Obrazy na stronie
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And let the land whose hearths he saved from shame

For many and many an age proclaim

At civic revel and pomp and game,
And when the long-illumined cities flame,

Their ever-loyal iron leader's fame,

With honour, honour, honour, honour to him,

Eternal honour to his name.

9

Peace, his triumph will be sung
By some yet unmoulded tongue

Far on in summers that we shall not see :
Peace, it is a day of pain 1

1

For one about whose patriarchal knee

Late the little children clung:

O peace, it is a day of pain

For one, upon whose hand and heart and brain
Once the weight and fate of Europe hung.
Ours the pain, be his the gain!
More than is of man's degree
Must be with us, watching here
At this, our great solemnity.
Whom we see not we revere.
We

e revere, and we refrain

From talk of battles loud and vain,

And brawling memories all too free
For such a wise humility

As befits a solemn fane:

We revere, and while we hear

The tides of Music's golden sea

Setting toward eternity,

Uplifted high in heart and hope are we,

1A day of pain.] "Pain" here used in the sense of "" regret.

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sorrow or

Until we doubt not that for one so true
There must be other nobler work to do
Than when he fought at Waterloo,

And Victor he must ever be.

For tho' the Giant Ages1 heave the hill
And break the shore, and evermore
Make and break, and work their will;
Tho' world on world 2 in myriad myriads roll
Round us, each with different powers,
And other forms of life than ours,
What know we greater than the soul?

On God and Godlike men we build our trust. Hush, the Dead March wails in the people's ears: The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and

tears:

The black earth yawns: the mortal disappears;
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust;

He is gone who seem'd so great.—
Gone; but nothing can bereave him
Of the force he made his own
Being here, and we believe him
Something far advanced in State,
And that he wears a truer crown
Than any wreath that man can weave him.
But speak no more of his renown,

Lay your earthly fancies down,

And in the vast cathedral leave him.
God accept him, Christ receive him.

1852.

1 Giant ages.] Alluding to the Greek fable of the giants heaping Pelion on Ossa, here finely applied to the great forces of Nature. 2 World on world.] 1st edition, "worlds on worlds."

THE DAISY1

WRITTEN AT EDINBURGH

O LOVE, what hours were thine and mine,
In lands of palm and southern pine;
In lands of palm, of orange-blossom,
Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine.

What Roman strength Turbìa 2 show'd
In ruin, by the mountain road;

How like a gem, beneath, the city
Of little Monaco, basking, glow'd.

How richly down the rocky dell
The torrent vineyard streaming fell

To meet the sun and sunny waters,
That only heaved with a summer swell.

What slender campanili grew

By bays, the peacock's neck in hue;

Where, here and there, on sandy beaches

A milky-bell'd amaryllis blew.

1 This poem was addressed to the author's wife, shortly after the birth of their eldest child, and recalling a previous tour in Italy. Its metre was called by the author a "far-off echo of the Horatian Alcaic" (Life, i. 341).

2 Turbia.] On the Cornice. So Dante, Purgatorio, iii. :

"Tra Lerici e Turbia la più deserta

La più romita via è una scala
Verso di quella, agevole e aperta."

How young Columbus seem'd to rove,
Yet present in his natal grove,

Now watching high on mountain cornice,
And steering, now, from a purple cove,

Now pacing mute by ocean's rim ;
Till, in a narrow street and dim,

I stay'd the wheels at Cogoletto,1
And drank, and loyally drank to him.

Nor knew we well what pleased us most,
Not the clipt palm of which they boast;
But distant colour, happy hamlet,

A moulder'd citadel on the coast,

Or tower, or high hill-convent, seen
A light amid its olives green;
Or olive-hoary cape in ocean;
Or rosy blossom in hot ravine,

Where oleanders flush'd the bed
Of silent torrents, gravel-spread;
And, crossing, oft we saw the glisten
Of ice, far up on a mountain head.

We loved that hall,2 tho' white and cold,
Those niched shapes of noble mould,

1 Cogoletto.] The traditional birthplace of Columbus, sixteen miles west of Genoa; though he himself said of the latter place in his will, "Thence I came, and there I was born.'

"

2 That hall.] Of the Banco di San Giorgio, in the old Dogana. "The upper hall, a striking picture of neglected and decaying magnificence, is surrounded by two ranges of grand life-size statues of Genoese heroes-Spinolas, Dorias, Fieschis, etc., the upper row standing, the lower seated" (Hare's Cities of Northern Italy, i. 36).

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