Of angel-shapes fleet through the skies,
And their glad voices ever flow.
Ah, how we'll wonder there at woe!
O Hope, now more than ever sweet,
This thought repays thy past deceit !-
There, Leonardo, there we'll meet!
Oimè il bel viso; oimè il soave sguardo;
Oimè il leggiadro portamento altero.
When, in the hours of boyhood's cloudless prime,
I was a denizen of Joy's far clime,
Begirt with wild romance's wildest dreams,
The dweller of an elfin-land whereon
Heaven seemed to shine with more than heavenly beams,
I knew a maid,—an almost matchless one :
Seldom hath minstrel sung of lady gay
More fair, more worthy of a deathless lay
Than she ;-and much it grieves me, thus, to wrong
A theme so goodly with so mean a song.
She was, just then, in the rejoicing May
Of rarest loveliness; and many a wight
Sighed for her, sorely, many a day and night.
Even in her April she made scores of fools,-
If love be folly, as the unlovely say;
And many an idler made, in several schools,
Where youths, to think of her, forsook the cares
Of study as impossible affairs,
And lolled in solemn reverie, or waged
War for her sake, and 'gainst each other raged.
Some took to rhyme, despite of grammar-rules:
But all agreed upon one point,-to curse
Learning of every kind, in every tongue;
Till the dread sage, with disenchanting wand,
Unlyred each Phoebus, and each Mars unmanned.
Matters, however, still grew worse and worse;
With heavier blows the house of bondage rung;
Lore and the learned, with deeper hate, were banned.
This heart of mine, too, had well-nigh forsaken
Its childish sports to love her; and the grace
Of that fine mien was hoarded in my soul;
And all the witcheries of her form and face
Left a bright picture,-bright as Love could trace,-
On my young memory, mocking Time's control:
For, from the life that portraiture was taken,
And painted on the life, in wondrous hues.
Not Titian's pencil ever could awaken
A shadow to such strong reality,
As that remembered image had for me.
Whene'er she walked abroad you might have seen
How many a swain the self-same way would choose, Careful to meet her at each turn she took,
And gain the ruinous bliss of one sweet look.
They tracked her steps, like very spies,—I mean
Like lovers!-There is no espionage
To equal theirs, who not alone with sight
Can watch, and watch; but with the total might
Of heart and soul.-That was a golden age:
But gold hath eagle-wings to wend its way,
And I have, somehow, reached this iron day:
Yet as the hapless bird, despite its cage,
Strives to recall the fresh green wood again,
And nature's free delights, in many a strain
Such as the sylvan echoes knew full well,
So I, albeit, in but an uncouth lay,
Thus struggle, for a while, to dream away,-
Away-through thousand sunsets, back on time,
From out this straitened earth, and frozen clime,
Into that marvellous world of which I tell.
The maid of whom I spoke had gone; and ere
I looked on her again, some half-score years
Were added to the past;-when, lo! appears,
Once more, by chance, that well-remembered fair :
"Twas on a day of spring;-just such a day
As I had known her to have brightened, oft,
With the pure love-light of her glances soft,
More than could Sol, with his returning ray.
His beams can never reach beyond the sight:-
Hers dazzled inward to the heart, and made
Summer of all the year, and day of night,
Where'er she dwelt. And can those glories fade?
Alas, they were but of a mortal maid !
I saw her; and I knew that it was she,
Despite the faithful semblance in my breast
Which all her early traits so well expressed.
I knew her by the sparkle of her eyes:
Yet that seemed, now,-bright though it was,-to be
But the wan spectre of their former light,—
A wintry sunset in the joyless skies.
I almost doubted if I saw aright,
So strange, yet so well-known, she seemed to me.
The lips that were right coralline, when last
I had beheld them,-in their present hue,
Resembled rose-leaves scattered by the blast
Of autumn, where there falls no freshening dew.
But oh, the cheeks! Out on ye, felon-years,
That would despoil that gifted creature, so!
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