 | Fra Cipolla, and other poems |  |
Who tells old tales, and with the purple wine
Warms his hoar forehead, calling out, Divine
Beautiful Bacchus, and God Mercury,
And Venus, daughter of the choral sea,
That 'gainst the land deep melodies doth make
In the pale moonshine when the forests shake,
Bowed by the north wind toward the leaping waves?
Who calls great poets from their haunted graves,
Around the living still the spells to throw
That in their hearts men treasured long ago?
'Tis thou, old Winter. Come—thou comest soon
With wizard mantle, for thy crescent moon
Shines like a flame behind the chesnut bare,
Whose black boughs shiver in the whistling air.
To Mary mother beauty's songs may rise,
And charm the angry spirit of the skies,
That o'er the seas the shipman safe may sail,
O'er all those liquid accents should prevail.
But I will tell a wild and tragic story
Again, with which the father and the glory
Of Albion's verse his famous pilgrimage
To Canterbury sped, where many an age
Down to the dust of that Archbishop bent
High mind, and lowly, with the same consent,
The Pardoner told it, onward as they went.
Warms his hoar forehead, calling out, Divine
Beautiful Bacchus, and God Mercury,
And Venus, daughter of the choral sea,
That 'gainst the land deep melodies doth make
In the pale moonshine when the forests shake,
Bowed by the north wind toward the leaping waves?
Who calls great poets from their haunted graves,
Around the living still the spells to throw
That in their hearts men treasured long ago?
'Tis thou, old Winter. Come—thou comest soon
With wizard mantle, for thy crescent moon
Shines like a flame behind the chesnut bare,
Whose black boughs shiver in the whistling air.
51
And charm the angry spirit of the skies,
That o'er the seas the shipman safe may sail,
O'er all those liquid accents should prevail.
But I will tell a wild and tragic story
Again, with which the father and the glory
Of Albion's verse his famous pilgrimage
To Canterbury sped, where many an age
Down to the dust of that Archbishop bent
High mind, and lowly, with the same consent,
The Pardoner told it, onward as they went.
| Fra Cipolla, and other poems | |