Over the Giudecca piled; Window just with window mating, I scarce could breathe to see you reach To catch him ere he climbed too high That quick the round smooth cord of gold, This coiled hair on your head, unrolled, With all its rarities that ache In silence while day lasts, but wake At night-time and their life renew, Suspended just to pleasure you Who brought against their will together. These objects, and, while day lasts, weave Around them such a magic tether That dumb they look: your harp, believe, With all the sensitive tight strings Of midnight palace-pillars, on And on, to sow God's plagues, have gone And while such murmurs flow, the nymph Come with a tune he knows so well. To that prim saint by Haste-thee-Luke! To-morrow, if a harp-string, say, Your gondola - let Zorzi wreathe Had struck some quay or bridge-foot stair! That I may throw a paper out As you and he go underneath. There's Zanze's vigilant taper; safe are we. Only one minute more to-night with me? snow. Now bow you, as becomes, nor touch my hand More than I touch yours when I step to land, And say, "All thanks, Siora!" Heart to heart And lips to lips! Yet once more, ere we part, Clasp me and make me thine, as mine thou art! [He is surprised, and stabbed.] It was ordained to be so, sweet! and best 'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear; At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see; At Düffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be; And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime, So Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!" At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun, Comes now, beneath thine eyes, upon thy And against him the cattle stood black breast. And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank, As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank. Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer; Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good, Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood. THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB Nephews - sons mine. . . ah God, I She, men would have to be your mother once, Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was! Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since, Life, how and what is it? As here I lie "Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace; And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know: Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care; Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South He graced his carrion with, God curse the same! Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, friends flocking And up into the very dome where live As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground; And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine, As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine, Which (the burgesses voted by common consent) Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent. The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh poured red wine of a mighty pulse. -Old Gandolf with his paltry onionstone, Put me where I may look at him! True peach, To revel down my villas while I gasp Rosy and flawless: how I earned the Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles church What then? So much was saved if My sons, ye would not be my death? The white-grape vineyard where the oilpress stood, Drop water gently till the surface sink, And if ye find. Ah God, I know not, I!.. Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft, And corded up in a tight olive-frail, Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli, Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape, Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast. Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all, That brave Frascati villa with its bath, So, let the blue lump poise between my knees, Like God the Father's globe on both his hands Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay, For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst! Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years: Man goeth to the grave, and where is he? Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black Nay, boys, ye love me all of jasper, then! And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet, Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend? No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best! Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage. All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart? Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick, They glitter like your mother's for my soul, Thou return with the joyful assurance the King liveth yet, Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the water be wet. For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space of three days, Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of prayer nor of praise, To betoken that Saul and the Spirit have ended their strife, Or ye would heighten my impoverished And that, faint in his triumph, the mon arch sinks back upon life. II "Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved! God's child with his dew On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and blue Just broken to twine round thy harpstrings, as if no wild heat Were now raging to torture the desert!" III Then I, as was meet, Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose on my feet, And ran o'er the sand burnt to powder. The tent was unlooped; I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and under I stooped; Hands and knees on the slippery grass- Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. But spoke, "Here is David, thy serv- Grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of all. Then a sunbeam, that burst through the tent-roof, showed Saul. |