Fantastically crumpled, like his thoughts Which would not seem too plain; you go round twice For one step forward, then you take it back, Because you’re somewhat giddy! there’s the rule For Proclus. Ah, I stained this middle leaf With pressing in’t my Florence iris-bell, Long stalk and all: my father chided me For that stain of blue blood,—I recollect The peevish turn his voice took,—‘Silly girls, Who plant their flowers in our philosophy To make it fine, and only spoil the book! No more of it, Aurora.’ Yes—no more! Ah, blame of love, that’s sweeter than all praise Of those who love not! ’tis so lost to me, I cannot, in such beggared life, afford To lose my Proclus. Not for Florence, even. The kissing Judas, Wolff, shall go instead, Who builds us such a royal book as this To honour a chief-poet, folio-built, And writes above, ‘The house of Nobody:’ Who floats in cream, as rich as any sucked From Juno’s breasts, the broad Homeric lines, And, while with their spondaic prodigious mouths They lap the lucent margins as babe-gods, Proclaims them bastards. Wolff’s an atheist; And if the Iliad fell out, as he says, By mere fortuitous concourse of old songs, We’ll guess as much, too, for the universe. That Wolff, those Platos: sweep the upper shelves As clean as this, and so I am almost rich, Which means, not forced to think of being poor In sight of ends. To-morrow: no delay. I’ll wait in Paris till good Carrington Dispose of such, and, having chaffered for My book’s price with the publisher, direct All proceeds to me. Just a line to ask His help. And now I come, my Italy, My own hills! Are you ’ware of me, my hills, How I burn toward you? do you feel to-night The urgency and yearning of my soul, As sleeping mothers feel the sucking babe And smile?—Nay, not so much as when, in heat, Vain lightnings catch at your inviolate tops, And tremble while ye are stedfast. Still, ye go Your own determined, calm, indifferent way Toward sunrise, shade by shade, and light by light; Of all the grand progression nought left out; As if God verily made you for yourselves, And would not interrupt your life with ours. SIXTH BOOK.