A youth was there, of quiet ways, A Student of old books and days, To whom all tongues and lands were known And yet a lover of his own; With many a social virtue graced, And yet a friend of solitude; A man of such a genial mood The heart of all things he embraced, And yet of such fastidious taste, He never found the best too good. Books were his passion and delight, And in his upper room at home Stood many a rare and sumptuous tome, In vellum bound, with gold bedight, Great volumes garmented in white, Recalling Florence, Pisa, Rome. He loved the twilight that surrounds The border-land of old romance; Where glitter hauberk, helm, and lance, And banner waves, and trumpet sounds, And ladies ride with hawk on wrist, And mighty warriors sweep along, Magnified by the purple mist, The dusk of centuries and of song. The chronicles of Charlemagne, Of Merlin and the Mort d’Arthure, Mingled together in his brain With tales of Flores and Blanchefleur, Sir Ferumbras, Sir Eglamour, Sir Launcelot, Sir Morgadour, Sir Guy, Sir Bevis, Sir Gawain. A young Sicilian, too, was there; In sight of Etna born and bred, Some breath of its volcanic air Was glowing in his heart and brain, And, being rebellious to his liege, After Palermo’s fatal siege, Across the western seas he fled, In good King Bomba’s happy reign. His face was like a summer night, All flooded with a dusky light; His hands were small; his teeth shone white As sea-shells, when he smiled or spoke; His sinews supple and strong as oak; Clean shaven was he as a priest, Who at the mass on Sunday sings, Save that upon his upper lip His beard, a good palm’s length least, Level and pointed at the tip, Shot sideways, like a swallow’s wings. The poets read he o’er and o’er, And most of all the Immortal Four Of Italy; and next to those, The story-telling bard of prose, Who wrote the joyous Tuscan tales Of the Decameron, that make Fiesole’s green hills and vales Remembered for Boccaccio’s sake. Much too of music was his thought; The melodies and measures fraught With sunshine and the open air, Of vineyards and the singing sea Of his beloved Sicily; And much it pleased him to peruse The songs of the Sicilian muse,-- Bucolic songs by Meli sung In the familiar peasant tongue, That made men say, “Behold! once more The pitying gods to earth restore Theocritus of Syracuse!”