Performs it, perfects it, makes amends For the toiling and moiling, and then, sic transit!

Happier the thrifty blind-folk labor, With upturned eye while the hand is busy,

Not sidling a glance at the coin of their neighbor!

"T is looking downward that makes one dizzy.

"If you knew their work you would deal your dole."

May I take upon me to instruct you? When Greek Art ran and reached the goal,

Thus much had the world to boast in fructu

The Truth of Man, as by God first spoken, Which the actual generations garble, Was re-uttered, and Soul (which Limbs betoken)

And Limbs (Soul informs) made new in marble.

So you saw yourself as you wished you were,

As you might have been, as you cannot be:

Earth here, rebuked by Olympus there: And grew content in your poor degree With your little power, by those statues' godhead,

And your little scope, by their eyes' full sway,

And your little grace, by their grace embodied

And your little date, by their forms that stay.

You would fain be kinglier, say, than I am?

Even so, you will not sit like Theseus, You would prove a model? The Son of Priam,

Has yet the advantage in arms' and knees' use.

You're wroth-can you slay your snake like Apollo?

You're grieved-still Niobe 's the grander!

You live-there's the Racers' frieze to follow:

You die-there's the dying Alexander.

So, testing your weakness by their strength,

Your meagre charms by their rounded beauty,

But what and where depend on life's minute?

Hails heavenly cheer or infernal laughter

Our first step out of the gulf or in it? Shall Man, such step within his endeavor, Man's face, have no more play and action

Than joy which is crystallized forever, Or grief, an eternal petrifaction?

On which I conclude, that the early painters,

To cries of Greek Art and what more wish you?"

Replied, "To become now self-acquainters,

And paint man, man, whatever the issue!

Make new hopes shine through the flesh

they fray,

New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters:

To bring the invisible full into play! Let the visible go to the dogs-what matters?"

Give these, I exhort you, their guerdon and glory

For daring so much, before they well did it.

The first of the new, in our race's story, Beats the last of the old; 't is no idle quiddit.

The worthies began a revolution,

Which if on earth you intend to acknowledge,

Why, honor them now! (ends my allocution)

Nor confer your degree when the folk leave college.

There's a fancy some lean to and others hate

That, when this life is ended, begins New work for the soul in another state, Where it strives and gets weary, loses

and wins:

Where the strong and the weak, this world's congeries,

Repeat in large what they practised in small,

Through life after life in unlimited series;

Only the scale 's to be changed, that's all.

Yet I hardly know. When a soul has

seen

By the means of Evil that Good is best,

And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's serene,—

When our faith in the same has stood the test

Why the child grown man, you burn the rod,

The uses of labor are surely done; There remaineth a rest for the people of God:

And I have had troubles enough, for

one.

But at any rate I have loved the season Of Art's spring-birth so dim and dewy ; My sculptor is Nicolo the Pisan,

My painter-who but Cimabue? Nor ever was man of them all indeed, From these to Ghiberti and Ghirlan dajo,

Could say that he missed my critic-meed. So, now to my special grievanceheigh-ho!

Their ghosts still stand, as I said before, Watching each fresco flaked and rasped,

Blocked up, knocked out, or whitewashed o'er:

-No getting again what the church

has grasped!

No matter for these! But Giotto, you. Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it,

Oh, never! it shall not be counted trueThat a certain precious little tablet Which Buonarrotti eyed like a lover

Was buried so long in oblivion's womb And, left for another than I to discover, Turns up at last! and to whom? — to whom?

I, that have haunted the dim San Spirito,

(Or was it rather the Ognissanti ?) Patient on altar-step planting a weary toe!

What I love best in all the world
Is a castle, precipice-encurled,
In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine.
Or look for me, old fellow of mine,
(If I get my head from out the mouth
O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands,
And come again to the land of lands)—
In a sea-side house to the farther South,
Where the baked cicala dies of drouth,
And one sharp tree-'t is a cypress-
stands

By the many hundred years red-rusted,
Rough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted,
My sentinel to guard the sands

To the water's edge. For, what expands Before the house, but the great opaque Blue breadth of sea without a break? While, in the house, forever crumbles Some fragment of the frescoed walls, From blisters where a scorpion sprawls. A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles Down on the pavement, green-flesh me

lons.

And says there 's news to-day—the king

Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing, Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling, --She hopes they have not caught the felons.

Italy, my Italy!

Queen Mary's saying serves for me-
(When fortune's malice
Lost her, Calais)

Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it, Italy."
Such lovers old are I and she:
So it always was, so shall ever be !
1855.

MY STAR

ALL that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw

(Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red,

Now a dart of blue; Till my friends have said

They would fain see, too,

My star that dartles the red and the blue !

Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled :

They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.

What matter to me if their star is a world?

Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

1855.

Couldst thou repeat a stroke and gain the sky!

And is it not the bitterer to think That disengage our hands and thou wilt sink

Although thy love was love in very deed?

I know that nature! Pass a festive day, Thou dost not throw its relic-flower away Nor bid its music's loitering echo speed.

Thou let'st the stranger's glove lie where it fell;

If old things remain old things all is well,

For thou art grateful as becomes man best:

And hadst thou only heard me play one tune,

Or viewed me from a window, not so

soon

With thee would such things fade as with the rest.

I seem to see! We meet and part; 't is brief;

Is it so helpful to thee? Canst thou take

The mimic up, nor, for the true thing's sake,

Put gently by such efforts at a beam? Is the remainder of the way so long, Thou need'st the little solace, thou the strong?

Watch out thy watch, let weak ones doze and dream!

Ah, but the fresher faces! "Is it true," Thou 'It ask, some eyes are beautiful and new?

Some hair, how can one choose but grasp such wealth?

And if a man would press his lips to lips Fresh as the wilding hedge-rose-cup there slips

The dewdrop out of, must it be by stealth?

"It cannot change the love still kept for Her,

More than if such a picture I prefer Passing a day with, to a room's bare side :