divine revealment of the Spring.

So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-season’d showers are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As ’twixt a miser and his wealth is found.
Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then better’d that the world may see my pleasure:
Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,
And by and by clean starved for a look;
Possessing or pursuing no delight,
Save what is had, or must from you be took.
Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
Or gluttoning on all, or all away.

I lay upon the headland-height, and listened
To the incessant sobbing of the sea
    In caverns under me,
And watched the waves, that tossed and fled and glistened,
Until the rolling meadows of amethyst
    Melted away in mist.

Then suddenly, as one from sleep, I started;
For round about me all the sunny capes
    Seemed peopled with the shapes
Of those whom I had known in days departed,
Apparelled in the loveliness which gleams
    On faces seen in dreams.

A moment only, and the light and glory
Faded away, and the disconsolate shore
    Stood lonely as before;
And the wild-roses of the promontory
Around me shuddered in the wind, and shed
    Their petals of pale red.

There was an old belief that in the embers
Of all things the...

Che fai, alma? che pensi? avrem mai pace?

DIALOGUE OF THE POET WITH HIS HEART.


P.    What actions fire thee, and what musings fill?
        Soul! is it peace, or truce, or war eterne?
H. Our lot I know not, but, as I discern,
        Her bright eyes favour not our cherish'd ill.
P. What profit, with those eyes if she at will
        Makes us in summer freeze, in winter burn?
H. From him, not her those orbs their movement learn.
P. What's he to us, she sees it and is still.
H. Sometimes, though mute the tongue, the heart laments
        Fondly, and, though the face be calm and bright,
        Bleeds inly, where no eye beholds its grief.
P. Nathless the mind not thus itself contents,
        Breakin...

I am not sorry for my soul
That it must go unsatisfied,
For it can live a thousand times,
Eternity is deep and wide.

I am not sorry for my soul,
But oh, my body that must go
Back to a little drift of dust
Without the joy it longed to know.

Our feet have wandered, wandered far and wide,--
His mercy endureth for ever!
From that strait path in which the Master died,--
His mercy endureth for ever!
Low have we fallen from our high estate,
Long have we lingered, lingered long and late;
But the tenderness of God
Is from age to age the same,
And His Mercy endureth for ever!

There is no sin His Love can not forgive;--
His mercy endureth for ever!
No soul so stained His Love will not receive;
His mercy endureth for ever!
No load of sorrow but His touch can move,
No hedge of thorns that can withstand His Love;
For the tenderness of God
Is from age to age the same,
And His Mercy endureth for ever!

So we will sing, whatever may betide;--

Baroque, but beautiful, between the lunes,
The valves of nacre of a mussel-shell,
Behold, a pearl! shaped like the burnished bell
Of some strange blossom that long afternoons
Of summer coax to open: all the moon's
Chaste lustre in it; hues that only dwell
With purity … It takes me, like a spell,
Back to a day when, whistling truant tunes,
A barefoot boy I waded 'mid the rocks,
Searching for shells deep in the creek's slow swirl,
Unconscious of the pearls that 'round me lay:
While, 'mid wild-roses, all her tomboy locks
Blond-blowing, stood, unnoticed then, a girl,
My sweetheart once, the pearl I flung away.

Far in the purple valleys of illusion
I see her waiting, like the soul of music,
With deep eyes, lovelier than cerulean pansies,
Shadow and fire, yet merciless as poison;
With red lips sweeter than Arabian storax,
Yet bitterer than myrrh. O tears and kisses!
O eyes and lips, that haunt my soul for ever!
Again Spring walks transcendent on the mountains:
The woods are hushed: the vales are blue with shadows:
Above the heights, steeped in a thousand splendours,
Like some vast canvas of the gods, hangs burning
The sunset's wild sciography: and slowly
The moon treads heaven's proscenium, night's stately
White queen of love and tragedy and madness.
Again I know forgotten dreams and longings;
Ideals lost; desires dead and buried
Beside the altar sacrifice erected

        The impulse of all love is to create.
    God was so full of love, in his embrace
    He clasped the empty nothingness of space,
        And low! the solar system! High in state
        The mighty sun sat, so supreme and great
    With this same essence, one smile of its face
    Brought myriad forms of life forth; race on race,
        From insects up to men.

    Through love, not hate,
        All that is grand in nature or in art
    Sprang into being. He who would build sublime
    And lasting works, to stand the test of time,
        Must inspiration draw from his full heart.
    And he who loveth widely, well, and much,
    The secret holds of the true master touch.

O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
Dost hold Time’s fickle glass, his fickle hour;
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st
Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow’st.
If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill.
Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure!
She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure:
Her audit (though delayed) answered must be,
And her quietus is to render thee.

I.

Queen, for whose house my fathers fought,
With hopes that rose and fell,
Red star of boyhood’s fiery thought,
Farewell

They gave their lives, and I, my queen,
Have given you of my life,
Seeing your brave star burn high between
Men’s strife.

The strife that lightened round their spears
Long since fell still: so long
Hardly may hope to last in years
My song.

But still through strife of time and thought
Your light on me too fell:
Queen, in whose name we sang or fought,
Farewell.

II.

There beats no heart on either border
Wherethrough the north blasts blow
But keeps your memory as a warder
His beacon-fire aglow.

Long since it fired with love and wonder
Mine, for whose April age
Bli...

I went and stood outside myself,
Spelled the dark sky
And ship-lights nigh,
And grumbling winds that passed thereby.

Then next inside myself I looked,
And there, above
All, shone my Love,
That nothing matched the image of.

Beyond myself again I ranged;
And saw the free
Life by the sea,
And folk indifferent to me.

O 'twas a charm to draw within
Thereafter, where
But she was; care
For one thing only, her hid there!

But so it chanced, without myself
I had to look,
And then I took
More heed of what I had long forsook:

The boats, the sands, the esplanade,
The laughing crowd;
Light-hearted, loud
Greetings from some not ill-endowed;

The evening sunlit cliffs, the talk,
Hailings and halts...

"It is the future generation that presses into being by means of
these exuberant feelings and supersensible soap bubbles of ours."
Schopenhauer

"The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open.
Our magnolia blossoms. Life begins to happen.
My hopped up husband drops his home disputes,
and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,
free-lancing out along the razor's edge.
This screwball might kill his wife, then take the pledge.
Oh the monotonous meanness of his lust...
It's the injustice... he is so unjust
whiskey-blind, swaggering home at five.
My only thought is how to keep alive.
What makes him tick? Each night now I tie
ten dollars and his car key to my thigh....
Gored by the climacteric of his want,
he stalls above me like an elephant."