Sad Lady, if some mother, passing thee, Should feel a throb of thy foreboding pain, And think--“My child at home clings so to me, With the same smile... and yet in vain, in vain, Since even this Jesus died on Calvary”-- Say to her then: “He also rose again.” THE TOMB OF ILARIA GIUNIGI. ILARIA, thou that wert so fair and dear That death would fain disown thee, grief made wise With prophecy thy husband’s widowed eyes And bade him call the master’s art to rear Thy perfect image on the sculptured bier, With dreaming lids, hands laid in peaceful guise Beneath the breast that seems to fall and rise, And lips that at love’s call should answer, “Here!” First-born of the Renascence, when thy soul Cast the sweet robing of the flesh aside, Into these lovelier marble limbs it stole, Regenerate in art’s sunrise clear and wide As saints who, having kept faith’s raiment whole, Change it above for garments glorified. THE SONNET. PURE form, that like some chalice of old time Contain’st the liquid of the poet’s thought Within thy curving hollow, gem-enwrought With interwoven traceries of rhyme, While o’er thy brim the bubbling fancies climb, What thing am I, that undismayed have sought To pour my verse with trembling hand untaught Into a shape so small yet so sublime? Because perfection haunts the hearts of men, Because thy sacred chalice gathered up The wine of Petrarch, Shakspere, Shelley--then Receive these tears of failure as they drop (Sole vintage of my life), since I am fain To pour them in a consecrated cup. TWO BACKGROUNDS. I. LA VIERGE AU DONATEUR. HERE by the ample river’s argent sweep, Bosomed in tilth and vintage to her walls, A tower-crowned Cybele in armored sleep The city lies, fat plenty in her halls, With calm, parochial spires that hold in fee The friendly gables clustered at their base, And, equipoised o’er tower and market-place, The Gothic minster’s winged immensity; And in that narrow burgh, with equal mood, Two placid hearts, to all life’s good resigned, Might, from the altar to the lych-gate, find Long years of peace and dreamless plenitude. II. MONA LISA. Yon strange blue city crowns a scarped steep No mortal foot hath bloodlessly essayed; Dreams and illusions beacon from its keep, But at the gate an Angel bares his blade; And tales are told of those who thought to gain At dawn its ramparts; but when evening fell Far off they saw each fading pinnacle Lit with wild lightnings from the heaven of pain; Yet there two souls, whom life’s perversities Had mocked with want in plenty, tears in mirth, Might meet in dreams, ungarmented of earth, And drain Joy’s awful chalice to the lees.