From Como, when the light was gray, And in my head, for half the day, The rich Virgilian rustic measure Of Lari Maxume, all the way, Like ballad-burthen music, kept, As on The Lariano crept To that fair port below the castle Of Queen Theodolind, where we slept ; Or hardly slept, but watch'd awake A cypress in the moonlight shake, The moonlight touching o'er a terrace One tall Agavè above the lake. What more? we took our last adieu, And up the snowy Splugen drew, But ere we reach'd the highest summit I pluck'd a daisy, I gave it you. It told of England then to me, O love, we two shall go no longer So dear a life your arms enfold Yet here to-night in this dark city, I found, tho' crush'd to hard and dry, Still in the little book you lent me, And where you tenderly laid it by : And I forgot the clouded Forth, The gloom that saddens Heaven and Earth, The bitter east, the misty summer And gray metropolis of the North. Perchance, to lull the throbs of pain, Perchance, to charm a vacant brain, Perchance, to dream you still beside me, My fancy fled to the South again. TO THE REV. F. D. MAURICE. OME, when no graver cares employ, Your presence will be sun in winter, Making the little one leap for joy. For, being of that honest few, Who give the Fiend himself his due, Should eighty-thousand college-councils Thunder "Anathema," friend, at you; Should all our churchmen foam in spite At you, so careful of the right, Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome (Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight; Where, far from noise and smoke of town, I watch the twilight falling brown All round a careless-order'd garden Close to the ridge of a noble down. You'll have no scandal while you dine, For groves of pine on either hand, Where, if below the milky steep Some ship of battle slowly creep, And on thro' zones of light and shadow Glimmer away to the lonely deep, |