The lady and her lover, left alone, The rosy flood of twilight's sky admired; Ave Maria! o'er the earth and sea, That heavenliest hour of Heaven is worthiest thee! THE TWILIGHT HOUR CII Ave Maria blessèd be the hour! The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft Have felt that moment in its fullest power Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft, While swung the deep bell in the distant tower Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft, And not a breath crept through the rosy air, And yet the forest leaves seem'd stirr'd with prayer. CIII Ave Maria! 't is the hour of prayer! Ave Maria! 't is the hour of love! Ave Maria! may our spirits dare Look up to thine and to thy Son's above! Ave Maria! oh that face so fair! Those downcast eyes beneath the Almighty dove What though 't is but a pictured image? — strike· That painting is no idol, 't is too like. CIV Some kinder casuists are pleased to say, In nameless print that I have no devotion; But set those persons down with me to pray, And you shall see who has the properest notion Of getting into heaven the shortest way; My altars are the mountains and the ocean, Earth, air, stars,— all that springs from the great Whole, Who hath produced, and will receive the soul. CV Sweet hour of twilight! in the solitude CVI The shrill cicalas, people of the pine, Making their summer lives one ceaseless song, His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng CVII Oh, Hesperus! thou bringest all good things Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings, CVIII Soft hour! which wakes the wish and melts the heart CIX When Nero perish'd by the justest doom Of nations freed, and the world overjoy'd, Of feeling for some kindness done, when power FROM "DON JUAN," CANTO IV HAIDÉE AND JUAN I NOTHING SO difficult as a beginning In poesy, unless perhaps the end; For oftentimes when Pegasus seems winning The race, he sprains a wing, and down we tend, Like Lucifer when hurl'd from heaven for sinning; Our sin the same, and hard as his to mend, Being pride, which leads the mind to soar too far, Till our own weakness shows us what we are. II But Time, which brings all beings to their level, Man, and, as we would hope, perhaps the devil, That neither of their intellects are vast: While youth's hot wishes in our red veins revel, We know not this the blood flows on too fast; But as the torrent widens towards the ocean, We ponder deeply on each past emotion. III As boy, I thought myself a clever fellow, And wish'd that others held the same opinion; They took it up when my days grew more mellow, And other minds acknowledged my dominion: Now my sere fancy "falls into the yellow Leaf," and Imagination droops her pinion, And the sad truth which hovers o'er my desk IV And if I laugh at any mortal thing, "Tis that I may not weep; and if I weep, "T is that our nature cannot always bring Itself to apathy, for we must steep Our hearts first in the depths of Lethe's spring, A mortal mother would on Lethe fix. V Some have accused me of a strange design I don't pretend that I quite understand VI To the kind reader of our sober clime This way of writing will appear exotic; Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme, Who sang when chivalry was more Quixotic, And revell'd in the fancies of the time, True knights, chaste dames, huge giants, kings des potic; |