Studies in Song | Page 7

gold the second Grace,
And verier daughter of his most perfect hours

Than any of latter time or alien place
Named, or with hair inwoven
of English flowers
Only, nor wearing on her statelier face
The
lordlier light of Athens. All the Powers
That graced and guarded
round that holiest race,
That heavenliest and most high
Time hath seen live and die,
Poured
all their power upon him to retrace
The erased immortal roll
Of Love's most sovereign scroll
And
Wisdom's warm from Freedom's wide embrace,
The scroll that on
Aspasia's knees
Laid once made manifest the Olympian Pericles.
38.
Clothed on with tenderest weft of Tuscan air,
Came laughing like
Etrurian spring the third,
With green Valdelsa's hill-flowers in her
hair
Deep-drenched with May-dews, in her voice the bird
Whose
voice hath night and morning in it; fair
As the ambient gold of
wall-flowers that engird
The walls engirdling with a circling stair

My sweet San Gimignano: nor a word
Fell from her flowerlike mouth
Not sweet with all the south;
As
though the dust shrined in Certaldo stirred
And spake, as o'er it shone
That bright Pentameron,
And his own
vines again and chestnuts heard
Boccaccio: nor swift Elsa's chime

Mixed not her golden babble with Petrarca's rhyme.

39.
No lovelier laughed the garden which receives
Yet, and yet hides not
from our following eyes
With soft rose-laurels and low
strawberry-leaves,
Ternissa, sweet as April-coloured skies,
Bowed
like a flowering reed when May's wind heaves
The reed-bed that the
stream kisses and sighs,
In love that shrinks and murmurs and
believes
What yet the wisest of the starriest wise
Whom Greece might ever hear
Speaks in the gentlest ear
That ever
heard love's lips philosophize
With such deep-reasoning words
As blossoms use and birds,
Nor
heeds Leontion lingering till they rise
Far off, in no wise over far,

Beneath a heaven all amorous of its first-born star.
40.
What sound, what storm and splendour of what fire,
Darkening the
light of heaven, lightening the night,
Rings, rages, flashes round what
ravening pyre
That makes time's face pale with its reflex light
And
leaves on earth, who seeing might scarce respire,
A shadow of red
remembrance? Right nor might
Alternating wore ever shapes more
dire
Nor manifest in all men's awful sight
In form and face that wore
Heaven's light and likeness more
Than
these, or held suspense men's hearts at height
More fearful, since man first
Slaked with man's blood his thirst,

Than when Rome clashed with Hannibal in fight,
Till tower on
ruining tower was hurled
Where Scipio stood, and Carthage was not
in the world.
41.
Nor lacked there power of purpose in his hand
Who carved their

several praise in words of gold
To bare the brows of conquerors and
to brand,
Made shelterless of laurels bought and sold
For price of
blood or incense, dust or sand,
Triumph or terror. He that sought of
old
His father Ammon in a stranger's land,
And shrank before the
serpentining fold,
Stood in our seer's wide eye
No higher than man most high,
And
lowest in heart when highest in hope to hold
Fast as a scripture furled
The scroll of all the world
Sealed with his
signet: nor the blind and bold
First thief of empire, round whose head

Swarmed carrion flies for bees, on flesh for violets fed.[1]
42.
As fire that kisses, killing with a kiss,
He saw the light of death,
riotous and red,
Flame round the bent brows of Semiramis
Re-risen,
and mightier, from the Assyrian dead,
Kindling, as dawn a
frost-bound precipice,
The steely snows of Russia, for the tread
Of
feet that felt before them crawl and hiss
The snaky lines of blood
violently shed.
Like living creeping things
That writhe but have no stings
To scare
adulterers from the imperial bed
Bowed with its load of lust,
Or chill the ravenous gusts
That made
her body a fire from heel to head;
Or change her high bright spirit and
clear,
For all its mortal stains, from taint of fraud or fear.
43.
As light that blesses, hallowing with a look;
He saw the godhead in
Vittoria's face
Shine soft on Buonarroti's, till he took,
Albeit
himself God, a more godlike grace,
A strength more heavenly to
confront and brook
All ill things coiled about his worldly race,


From the bright scripture of that present book
Wherein his tired grand
eyes got power to trace
Comfort more sweet than youth,
And hope whose child was truth,

And love that brought forth sorrow for a space,
Only that she might bear
Joy: these things, written there,
Made
even his soul's high heaven a heavenlier place,
Perused with eyes
whose glory and glow
Had in their fires the spirit of Michael Angelo.
44.
With balms and dews of blessing he consoled
The fair fame wounded
by the black priest's fang,
Giovanna's, and washed off her blithe and
bold
Boy-bridegroom's blood, that seemed so long to hang
On her
fair hand, even till the stain of old
Was cleansed with healing song,
that after sang
Sharp truth by sweetest singers' lips untold
Of pale
Beatrice, though her death-note rang
From other strings divine
Ere his rekindling line
With yet more
piteous and intolerant pang
Pierced all men's hearts anew
That heard her passion through
Till
fierce from throes of fiery pity sprang
Wrath, armed for chase of