To Giusue Carducci
O RICH and splendid soul that overflowest
With light and fire caught from thy native skies!—
Whose latent storm is lurid in thine eyes
When with august and bended brows thou throwest
Thy Jove-like bolt upon the world below.
Woe, woe the wretch—that ever he was born!
Whom once the fierce sirocco of thy scorn
Encircles, deadly, withering,—Ah woe!
But thrice-blest She, whom with one golden word
Thou settest in the firmament of heaven,
A happy, deathless star;—a wonder given
To awe-eyed mortals while thy voice is heard.
And she—ah me!—her name is—ITALY!
Most glorious and most woful of all names!
Whose sweet sound the whole world’s vast heart inflames
So chanted by her last great son—by thee
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poem by George William Lewis Marshall-Hall
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On Reading Shakepeare's Sonnets
THY verse is like a cool and shady well
Lying a-dream within some moss-walled close
Far from the common way, where violets doze
In green-deep grass beside the sweet hare-bell.
And each wayfarer as he stoopeth there
Doth spy a face that is most like his own,
So weary and—ah me!—so woe-begone
That almost he forgetteth his deep care.
There is a royal restraint in thy sad rhyme,
Dis-calmèd calm, and passion passionless,
And mellowed is all taint of bitterness
Into the harmony of that still time
When leaves are yellowing in the sallow sun
And evening’s bloom is flush across the sky,
When haggard summer tottereth in his run
And gracious moist-eyed autumn draweth nigh.
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poem by George William Lewis Marshall-Hall
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