For thrilling audient and beholding souls

By signs and touches which are known to souls. How known, they know not; why, they cannot find: So straight call out on genius, say, 'A man Produced this,' when much rather they should say, "'Tis insight, and he saw this.'

FROM CASA GUIDI WINDOWS.' 11

FROM PART I.

I HEARD last night a little child go singing
'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church,

'O bella libertà, O bella!' stringing

The same words still on notes, he went in search So high for, you concluded the upspringing

Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch
Must leave the whole bush in a tremble green,
And that the heart of Italy must beat,

While such a voice had leave to rise serene
'Twixt church and palace of a Florence street:
A little child, too, who not long had been

By mother's fingers steadied on his feet,
And still bella libertà' he sang.

·

FROM PART II.

I WROTE a meditation and a dream,
Hearing a little child sing in the street:

I leant upon his music as a theme,

Till it gave way beneath my heart's full beat

Which tried at an exultant prophecy,

But dropped before the measure was complete

Alas for songs and hearts! O Tuscany,

O Dante's Florence, is the type too plain?

Didst thou, too, only sing of liberty,

As little children take up a high strain With unintentioned voices, and break off

To sleep upon their mothers' knees again? Couldst thou not watch one hour? Then sleep enough, That sleep may hasten manhood, and sustain The faint, pale spirit with some muscular stuff.

But we who cannot slumber as thou dost;

We thinkers, who have thought for thee, and failed;
We hopers, who have hoped for thee, and lost;
We poets, wandered round by dreams, who hailed
From this Atrides' roof (with lintel-post

Which stills drips blood,

the worse part hath prevailed)

The fire-voice of the beacons to declare

Troy taken, sorrow ended, - cozened through
A crimson sunset in a misty air,

What now remains for such as we to do?

God's judgments, peradventure, will he bare
To the roots of thunder, if we kneel and sue?

From Casa Guidi windows I looked forth,
And saw ten thousand eyes of Florentines
Flash back the triumph of the Lombard north,
Saw fifty banners, freighted with the signs

And exultations of the awakened earth,
Float on above the multitude in lines,

Straight to the Pitti. So, the vision went.
And so, between those populous rough hands
Raised in the sun, Duke Leopold outleant,
And took the patriot's oath, which henceforth stands
Among the oaths of perjurers, eminent

To catch the lightnings ripened for these lands.

The sun strikes through the windows, up the floor; Stand out in it, my own young Florentine,

Not two years old, and let me see thee more! It grows along thy amber curls, to shine

Brighter than elsewhere. Now, look straight before, And fix thy brave blue English eyes on mine,

And from my soul, which fronts the future so,

With unabashed and unabated gaze,

Teach me to hope for, what the angels know When they smile clear as thou dost. Down God's ways With just alighted feet, between the snow And snowdrops, where a little lamb may graze, Thou hast no fear, my lamb, about the road, Albeit in our vain-glory we assume

That, less than we have, thou hast learnt of God.
Stand out, my blue-eyed prophet!· thou to whom
The earliest world-day light that ever flowed,
Through Casa Guidi windows chanced to come!
Now shake the glittering nimbus of thy hair,
And be God's witness that the elemental

New springs of life are gushing everywhere
To cleanse the water-courses, and prevent all
Concrete obstructions which infest the air!
That earth 's alive, and gentle or ungentle
Motions within her signify but growth!

The ground swells greenest o'er the laboring moles.
Howe'er the uneasy world is vexed and wroth,
Young children, lifted high on parent souls,

Look round them with a smile upon the mouth,
And take for music every bell that tolls;

(WHO said we should be better if like these?)
But we sit murmuring for the future, though
Posterity is smiling on our knees,
Convicting us of folly. Let us go-

We will trust God. The blank interstices
Men take for ruins, He will build into

With pillared marbles rare, or knit across With generous arches, till the fane 's complete.

This world has no perdition, if some loss.
Such cheer I gather from thy smiling, sweet!
The selfsame cherub-faces which emboss
The Vail, lean inward to the Mercy-seat.

FROM 'SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE.' 12

I.

I THOUGHT Once how Theocritus had sung

Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young;
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw in gradual vision, through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,

'Guess now who holds thee?'-'Death,' I said. But there The silver answer rang, 'Not Death, but Love.'

IV.

Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor,
Most gracious singer of high poems, where
The dancers will break footing, from the care
Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.
And dost thou lift this house's latch too poor
For hand of thine? and canst thou think, and bear
To let thy music drop here unaware

In folds of golden fulness at my door?
Look up, and see the casement broken in,
The bats and owlets builders in the roof!

My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.
Hush, call no echo up in further proof
Of desolation! there's a voice within
That weeps-

as thou must sing — alone, aloof.

V.

I lift my heavy heart up solemnly,
As once Electra her sepulchral urn,
And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn
The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see
What a great heap of grief lay hid in me,
And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn
Through the ashen grayness. If thy foot in scorn
Could tread them out to darkness utterly,
It might be well, perhaps. But if, instead,
Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow
The gray dust up- those laurels on thine head,
O my beloved, will not shield thee so,

That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred
The hair beneath. Stand farther off, then! Go.

Go from me.

VI.

Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life, I shall command The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand Serenely in the sunshine as before, Without the sense of that which I forbore, Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land Doom takes to part us leaves thy heart in mine With pulses that beat double. What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes. And, when I sue God for myself, He hears that name of thine, And sees within my eyes the tears of two.