ANEAR the centre of that northern crest Stands out a level upland bleak and bare,

From which the city east and south and west

Sinks gently in long waves; and throned there

An Image sits, stupendous, superhuman, The bronze colossus of a winged Woman, Upon a graded granite base foursquare.

Low-seated she leans forward massively, With cheek on clench'd left hand, the forearm's might

Erect, its elbow on her rounded knee ;

Across a clasp'd book in her lap the right Upholds a pair of compasses; she gazes With full set eyes, but wandering in thick

mazes

Of sombre thought beholds no outward sight.

Words cannot picture her; but all men know

That solemn sketch the pure sad artist

wrought

Three centuries and three score years ago, With fantasies of his peculiar thought : The instruments of carpentry and science Scatter'd about her feet, in strange alliance With the keen wolf-hound sleeping undistraught ;

Scales, hour-glass, bell, and magic-square above;

The grave and solid infant perch'd beside,

With open winglets that might bear a dove,

Intent upon its tablets, heavy-eyed ; Her folded wings as of a mighty eagle But all too impotent to lift the regal Robustness of her earth-born strength and pride;

And with those wings, and that light wreath which seems

To mock her grand head and the knotted frown

Of forehead charged with baleful thoughts and dreams,

The household bunch of keys, the housewife's gown

Voluminous, indented, and yet rigid
As if a shell of burnish'd metal frigid,
The feet thick-shod to tread all weak-
ness down;

FROM "HE HEARD HER SING”

AND thus all-expectant abiding I waited not long, for soon

A boat came gliding and gliding out in the light of the moon,

Gliding with muffled oars, slowly, a thin dark line,

Round from the shadowing shores into the silver shine

Of the clear moon westering now, and still drew on and on,

While the water before its prow breaking and glistering shone,

Slowly in silence strange; and the rower row'd till it lay

Afloat within easy range deep in the curve of the bay;

And besides the rower were two: a Woman, who sat in the stern,

And Her by her fame I knew, one of those fames that burn,

Startling and kindling the world, one whose

likeness we everywhere see;

And a man reclining half-curl'd with an indolent grace at her knee, The Signor, lord of her choice; and he lightly touch'd a guitar ;

A guitar for that glorious voice! Illumine the sun with a star!

She sat superb and erect, stately, all-happy,

serene,

Her right hand toying uncheck'd with the hair of that page of a Queen ; With her head and her throat and her bust like the bust and the throat and the head

Of Her who has long been dust, of her who shall never be dead,

Preserv'd by the potent art made trebly

potent by love,

While the transient ages depart from under the heavens above,

Preserv'd in the color and line on the canvas fulgently flung

By Him the Artist divine who triumph'd and vanish'd so young:

Surely there rarely hath been a lot more to be envied in life

Than thy lot, O Fornarina, whom Raphael's heart took to wife.

There was silence yet for a time save the tinkling capricious and quaint, Then She lifted her voice sublime, no longer tender and faint,

Pathetic and tremulous, no! but firm as a column it rose,

Rising solemn and slow with a full rich swell to the close,

Firm as a marble column soaring with noble pride

In a triumph of rapture solemn to some Hero deified;

In a rapture of exultation made calm by its stress intense,

In a triumph of consecration and a jubilation immense.

And the Voice flow'd on and on, and ever it swell'd as it pour'd,

Till the stars that throbb'd as they shone seem'd throbbing with it in accord;

Till the moon herself in my dream, still Empress of all the night,

Was only that voice supreme translated into pure light:

And I lost all sense of the earth though I still had sense of the sea;

And I saw the stupendous girth of a tree like the Norse World-Tree ; And its branches fill'd all the sky, and the deep sea water'd its root,

And the clouds were its leaves on high and the stars were its silver fruit ; Yet the stars were the notes of the singing and the moon was the voice of the

song,

Through the vault of the firmament ring

ing and swelling resistlessly strong; And the whole vast night was a shell for that music of manifold might,

And was strain'd by the stress of the swell of the music yet vaster than night. And I saw as a crystal fountain whose shaft was a column of light

More high than the loftiest mountain ascend the abyss of the night;

And its spray fill'd all the sky, and the clouds were the clouds of its spray, Which glitter'd in star-points on high and fill'd with pure silver the bay ; And ever in rising and falling it sang as it rose and it fell,

And the heavens with their pure azure walling all puls'd with the pulse of its swell,

For the stars were the notes of the singing and the moon was the voice of the song Through the vault of the firmament ringing and swelling ineffably strong;

And the waves of its blood seem'd to dash on the shore of the sky to the cope With the stress of the fire of a passion and yearning of limitless scope,

Vast fire of a passion and yearning, keen torture of rapture intense,

A most unendurable burning consuming the soul with the sense :

"Love, love only, forever love with its torture of bliss;

All the world's glories can never equal two souls in one kiss :

Love, and ever love wholly; love in all time and all space;

Life is consummate then solely in the death of a burning embrace."

Had look'd upon the glory of that day
In Sicily beneath the summer sun,
Would not have dream'd that Death was
reigning there

In shape so terrible;

for all the road Was like an avenue of Paradise,

Life, and full flame of loveliness of life. The red geraniums blaz'd in banks breasthigh,

And from the open doors in the white walls
Scents of magnolia and of heliotrope
Came to the street; filmy aurora-flowers
Open'd and died in the hour, and fell away
In many-color'd showers upon the ground;
Nebulous masses of the pale blue stars
Made light upon the darkness of the green,
Through openings in the thickets over-
arch'd;

Where roses, white and yellow and full

From the green sheath, till all the green was hid

By the white spread of giant-blowing wings.
In the cool shadow heaps of tuberose
Lay by the fountains in the market-place,
Among the purple fruit. The jalousies
Of the tall houses shut against the sun
Were wreath'd with trails of velvet-glossy
bells ;

And here and there one had not been unclos'd

Yesterday, and the vivid shoots had run
Over it in a night, and seal'd it fast
With tendril, and bright leaf, and drops of

flower.

And in and out the balconies thin stems Went twisting, and the chains of passionflowers,

Bud, blossom, and phantasmal orb of fruit Alternate, swung, and lengthen'd every hour.

And fine-leav'd greenery crept from bower to bower

With thick white star-flakes scatter'd ; and

the bloom

Of orient lilies, and the rainbow-blue
Of iris shot up stately from the grass;
And through the wavering shadows crim-
son sparks

Pois'd upon brittle stalks, glanced up and down;

And shining darkness of the cypress clos'd The deep withdrawing glades of evergreen, Lit up far off with oleander pyres.

Out of the rocky dust of the wayside The lamps of the aloes burn'd themselves

aloft,

Immortal; and the prickly cactus-knots
In the hot sunshine overleant the walls,
The lizards darting in and out of them;
But in the shadier side the maidenhair
Sprung thick from every crevice. Passing
these,

He issued on to the Piazza, where

The wonder of the world, the Fountain streams

From height to height of marble, dashing down

White waves forever over whitest limbs, That shine in multitudes amid the spray And sound of silver waters without end, Rolling and rising and showering suddenly.

There standing where the fig-trees made a shade

Close in the angle, he beheld the streets Stretch fourways to the beautiful great gates;

With all their burnish'd domes and carven

Bare are the branches, cold is the air,
Yet it is fire at the heart I bear,

I come, a flame that is fed by none :
The summer hath blossoms for her delight,
Thick and dewy and waxen-white,

Thou seest me golden, O golden Sun!

Deep in the warm sleep underground
Life is still, and the peace profound:
Yet a beam that pierced, and a thrill
that smote

Call'd me and drew me from far away;
rose, I
came, to the open day

I

I have won, unshelter'd, alone, remote.