AUSTERITY OF POETRY That son of Italy who tried to blow,[9] Ere Dante came, the trump of sacred song, In his light youth amid a festal throng Sate with his bride to see a public show. Fair was the bride, and on her front did glow Youth like a star; and what to youth belong-- Gay raiment, sparkling gauds, elation strong. A prop gave way! crash fell a platform! lo, 'Mid struggling sufferers, hurt to death, she lay! Shuddering, they drew her garments off--and found A robe of sackcloth next the smooth, white skin. Such, poets, is your bride, the Muse! young, gay, Radiant, adorn'd outside; a hidden ground Of thought and of austerity within. A PICTURE AT NEWSTEAD What made my heart, at Newstead, fullest swell?-- 'Twas not the thought of Byron, of his cry Stormily sweet, his Titan-agony; It was the sight of that Lord Arundel Who struck, in heat, his child he loved so well, And his child's reason flicker'd, and did die. Painted (he will'd it) in the gallery They hang; the picture doth the story tell. Behold the stern, mail'd father, staff in hand! The little fair-hair'd son, with vacant gaze, Where no more lights of sense or knowledge are! Methinks the woe, which made that father stand Baring his dumb remorse to future days, Was woe than Byron's woe more tragic far. RACHEL I In Paris all look'd hot and like to fade. Sere, in the garden of the Tuileries, Sere with September, droop'd the chestnut-trees. 'Twas dawn; a brougham roll'd through the streets and made Halt at the white and silent colonnade Of the French Theatre. Worn with disease, Rachel, with eyes no gazing can appease, Sate in the brougham and those blank walls survey'd. She follows the gay world, whose swarms have fled To Switzerland, to Baden, to the Rhine; Why stops she by this empty play-house drear? Ah, where the spirit its highest life hath led, All spots, match'd with that spot, are less divine; And Rachel's Switzerland, her Rhine, is here! II Unto a lonely villa, in a dell Above the fragrant warm Provencal shore, The dying Rachel in a chair they bore Up the steep pine-plumed paths of the Estrelle, And laid her in a stately room, where fell The shadow of a marble Muse of yore, The rose-crown'd queen of legendary lore, Polymnia, full on her death-bed.--'Twas well! The fret and misery of our northern towns, In this her life's last day, our poor, our pain, Our jangle of false wits, our climate's frowns, Do for this radiant Greek-soul'd artist cease; Sole object of her dying eyes remain The beauty and the glorious art of Greece. III Sprung from the blood of Israel's scatter'd race, At a mean inn in German Aarau born, To forms from antique Greece and Rome uptorn, Trick'd out with a Parisian speech and face,