Imaginary Conversations and Poems

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Title: Imaginary Conversations and Poems
A Selection
Author: Walter Savage Landor
Release Date: May 28, 2007 [EBook #21628]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS?AND POEMS: A SELECTION
By?WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
CONTENTS
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS
Marcellus and Hannibal
Queen Elizabeth and Cecil
Epictetus and Seneca
Peter the Great and Alexis
Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn
Joseph Scaliger and Montaigne
Boccaccio and Petrarca
Bossuet and the Duchess de Fontanges
John of Gaunt and Joanna of Kent
Leofric and Godiva
Essex and Spenser
Lord Bacon and Richard Hooker
Oliver Cromwell and Walter Noble
Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney
Southey and Porson
The Abbé Delille and Walter Landor
Diogenes and Plato
Alfieri and Salomon the Florentine Jew
Rousseau and Malesherbes
Lucullus and Caesar
Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa
Dante and Beatrice
Fra Filippo Lippi and Pope Eugenius the Fourth
Tasso and Cornelia
La Fontaine and de La Rochefoucault
Lucian and Timotheus
Bishop Shipley and Benjamin Franklin
Southey and Landor
The Emperor of China and Tsing-Ti
Louis XVIII and Talleyrand
Oliver Cromwell and Sir Oliver Cromwell
The Count Gleichem: the Countess: their Children, and Zaida
THE PENTAMERON
First Day's Interview
Third Day's Interview
Fourth Day's Interview
Fifth Day's Interview
POEMS
I. She I love (alas in vain!)
II. Pleasure! why thus desert the heart
III. Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives
IV. Ianthe! you are call'd to cross the sea!
V. The gates of fame and of the grave
VI. Twenty years hence my eyes may grow
VII. Here, ever since you went abroad
VIII. Tell me not things past all belief
IX. Proud word you never spoke, but you will speak
X. Fiesole Idyl
XI. Ah what avails the sceptred race
XII. With rosy hand a little girl prest down
VIII. Ternissa! you are fled!
XIV. Various the roads of life; in one
XV. Yes; I write verses now and then
XVI. On seeing a hair of Lucretia Borgia
XVII. Once, and once only, have I seen thy face
XVIII. To Wordsworth
XIX. To Charles Dickens
XX. To Barry Cornwall
XXI. To Robert Browning
XXII. Age
XXIII. Leaf after leaf drops off, flower after flower
XXIV. Well I remember how you smiled
XXV. I strove with none, for none was worth my strife
XXVI. Death stands above me, whispering low
XXVII. A Pastoral
XXVIII. The Lover
XXIX. The Poet who Sleeps
XXX. Daniel Defoe
XXXI. Idle Words
XXXII. To the River Avon
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS
MARCELLUS AND HANNIBAL
_Hannibal._ Could a Numidian horseman ride no faster? Marcellus! oh! Marcellus! He moves not--he is dead. Did he not stir his fingers? Stand wide, soldiers--wide, forty paces; give him air; bring water; halt! Gather those broad leaves, and all the rest, growing under the brushwood; unbrace his armour. Loose the helmet first--his breast rises. I fancied his eyes were fixed on me--they have rolled back again. Who presumed to touch my shoulder? This horse? It was surely the horse of Marcellus! Let no man mount him. Ha! ha! the Romans, too, sink into luxury: here is gold about the charger.
_Gaulish Chieftain._ Execrable thief! The golden chain of our king under a beast's grinders! The vengeance of the gods hath overtaken the impure----
_Hannibal._ We will talk about vengeance when we have entered Rome, and about purity among the priests, if they will hear us. Sound for the surgeon. That arrow may be extracted from the side, deep as it is. The conqueror of Syracuse lies before me. Send a vessel off to Carthage. Say Hannibal is at the gates of Rome. Marcellus, who stood alone between us, fallen. Brave man! I would rejoice and cannot. How awfully serene a countenance! Such as we hear are in the islands of the Blessed. And how glorious a form and stature! Such too was theirs! They also once lay thus upon the earth wet with their blood--few other enter there. And what plain armour!
_Gaulish Chieftain._ My party slew him; indeed, I think I slew him myself. I claim the chain: it belongs to my king; the glory of Gaul requires it. Never will she endure to see another take it.
_Hannibal._ My friend, the glory of Marcellus did not require him to wear it. When he suspended the arms of your brave king in the temple, he thought such a trinket unworthy of himself and of Jupiter. The shield he battered down, the breast-plate he pierced with his sword--these he showed to the people and to the gods; hardly his wife and little children saw this, ere his horse wore it.
_Gaulish Chieftain._ Hear me; O Hannibal!
_Hannibal._ What! when Marcellus lies before me? when his life may perhaps be recalled? when I may lead him in triumph to Carthage? when Italy, Sicily, Greece, Asia, wait to obey me? Content thee! I will give thee mine own bridle,