pass, and on the polished floor
I see the lines of chequered light and shade;

I seem to see the dark-browed Lybian lean
To cool the tortured burning of the lash,
I see the fountains as they leap and flash,
The rustling sway of cypress set between.

And now yon friar with the bare feet there,
Is grown the haunting spirit of the place;
Ah! brown-robed friar with the shaven face,
The saints are weary of thy mumbled prayer.

From matins' bell to the slow day's decline
He sits and thumbs his endless round of beads,
Drawls out the dreary cadence of his creeds
And nods assent to each familiar line.

But she the goddess whose white star is set,
Whose fane was pillaged for this sombre shrine,
Could she look down upon those lips of thine,
And hear thee mutter, would she still regret?

There came a sound of singing on my ear,
And slowly glided through the far-off door
A glimmer of grey forms like ghosts, they bore
A dead man lying on his purple bier.

Some poor man's soul, so little candle smoke
Went curling upwards by the uncased shroud,
And then a sudden thunder-clap broke loud,
And drowned the droning of the priest who spoke.

So all the shuffling feet passed out again
To lightnings flashing through the wet and wind,
And while I lingered in the gate behind
The dead man travelled through the storm and rain.

ROME, 1881.



AT LANUVIUM


" Festo quid potius die
Neptuni faciam."

HORACE, Odes, iii. 28.



Spring grew to perfect summer in one day,
And we lay there among the vines, to gaze
Where Circe's isle floats purple, far away
Above the golden haze:

And on our ears there seemed to rise and fall
The burden of an old world song we knew,
That sang, "To-day is Neptune's festival,
And we, what shall we do?"

Go down brown-armed Campagna maid of mine,
And bring again the earthen jar that lies
With three years' dust above the mellow wine;
And while the swift day dies,

You first shall sing a song of waters blue,
Paphos and Cnidos in the summer seas,
And one who guides her swan-drawn chariot through
The white-shored Cyclades;

And I will take the second turn of song,
Of floating tresses in the foam and surge
Where Nereid maids about the sea-god throng;
And night shall have her dirge.

1881.



"IF ANY ONE RETURN"


I would we had carried him far away
To the light of this south sun land.
Where the hills lean down to some red-rocked bay
And the sea's blue breaks into snow-white spray
As the wave dies out on the sand.

Not there, not there, where the winds deface!
Where the storm and the cloud race by!
But far away in this flowerful place
Where endless summers retouch, retrace,
What flowers find heart to die.

And if ever the souls of the loved, set free,
Come back to the souls that stay,
I could dream he would sit for a while with me
Where I sit by this wonderful tideless sea
And look to the red-rocked bay,

By the high cliff's edge where the wild weeds twine,
And he would not speak or move,
But his eyes would gaze from his soul at mine,
My eyes that would answer without one sign,
And that were enough for love.

And I think I should feel as the sun went round
That he was not there any more,
But dews were wet on the grass-grown mound
On the bed of my love lying underground,
And evening pale on the shore.

1879.

SONNETS



"UNE HEURE VIENDRA QUI TOUT PAIERA"


It was a tomb in Flanders, old and grey,
A knight in armour, lying dead, unknown
Among the long-forgotten, yet the stone
Cried out for vengeance where the dead man lay;

No name was chiselled at his side to say
What wrongs his spirit thirsted to atone,
Only the armour with green moss o'ergrown,
And those grim words no years had worn away.

It may be haply in the songs of old
His deeds were wonders to sweet music set,
His name the thunder of a battle call,
Among the things forgotten and untold;
His only record is the dead man's threat,—
"An hour will come that shall atone for all!"

1879.




ACTEA


When the last bitterness was past, she bore
Her singing Cæsar to the Garden Hill,
Her fallen pitiful dead emperor.
She lifted up the beggar's cloak he wore
—The one thing living he would not kill—
And on those lips of his that sang no more,
That world-loathed head which she found lovely still,
Her cold lips closed, in death she had her will.

Oh wreck of the lost human soul left free
To gorge the beast thy mask of manhood screened!
Because one living thing, albeit a slave,
Shed those hot tears on thy dishonoured grave,
Although thy curse be as the shoreless sea,
Because she loved, thou art not wholly fiend.

1881.



IMPERATOR AUGUSTUS


Is this the man by whose decree abide
The lives of countless nations, with the trace
Of fresh tears wet upon the hard cold face?
—He wept, because a little child had died.

They set a marble image by his side,
A sculptured Eros, ready for the chase;
It wore the dead boy's features, and the grace
Of pretty ways that were the old man's pride.

And so he smiled, grown softer now, and tired
Of too much empire, and it seemed a joy
Fondly to stroke and pet the curly head,
The smooth round limbs so strangely like the dead,
To kiss the white lips of his marble boy
And call by name his little heart's-desired.

1879.



"ATQUE IN PERPETUUM FRATER AVE ATQUE VALE"


This was the end love made,—the hard-drawn breath,
The last long sigh that ever man sighs here;
And then for us, the great unanswered fear,
Will love live on,—the other side of death?

Only a