Read Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) for Free Online Page A

point,
    And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop
    [90] Into great laps and folds of sculptor’s-work:
    And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts
    Grow, with a certain humming in my ears,
    About the life before I lived this life,
    And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests,
    Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount,
    Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes,
    And new-found agate urns as fresh as day,
    And marble’s language, Latin pure, discreet,
    – Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend?
    [100] No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best!
    Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.
    All lapis , all, sons! Else I give the Pope
    My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart?
    Ever your eyes were as a lizard’s quick,
    They glitter like your mother’s for my soul,
    Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze,
    Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase
    With grapes, and add a vizor and a Term,
    And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx
    [110] That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down,
    To comfort me on my entablature
    Whereon I am to lie till I must ask
    ‘Do I live, am I dead?’ There, leave me, there!
    For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude
    To death – ye wish it – God, ye wish it! Stone –
    Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat
    As if the corpse they keep were oozing through –
    And no more lapis to delight the world!
    Well go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there,
    [120] But in a row: and, going, turn your backs
    – Ay, like departing altar-ministrants,
    And leave me in my church, the church for peace,
    That I may watch at leisure if he leers –
    Old Gandolf, at me, from his onion-stone,
    As still he envied me, so fair she was!

Love Among the Ruins
    I
    Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,
Miles and miles
    On the solitary pastures where our sheep
Half-asleep
    Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop
As they crop –
    Was the site once of a city great and gay,
(So they say)
    Of our country’s very capital, its prince
[10] Ages since
    Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
Peace or war.
    II
    Now, – the country does not even boast a tree,
As you see,
    To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
From the hills
    Intersect and give a name to, (else they run
Into one)
    Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires
[20] Up like fires
    O’er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
Bounding all,
    Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed,
Twelve abreast.
    III
    And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
Never was!
    Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o’erspreads
And embeds
    Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,
[30] Stock or stone –
    Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
Long ago;
    Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
Struck them tame;
    And that glory and that shame alike, the gold
Bought and sold.
    IV
    Now, – the single little turret that remains
On the plains,
    By the caper over-rooted, by the gourd
[40] Overscored,
    While the patching houseleek’s head of blossom winks
Through the chinks –
    Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time
Sprang sublime,
    And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced
As they raced,
    And the monarch and his minions and his dames
Viewed the games.
    V
    And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve
[50] Smiles to leave
    To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece
In such peace,
    And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey
Melt away –
    That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
Waits me there
    In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
For the goal,
    When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb
[60] Till I come.
    VI
    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,
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
[70] Of my face,
    Ere we rush, ere we