Come down to me, cling to me, lay thy red lips on me, love, Let me drown in thy bountiful beauty, O glorious consecrate dove, Made fit for the vigil of Venus, made fair by the Cyprian dame, Made fair in the form of a maiden, a medley of music and flame; For the world grows giddy around us, and swoons, and the pale souls preach Poor fables of sorrow and virtue, and all that the grey gods teach, But we clasp and we bite and we madden, and I worship your throat and your hair. We have strayed in the cold sea places, we have laughed on the altar stair, We have eaten and drunken of love, and the lesson of living is this, That the high sky bends above us, and life is a curse and a kiss. Make me glad, O thou rare hand-maiden, with the sound of thy passionate sighs, While I sing of thy body’s white beauty and live in the light of thine eyes, For save me there’s no man living made worthy to utter thy praise, Who art come as new moon to our night-tide, new sun toour days. _Jack Harris after his Conversion._ From an article by Mr. Justin H. McCarthy, which appeared in _Belgravia_ (London). March, 1880. ――――:o:―――― THE LAY OF MACARONI. As a wave that steals when the winds are stormy From creek to cove of the curving shore, Buffeted, blown, and broken before me, Scattered and spread to its sunlit core: As a dove that dips in the dark of maples To sip the sweetness of shelter and shade, I kneel in thy nimbus, O noon of Naples, I bathe in thine beauty, by thee embayed. What is it ails me that I should sing of her? The queen of the flashes and flames that were! Yea, I have felt the shuddering sting of her, The flower-sweet throat and the hands of her! I have swayed and sung to the sound of her psalters, I have danced her dances of dizzy delight, I have hallowed mine hair to the horns of her altars, Between the nightingale’s song and the night! What is it, Queen, that now I should do for thee? What is it now I should ask at thine hands? Blow of the trumpets thine children once blew for thee? Break from thine feet and thine bosom the bands? Nay, as sweet as the songs of Leone Leoni, And gay as her garments of gem-sprinkled gold, She gives me mellifluous, mild macaroni, The choice of her children when cheeses are old! And over me hover, as if by the wings of it, Frayed in the furnace by flame that is fleet, The curious coils and the strenuous strings of it, Dropping, diminishing down, as I eat: Lo! and the beautiful Queen, as she brings of it, Lifts me the links of the limitless chain, Bidding mine mouth chant the splendidest things of it, Out of the wealth of my wonderful brain!