SONG OF THE VINE, IN ENGLAND Man: O Vine along my garden wall, Could I thine English slumber break, Vine: I would wake at the hour of dawning in May in Italy, When rose mists rise from the Magra's valley plains, In the fields of maize and olives around Pontrémoli, When peaks grow golden and clear and the starlight wanes. I would wake to the dance of the sacred mountains boundlessly Kindling their marble snows in the rite of fire; To them my new-born tendrils softly and soundlessly Would uncurl and aspire. I would hang no more on thy wall a rusted slumberer, In some warm terraced dell where the Roman rioted, Would I festoon with leaf-light his glory quieted, Doves from the mountain belfries would seek and cling to me, There go the pale blue shadows so light and showery Mighty white oxen drag in the jars rich-spirited Grazing the narrow walls! Wine-jars I too have filled, and the heart was thrilled with me. Brown-limbed on shady turf the families lay: Shouting they bowled the bowls; and old men, filled with me, Roused the September twilight with songs that day. Lanterns of sun and moon the young children flaunted me, Plaiters of straw from doorway to window cried. Borne through the city gates the great oxen vaunted me, Swaying from side to side. Wine-jars out of my leafage that once so vitally Throbbed into purple, of me thou canst never take: Thy heart would remember the towns on the branch of Italy, And teaching to throb I should teach it, perchance, to break. It would beat for those little cities, rock-hewn and mellowing, Festooned from summit to summit, where still sublime Murmur her temples, lovelier in their yellowing Than in the morn of time. I from the scorn of frost and the wind's iniquity My passionate rootlets draw from that hearth's antiquity The serried realms of our fathers would swell and foam with us Juice of the Latin sunrise; your own sea-flung Rude and far-wandered race might again find home with us Leaguing with old Rome, young. Herbert Trench TO A GREY DRESS" There's a flutter of grey through the trees: I see not her face, I but see The swift re-appearance, the flitting persistence- It has flickered and fluttered away: What a teasing regret she has left in my day-dream, And what dreams of delight are the dreams that one may dream! It was only a flutter of grey; But the vaguest of raiment's impossible chances DREAMS I To dream of love, and, waking, to remember you: As though, being dead, one dreamed of heaven, and woke in hell. At night my lovely dreams forget the old farewell: Ah! wake not by his side, lest you remember too! II I set all Rome between us: with what joy I set The wonder of the world against my world's delight! Rome, that hast conquered worlds, with intellectual might Capture my heart, and teach my memory to forget! Arthur Symons THE WINDOWS The windows of the little house look down the crooked lane, Morning after morning I walk the fields a mile, I go to town and back again, I swing the little gate; Long since my watching ended-the heart-thrust and the care. It's only for the little house I keep its windows bright; |