Part 10 (1/2)
THE silk sail fills, the soft winds wake, Arise and tempt the seas; Our ocean is the Palace lake, Our waves the ripples that we make Among the mirrored trees.
ELLE.
Nay, sweet the sh.o.r.e, and sweet the song, And dear the languid dream; The music mingled all day long With paces of the dancing throng, And murmur of the stream.
An hour ago, an hour ago, We rested in the shade; And now, why should we seek to know What way the wilful waters flow?
There is no fairer glade.
LUI.
Nay, pleasure flits, and we must sail, And seek him everywhere; Perchance in sunset's golden pale He listens to the nightingale, Amid the perfumed air.
Come, he has fled; you are not you, And I no more am I; Delight is changeful as the hue Of heaven, that is no longer blue In yonder sunset sky.
ELLE.
Nay, if we seek we shall not find, If we knock none openeth; Nay, see, the sunset fades behind The mountains, and the cold night wind Blows from the house of Death.
A NATIVITY OF SANDRO BOTTICELLI.
'WROUGHT in the troublous times of Italy By Sandro Botticelli,' when for fear Of that last judgment, and last day drawn near To end all labour and all revelry, He worked and prayed in silence; this is she That by the holy cradle sees the bier, And in spice gifts the hyssop on the spear, And out of Bethlehem, Gethsemane.
Between the gold sky and the green o'er head, The twelve great s.h.i.+ning angels, garlanded, Marvel upon this face, wherein combine The mother's love that shone on all of us, And maiden rapture that makes luminous The brows of Margaret and Catherine.
SONGS AND SONNETS
TWO HOMES.
To a young English lady in the Hospital of the Wounded at Carlsruhe.
Sept. 1870.
WHAT does the dim gaze of the dying find To waken dream or memory, seeing you?
In your sweet eyes what other eyes are blue, And in your hair what gold hair on the wind Floats of the days gone almost out of mind?
In deep green valleys of the Fatherland He may remember girls with locks like thine; May dream how, where the waiting angels stand, Some lost love's eyes are dim before they s.h.i.+ne With welcome:-so past homes, or homes to be, He sees a moment, ere, a moment blind, He crosses Death's inhospitable sea, And with brief pa.s.sage of those barren lands Comes to the home that is not made with hands.
SUMMER'S ENDING.
THE flags below the shadowy fern s.h.i.+ne like spears between sun and sea, The tide and the summer begin to turn, And ah, for hearts, for hearts that yearn, For fires of autumn that catch and burn, For love gone out between thee and me.