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ROME

THE VATICAN-SALA DELLE MUSE

(1887)

I SAT in the Muses' Hall at the mid of the day, And it seemed to grow still, and the people to pass away,

And the chiselled shapes to combine in a haze

of sun,

Till beside a Carrara column there gleamed forth One.

She looked not this nor that of those beings

divine,

But each and the whole-an essence of all the

Nine ;

With tentative foot she neared to my haltingplace,

A pensive smile on her sweet, small, marvellous face.

Regarded so long, we render thee sad? said she.

"

"Not you," sighed I, "but my own in

constancy!

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I worship each and each; in the morning one, And then, alas! another at sink of sun.

"To-day my soul clasps Form; but where is my troth

Of yesternight with Tune: can one cleave to both?"

"Be not perturbed," said she.

apart in fame,

"Though

As I and my sisters are one, those, too, are the same."

-"But my love goes further-to Story, and Dance, and Hymn,

"

The lover of all in a sun-sweep is fool to whim-
Is swayed like a river-weed as the ripples run!
Nay, wight, thou sway'st not. These are
but phases of one ;

"And that one is I; and I am projected from thee,

One that out of thy brain and heart thou causest

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ROME

AT THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS

NEAR THE GRAVES OF SHELLEY AND KEATS

(1887)

WHO, then, was Cestius,

And what is he to me ?

Amid thick thoughts and memories multi

tudinous

One thought alone brings he.

I can recall no word

Of anything he did;

For me he is a man who died and was interred To leave a pyramid

Whose purpose was exprest

Not with its first design,

Nor till, far down in Time, beside it found their rest

Two countrymen of mine.

Cestius in life, maybe,

Slew, breathed out threatening ;

I know not.

This I know in death all silently He does a rarer thing,

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In beckoning pilgrim feet
With marble finger high

To where, by shadowy wall and history-haunted street,

Those matchless singers lie.

-Say, then, he lived and died

That stones which bear his name

Should mark, through Time, where two im mortal Shades abide;

It is an ample fame.

ON AN INVITATION TO THE

UNITED STATES

I

My ardours for emprize nigh lost
Since Life has bared its bones to me,
I shrink to seek a modern coast
Whose riper times have yet to be;
Where the new regions claim them free
From that long drip of human tears
Which peoples old in tragedy

Have left upon the centuried years.

II

For, wonning in these ancient lands,
Enchased and lettered as a tomb,

And scored with prints of perished hands,
And chronicled with dates of doom,
Though my own Being bear no bloom
I trace the lives such scenes enshrine,
Give past exemplars present room,
And their experience count as mine.

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