But he looked upon the city, every side, Far and wide, All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades' Colonnades, All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts--and then, 65 All the men! When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand, Either hand On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace Of my face, 70 Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech Each on each. In one year they sent a million fighters forth South and North, And they built their gods a brazen pillar high 75 As the sky, Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force-- Gold, of course. O heart! O blood that freezes, blood that burns! Earth's returns 80 For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin! Shut them in, With their triumphs and their glories and the rest! Love is best. UP AT A VILLA--DOWN IN THE CITY (AS DISTINGUISHED BY AN ITALIAN PERSON OF QUALITY) Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare, The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square; Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there! Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least! There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast; 5 While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast. Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull Just on a mountain-edge as bare as the creature's skull, Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull! --I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned 10 wool. But the city, oh, the city--the square with the houses! Why? They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's something to take the eye! Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry; You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by; Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets 15 high; And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly. What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights, 'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights: You've the brown plowed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze, And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray 20 olive-trees. Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all at once; In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns. 'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well, The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick 25 and sell.