University of Virginia Library

“In what a goodly company I sit!
There, Jupiter, with Empire on his brow,
But calm in self-held counsel, undisturbed
By purposes participated, or
The gusty misdirection of the crowd.
There, Hermes, not yet dwarfed to Mercury,
Winged at the head and sandalled at the heel,
Heaven's messenger alert, whose stolen strings,
Stretched deftly o'er the sluggish tortoise' shell,
Make instant music: Virgin Artemis,
Kept chaste by action and the brisk embrace
Of Morning, bright and chilly as her spear,
Her bare feet diamonded with meadow dew,
And twin-leashed boarhounds baying at her side,
Beating Arcadian covert: all the Gods
Radiant around me! No Madonnas here,
Contorted martyrs, scranny confessors,
To wean composure from the breast of joy.
And not alone the deathless denizens
Of Hades and Olympus drink the light
Of these cool corridors, but mortal men,
Almost as godlike as the gods themselves
By marble will and majesty of mind,—
The Macedonian with his manly tears
At frontier of ambition; Hannibal
Unvanquished by his victors, 'spite defeat
Foremost of those who tread the ways of war;
The Samian Sage, the vulgar travesty,
Who made himself a garden, and enjoined,
No carnal epicure, the goal of man
Is still felicity, but that the road
Lies along cleanly and imperial ways,
Not swinish by-paths; Homer, with his gaze
Surveying all, and therefore fixed on none,
The Poet outside all things, he alone,
The Reconciler, with his concords twain,
Song and ensuing Silence;—all are here,
Indulgent of my presence, claiming me
Their servitor, if faithful then their friend,
Their equal, by their grace and courtesy.
Such will I strive to be, but not to-day,
When, look! upon the fountain's marble rim
Rounding the plashing music, April doves,
Just like to Pliny's in the Capitol,
Sip and glance sideways, flutter, perch again,
And preen their purple feathers in the sun,
Ausonian sun that fills the chalices
Of tulip and anemone with light
Mellower than Montefiascone's wine.
Along the coping of the stuccoed wall
See Juno's pompous sentinels parade
The jewels of their self-supporting train.
Stirred by the very faintest breath that scarce
Would rob the roundness of the thistledown,
Flutters the olive, and with upturned leaves
Silvers the golden sunlight. At the tips
Of the pruned vine-stems glisten drops of dew,
The promise of their shortly dawning shoots.
Hark! 'twas the hoopoe! heralding the bird
Who talks to Spring of nothing but himself,
So likewise half an egoist, as is meet,
Apeing his betters, but imperfectly.
To fig-tree bole the green frog clings and croaks,
And the lithe lizard squats along the wall,
Fagged by its very restlessness, and takes
Siesta in the sunshine, not the shade.
Taught by the almond how to bloom, the peach
Hath bettered now the lesson, and the pear,
Forgoing useless rivalry, arrays
Itself in whiteness. Every ruined wall
Breaks into blossom, every shattered arch
Its wrinkled baldness now festoons with flowers,
To join the Saturnalia of the Spring.
I hear the cask-piled wine-carts creaking slow
O'er the Nomentan Way, hear them, but see not,
Save with the sight responsive to the sound,
In sweet confusion of the senses made
Kindred. There is no iris now in Heaven,
But, finding Earth yet heavenlier, it hath dropped
In coils and jewelled fragments to the ground,
And wavers over the Campagna wide.
Days are there, like to this one, when 'tis well
To lie supine in poppied vacancy,
And, passionlessly passive, to conceive
Those hovering intimations that alight
On the lulled sense, impregnating the brain
With embryonic fancies that mature
In season unto shapeliness and fruit.
And so to-day I claim from Gods and men,
And my loved Alessandro, a forenoon
Of brooding lethargy,—to bask and purr
Over my fixed felicity.