But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve,

While I triumph o’er a secret wrung from nature’s close reserve,

In you come with your cold music till I creep thro’ every nerve.

Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned:

"Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.

"The soul, doubtless, is immortal — where a soul can be discerned.

"Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology,

"Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;

"Butterflies may dread extinction, — you’ll not die, it cannot be!

"As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,

"Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:

"What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

"Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.

Dear dead women, with such hair, too — what’s become of all the gold

Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

Two in The Campagna

I wonder do you feel to-day

As I have felt since, hand in hand,

We sat down on the grass, to stray

In spirit better through the land,

This morn of Rome and May?

For me, I touched a thought, I know,

Has tantalized me many times,

(Like turns of thread the spiders throw

Mocking across our path) for rhymes

To catch at and let go.

Help me to hold it! First it left

The yellowing fennel,* run to seed

There, branching from the brickwork’s cleft,

Some old tomb’s ruin: yonder weed

Took up the floating wet,

Where one small orange cup amassed

Five beetles, — blind and green they grope

Among the honey-meal: and last,

Everywhere on the grassy slope

I traced it. Hold it fast!

The champaign with its endless fleece

Of feathery grasses everywhere!

Silence and passion, joy and peace,

An everlasting wash of air —

Rome’s ghost since her decease.

Such life here, through such lengths of hours,

Such miracles performed in play,

Such primal naked forms of flowers,

Such letting nature have her way

While heaven looks from its towers!

How say you? Let us, O my dove,

Let us be unashamed of soul,

As earth lies bare to heaven above!

How is it under our control

To love or not to love?

I would that you were all to me,

You that are just so much, no more.

Nor yours nor mine, nor slave nor free!

Where does the fault lie? What the core

O’ the wound, since wound must be?

I would I could adopt your will,

See with your eyes, and set my heart

Beating by yours, and drink my fill

At your soul’s springs, — your part my part

In life, for good and ill.

No. I yearn upward, touch you close,

Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,

Catch your soul’s warmth, — I pluck the rose

And love it more than tongue can speak —

Then the good minute goes.

Already how am I so far

Out of that minute? Must I go

Still like the thistle-ball, no bar,

Onward, whenever light winds blow,

Fixed by no friendly star?

Just when I seemed about to learn!

Where is the thread now? Off again!

The old trick! Only I discern —

Infinite passion, and the pain

Of finite hearts that yearn.

Memorabilia

Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,

And did he stop and speak to you?

And did you speak to him again?

How strange it seems, and new!

But you were living before that,

And you are living after,

And the memory I started at—

My starting moves your laughter!

I crossed a moor, with a name of its own

And a certain use in the world no doubt,

Yet a hand’s-breadth of it shines alone

’Mid the blank miles round about:

For there I picked up on the heather

And there I put inside my breast