Nè mai pietosa madre al caro figlio.

HER COUNSEL ALONE AFFORDS HIM RELIEF.


    Ne'er did fond mother to her darling son,
Or zealous spouse to her belovèd mate,
Sage counsel give, in perilous estate,
With such kind caution, in such tender tone,
As gives that fair one, who, oft looking down
On my hard exile from her heavenly seat,
With wonted kindness bends upon my fate
Her brow, as friend or parent would have done:
Now chaste affection prompts her speech, now fear,
Instructive speech, that points what several ways
To seek or shun, while journeying here below;
Then all the ills of life she counts, and prays
My soul ere long may quit this terrene sphere:
And by her words alone I'm soothed and freed from woe.

NOTT.


 ...

Farewell!--but whenever you welcome the hour.
That awakens the night-song of mirth in your bower,
Then think of the friend who once welcomed it too,
And forgot his own griefs to be happy with you.
His griefs may return, not a hope may remain
Of the few that have brightened his pathway of pain.
But he ne'er will forget the short vision, that threw
Its enchantment around him, while lingering with you.
And still on that evening, when pleasure fills up
To the highest top sparkle each heart and each cup,
Where'er my path lies, be it gloomy or bright,
My soul, happy friends, shall be with you that night;


Shall join in your revels, your sports, and your wiles,
And return to me, beaming all o'er with your smiles--
Too blest, if it tells me that, mid the gay cheer

I am poor and old and blind;
The sun burns me, and the wind
    Blows through the city gate
And covers me with dust
From the wheels of the august
    Justinian the Great.

It was for him I chased
The Persians o'er wild and waste,
    As General of the East;
Night after night I lay
In their camps of yesterday;
    Their forage was my feast.

For him, with sails of red,
And torches at mast-head,
    Piloting the great fleet,
I swept the Afric coasts
And scattered the Vandal hosts,
    Like dust in a windy street.

For him I won again
The Ausonian realm and reign,
    Rome and Parthenope;
And all the land was mine
From the summits of Apennine
    To the shores of either sea.

For him, in my feeble age,

When I go back to earth
And all my joyous body
Puts off the red and white
That once had been so proud,
If men should pass above
With false and feeble pity,
My dust will find a voice
To answer them aloud:

"Be still, I am content,
Take back your poor compassion
Joy was a flame in me
Too steady to destroy.
Lithe as a bending reed
Loving the storm that sways her
I found more joy in sorrow
Than you could find in joy."

When fairer faces turn from me,
And gayer friends grow cold,
And I have lost through poverty
The friendship bought with gold;
When I have served the selfish turn
Of some all-worldly few,
And Folly’s lamps have ceased to burn,
Then I’ll come back to you.

When my admirers find I’m not
The rising star they thought,
And praise or blame is all forgot
My early promise brought;
When brighter rivals lead a host
Where once I led a few,
And kinder times reward their boast,
Then I’ll come back to you.

You loved me, not for what I had
Or what I might have been,
You saw the good, but not the bad,
Was kind, for that between.
I know that you’ll forgive again,
That you will judge me true;
I’ll be too tired to explain
When I come ...

My books are on their shelves again
And clouds lie low with mist and rain.
Afar the Arno murmurs low
The tale of fields of melting snow.
List to the bells of times agone
The while I wait me for the dawn.

Beneath great Giotto's Campanile
The gray ghosts throng; their whispers steal
From poets' bosoms long since dust;
They ask me now to go. I trust
Their fleeter footsteps where again
They come at night and live as men.

The rain falls on Ghiberti's gates;
The big drops hang on purple dates;
And yet beneath the ilex-shades--
Dear trysting-place for boys and maids--
There comes a form from days of old,
With Beatrice's hair of gold.

The breath of lands or lilied streams
Floats through the fabric of my dreams;
And yonder from the...

[* Eleven of these Visions of Bellay (all except the 6th, 8th, 13th, and 14th) differ only by a few changes necessary for rhyme from blank-verse translations found in Van der Noodt's Theatre of Worldlings, printed in 1569; and the six first of the Visions of Petrarch (here said to have been "formerly translated") occur almost word for word in the same publication, where the authorship appears to be claimed by one Theodore Roest. The Complaints were collected, not by Spenser, but by Ponsonby, his bookseller, and he may have erred in ascribing these Visions to our poet. C.]


I.

It was the time when rest, soft sliding downe
From heavens hight into mens heavy eyes,
In the forgetfulnes of sleepe doth drowne
The carefull thoughts of mortall miseries.
Then did a ghost before mine eyes appeare...

God has kept me, dearest mother.
    Kindly, safely, through the day:
Let me thank Him for His goodness,
    Ere the twilight fades away.

For my home and friends I thank Him,
    For my father, mother dear;
For the hills, the trees, the flowers,
    And the sky so bright and clear.

If I have been kind and gentle,
    If I've spoken what was true,
Or if I've been cross and selfish,
    He has seen and known it, too.

Those I love He will watch over,
    Though they may be far away,
For he loves good little children,
    And will hear the words they say.

Imitated from Horace, lib. i, ode 3.


So may my Lady's prayers prevail,
    And Canning's too, and lucid Bragge's,
And Eldon beg a favoring gale
    From Eolus, that older Bags,
To speed thee on thy destined way,
Oh ship, that bearest our Castlereagh,
Our gracious Regent's better half
    And therefore quarter of a King--
(As Van or any other calf
    May find without much figuring).
Waft him, oh ye kindly breezes,
    Waft this Lord of place and pelf,
Any where his Lordship pleases,
    Tho' 'twere to Old Nick himself!

Oh, what a face of brass was his.
Who first at Congress showed his phiz--
To sign away the Rights of Man
    To Russian threats and Austrian juggle;
And leave the sinking African
...

The Higher Pantheism


The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains–
Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns?

Is not the Vision He? tho’ He be not that which He seems?
Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?

Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb,
Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him?

Dark is the world to thee: thyself art the reason why;
For is He not all but that which has power to feel ‘I am I’?

Glory about thee, without thee; and thou fulfillest thy doom
Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendour and gloom.

Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet–
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

G...

"Put up the sword!" The voice of Christ once more
Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon's roar,
O'er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped
And left dry ashes; over trenches heaped
With nameless dead; o'er cities starving slow
Under a rain of fire; through wards of woe
Down which a groaning diapason runs
From tortured brothers, husbands, lovers, sons
Of desolate women in their far-off homes
Waiting to hear the step that never comes!
O men and brothers! let that voice be heard.
War fails, try peace; put up the useless sword!

Fear not the end. There is a story told
In Eastern tents, when autumn nights grow cold,
And round the fire the Mongol shepherds sit
With grave responses listening unto it:
Once, on the errands of his mercy bent,
Buddha, the holy an...

When, by an edict of the powers supreme,
The Poet in this bored world comes to be,
His daunted mother, eager to blaspheme,
Rages to God, who looks down piteously:

'Rather than have this mockery to nurse
Why not a nest of snakes for me to bear!
And may that night of fleeting lust be cursed,
When I conceived my penance, unaware!

Since from all women you chose me to shame,
To be disgusting to my grieving spouse,
And since I can't just drop into the flames
Like an old love-note, this misshapen mouse,

1'1l turn your hate that overburdens me
Toward the damned agent of your spiteful doom,
And I will twist this miserable tree
So its infected buds will never bloom!'

She swallows thus her hatred's foaming spit
And, never grasping the divine ...

As Hermes once took to his feathers light
When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon'd and slept,
So on a Delphic reed my idle spright
So play'd, so charm'd, so conquer'd, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes,
And, seeing it asleep, so fled away:
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe where Jove griev'd a day;
But to that second circle of sad hell,
Where 'mid the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kiss'd, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

Love in Fantastique Triumph satt,
Whilst bleeding Hearts around him flow'd,
For whom Fresh pains he did create,
And strange Tryanic power he show'd;
From thy Bright Eyes he took his fire,
Which round about, in sport he hurl'd;
But 'twas from mine he took desire,
Enough to undo the Amorous World.
From me he took his sighs and tears,
From thee his Pride and Crueltie;
From me his Languishments and Feares,
And every Killing Dart from thee;
Thus thou and I, the God have arm'd,
And sett him up a Deity;
But my poor Heart alone is harm'd,
Whilst thine the Victor is, and free.

A modest lot, a fame petite,
A brief campaign of sting and sweet
Is plenty! Is enough!
A sailor's business is the shore,
A soldier's -- balls. Who asketh more
Must seek the neighboring life!

There was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising calm and bright;
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods;
The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters;
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.
All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning's birth;
The grass is bright with rain-drops; on the moors
The hare is running races in her mirth;
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.

I was a Traveller then upon the moor;
I saw the hare that raced about with joy;
I heard the woods and distant waters roar;

Though good things answer many good intents,
Crosses do still bring forth the best events.

Up to Dunbar our Cromwell went,
Not to invade was his intent;
But they who first King Charles sold
Now turn their backs on friends of old,
And principles they then held dear
Were sacrificed for self, I fear.
Another Stuart they receive,
Who knew too well how to deceive;
The most perfidious of his race,
Corrupt in life, and void of grace,
The menial of the Papacy;
And yet content by oath to free
Himself from Holy See's control,
And covenant to save his soul
By the Scotch Presbyterian mode,
As to the crown this paved the road.
But Cromwell brooked not this control;
He wished man free to save his soul
As conscience may to him dictate,
Without subservience to the State.
He saw also thro' the disguise
Of one well versed in fraud and lies,