It lay upon thee where the crimson was, If dropping now, — would darken where it met thee. v. The fly that lit upon thee, To stretch the tendrils of its tiny feet Along thy leafs pure edges after heat,— If lighting now,—would coldly overrun thee. vt. The bee that once did suck thee, And build thy perfumed ambers up his' hive, And swoon in thee for joy, till scarce alive,— If passing now,—would blindly overlook thee. vtt. The heart doth recognise thee. Alone, alone! The heart doth smell thee sweet, Doth view thee fair, doth judge thee most complete— Perceiving all those changes that disguise thee. vm. Yes, and the heart doth owe thee More love, dead rose! than to such roses bold As Julia wears at dances, smiling cold !— Lie still upon this heart—which breaks below thee. A WOMAN'S SHORTCOMINGS. She has laughed as softly as if she sighed I She has counted six and over. Of a purse well filled, and a heart well tried— Oh, each a worthy lover! They 'give her time for her soul must slip Where the world has set the grooving: She will lie to none with her fair red lip— But love seeks truer loving. tt. She trembles her fan in a sweetness dumb, As her thoughts were beyond recalling; With a glance for one, and a glance for tome. From her eyelids rising and falling. —Speaks common words with a blushful air; —Hears bold words, unreproving; But her silence says—what she never will swear— And love seeks better loving. tal Go, lady! lean to the night-guitar, And drop a smile to the bringer; Then smile as sweetly, when he is far. At the voice of an in-door singer! Bask tenderly beneath tender eyes; Glance lightly, on their removing; And join new vows to old perjuries— But dare not call it loving I iv. Unless you can think, when the song is done. No other is soft in the rhythm; Unless you can feel, when left by One, That all men else go with him; Unless you can know, when upraised by his breath. That your beauty itself wants proving; Unless you can swear—' For life, for death !'— Oh, fear to call it loving! v. Unless you can muse in a crowd all day,' On the absent face that fixed you; Unless you can love, as the angels may, With the breadth of heaven betwixt you; Unless you can dream that his faith is fast, Through behooving and unbehooving; Unless you can die when the dream is past— Oh, never call it loving! vii. And let the door ajar remain, And leave the wheel out very plain. CHANGE UPON CHANGE. Five months ago, the stream did flow. The lilies bloomed within the sedge; And we were lingering to and fro,— Where none will track thee in this snow, Along the stream, beside the hedge. Ah, sweet, be free to love and go! For if I do not hear tby foot, The frozen river is as mute, The flowers have dried down to the root; And wby, since these be changed since May, Shouldst thou change less than they? And slow, slow, as the winter snow, And my poor cheeks, five months ago, Set blushing at tby praises so, Ah, sweet, be free to praise and go! Should / change less than thou? A REED. I Am no trumpet, but a reed: No flattering breath shall from me lead A silver sound, a hollow sound! I will not ring, for priest or king, One blast that in re-echoing Would leave a bondsman faster bound. I am no trumpet, but a reed,— Left flat upon a dismal shore: This reed will answer evermore. I am no trumpet, but a reed: Their nets along the river's edge, Then let them leave me in the sedge. CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. [thib Poem contains the tmpreBslens of the writer upon events in Tuscany of which she was a witness. "From a window/' the critic may demur. She bows to the objection in the very title of her work. No continuous narrative, nor exposition of political phliosophy, la attempted by her. it is a simple story of personal impressions, whose only value is in the intensity with which they were received, as proving her warm affection for a beautiful and unfortunate country; and the sincerity with which they are related, as indicating her own good faith and' freedom from all partizanship. Of the two parts of this Poem, the first was written nearly three years ago, whlle the second resumes the actual situation of iSM, The discrepancy between the two parts is a sufficient guarantee to the public of the truthfulness of the writer, who, though she certainly escaped the epidemic "falling sickness" of enthusiasm for Pio Nouo, takes shame upon herself that she believed, like a woman,some royal oaths, and lost sight of tha probable consequences ol some obvious popular delects. il the discrepancy should be painful to the reader, let him understand that to tiie writer it has been more so. ButBiich discrepancy we are called upon to accept at every hour by the conditions of our nature . . . the discrepancy between aspiration and perform* aiic*, between faith and dislilusion, between hope and fact. "Oh trusted, broken prophecy, Oh richest fortune sourly crost, Born for the future, to the future lost i" Nay, not loBt to the future in this case. The future of italy shall not be disinherited.—Fi.orEncb, i85i.l PART I, I Heard last night a little child go singing 'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church, "O bella liberta, 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 finger steadied on his And still O bella liberta he sang, Then I thought, musing, of the innu- Sweet songs which still for Italy outrang From older singers' lips, who sang not thus ExultingJy and purely, yet, with pang Sheathed into music, touched the heart of us So finely that the pity scarcely pained! I thought how Filicaja led on others, Bewailers for their Italy enchained, And how they called her childless among mothers. Widow of empires, ay, and scarce refrained Cursing her beauty to her face as brothers Might a shamed sister's—' Had she been less fair She were less wretched,'—how, evoking so From congregated wrong and heaped despair Of men and women writhing under blow, Harrowed and hideous in a filthy lair, Some personating Image, wherein woe Was wrapt in beauty from offending much, They called it Cybele, or Niobe, Or laid it corpse-like on a bier for such, Where all the world might drop for Italy Those cadenced tears which burn not where they touch,— 'Juliet of nations, canst thou die as we? And was the violet crown that crowned thy head So over large, though new buds made it rough, It slipped down and across thine eyelids dead, 0 sweet, fair Juliet V Of such songs enough; Too many of such complaints! Behold, instead, Void at Verona, Juliet's marble trough !* As void as that is, are all images Men set between themselves and actual wrong, To catch the weight of pity, meet the stress Of conscience ;—since 'tis easier to gaze long • They show at verona an empty trough of ■tone aa the tomb of Juliet. On mournful masks, and sad effigies, Than on real, live, weak creatures crushed by strong. Ht. For me who stand in Italy to-day Where worthier poets stood and sang before, I kiss their footsteps, yet their words gainsay. I can but muse in hope upon this shore Of golden Arno as it shoots away Through Florence's heart beneath her bridges four! Bent bridges, seeming to strain oiT like bows, And tremble while the arrowy undertide Shoots on and cleaves the marble as it goes, And strikes up palace-walls on either side, And froths the cornice out in glittering rows. With doors and windows quaintly multiplied, And terrace-sweeps, and gazers upon all, By whom if flower or kerchief were thrown out From any lattice there, the same would fall Into the river underneath no doubt. It runs so close and fast 'twixt wall and wall. How beautiful! The mountains from without In silence listen for the word said next, What word will men say,—here where In act, in aspiration keep undaunted! • These famous statura recline tn the Sagreatia Nuova, on the tombs of Gfullano de' Medici, third son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and Like dogs upon a dunghill, couched on clay From whence the Medicean stamp's outworn, The final putting off of all sueh sway By all such hands, and freeing of the unborn In Florence and the great world outside Florence Three hundred years his patient statues wait In that small chapel of the dim St. Lawrence! Day's eyes are breaking bold and passionate Over his shoulder, and will flash abhorrence On darkness and with level looks meet fate. When once loose from that marble film of theirs; The Night has wild dreams in her sleep; the Dawn Is haggard as the sleepless. Twilight wears A sort of horror; as the veil withdrawn 'Twixt the artist's soul and works had left them heirs Of speechless thoughts which would not quail nor fawn, Of angers and contempts, of hope and love; For not without a meaning did he place Princely Urbino on the seat above With everlasting shadow on his face; While the slow dawns and twilights disapprove The ashes of his long-extinguished race, Which never more shall clog the feet of men. iv.' I do believe, divinest Angelo, That winter-hour Via Larga, when. They bade thee build a,statue up in snow,* Lorenzo nI Urbino, ilia grandson. Strozzl's epigram on the Night, with Michael Angelo's rejoinder, la well known. * This mocking task was set hy Pletro, the unworthy successor ol Lorenzo the Magnificent. And straight that marvel of thine art again Dissolved beneath the sun's Italian glow, Thine eyes, dilated with the plastic passion, Thawing too, in drops of wounded manhood, since, To mock alike thine art and indignation, Laughed at the palace-window the new prince,— (* Aha! this genius needs for exaltation, * When all's said, and howe'er the proud may wince, A little marble from our princel y mines !') I do believe that hour thou laughedst too. For the whole sad world and for tby Florentines After these few tears—which were only few l That a.% beneath the sun, the grand white lines Of tby snow statue trembled and withdrew,— Tby head, erect as Jove's, being palsied first, The eyelids flattened, the full brow turned blank,— The right hand, raised but now as if it cursed, Dropt, a mere snowball, (till the people sank Their voices, though a louder laughter burst From the royal window.) thou couldst proudly thank God and the prince for promise and presage, And laugh the laugh back, I think verily, Thine eyes being purged by tears of righteous rage To read a wrong into a prophecy. And measure a true great man's heritage Against a mere great duke s posterity. I think tby soul said then, 'I do not need A princedom and its quarries after all; |