Now the hand trails upon the viol-string

That sobs, and the brown faces cease to sing, Sad with the whole of pleasure. Whither stray Her eyes now, from whose mouth the slim pipes creep And leave it pouting, while the shadowed grass Is cool against her naked side? Let be :Say nothing now unto her lest she weep, Nor name this ever. Be it as it was,Life touching lips with Immortality.

FOR

AN ALLEGORICAL DANCE OF WOMEN. BY ANDREA MANTEGNA.

(In the Louvre.)

SCARCELY, I think; yet it indeed may be

The meaning reached him, when this music rang Clear through his frame, a sweet possessive pang, And he beheld these rocks and that ridged sea. But I believe that, leaning tow'rds them, he Just felt their hair carried across his face

As each girl passed him; nor gave ear to trace How many feet; nor bent assuredly His eyes from the blind fixedness of thought To know the dancers. It is bitter glad

Even unto tears. Its meaning filleth it,

A secret of the wells of Life: to wit:The heart's each pulse shall keep the sense it had With all, though the mind's labor run to nought.

FOR

'RUGGIERO AND ANGELICA.'

BY INGRES.

(Two Sonnets.)

I.

A REMOTE Sky, prolonged to the sea's brim :
One rock-point standing buffeted alone,
Vexed at its base with a foul beast unknown,
Hell-birth of geomaunt and teraphim:

A knight, and a winged creature bearing him,
Reared at the rock: a woman fettered there,
Leaning into the hollow with loose hair
And throat let back and heartsick trail of limb.
The sky is harsh, and the sea shrewd and salt:
Under his lord the griffin-horse ramps blind

With rigid wings and tail. The spear's lithe stem Thrills in the roaring of those jaws behind, That evil length of body chafes at fault.

She doth not hear nor see-she knows of them.

II.

Clench thine eyes now,―'tis the last instant, girl :
Draw in thy senses, set thy knees, and take
One breath for all: thy life is keen awake,——

Thou mayst not swoon.

Was that the scattered whirl

Of its foam drenched thee?—or the waves that curl
And split, bleak spray wherein thy temples ache?
Or was it his the champion's blood to flake
Thy flesh

Now, silence

or thine own blood's anointing, girl?

for the sea's is such a sound As irks not silence; and except the sea,

All now is still. Now the dead thing doth cease To writhe, and drifts. He turns to her: and she, Cast from the jaws of Death, remains there, bound, Again a woman in her nakedness.

FOR

"THE WINE OF CIRCE."

BY EDWARD BURNE JONES.

DUSK-HAIRED and gold-robed o'er the golden wine
She stoops, wherein, distilled of death and shame,
Sink the black drops; while, lit with fragrant flame,
Round her spread board the golden sunflowers shine.
Doth Helios here with Hecatè combine

(O Circe, thou their votaress !) to proclaim
For these thy guests all rapture in Love's name,
Till pitiless Night give Day the countersign?

Lords of their hour, they come. And by her knee
Those cowering beasts, their equals heretofore,
Wait; who with them in new equality

To-night shall echo back the sea's dull roar
With a vain wail from passion's tide-strown shore
Where the dishevelled seaweed hates the sea.

MARY'S GIRLHOOD.

(For a Picture.)

THIS is that blessed Mary, pre-elect

God's Virgin. Gone is a great while, and she
Dwelt young in Nazareth of Galilee.

Unto God's will she brought devout respect,
Profound simplicity of intellect,

And supreme patience. From her mother's knee
Faithful and hopeful; wise in charity;
Strong in grave peace; in pity circumspect.
So held she through her girlhood; as it were
An angel-watered lily, that near God

Grows and is quiet. Till, one dawn at home,
She woke in her white bed, and had no fear
At all, yet wept till sunshine, and felt awed:
Because the fulness of the time was come.

THE PASSOVER IN THE HOLY FAMILY. (For a Drawing.*)

HERE meet together the prefiguring day

6

And day prefigured. Eating, thou shalt stand, Feet shod, loins girt, thy road-staff in thine hand, With blood-stained door and lintel,'-did God say By Moses' mouth in ages passed away.

And now, where this poor household doth comprise
At Paschal-Feast two kindred families,—

Lo! the slain lamb confronts the Lamb to slay.

*The scene is in the house-porch, where Christ holds a bowl of blood from which Zacharias is sprinkling the posts and lintel. Joseph has brought the lamb and Elisabeth lights the pyre. The shoes which John fastens and the bitter herbs which Mary is gathering form part of the ritual.

The pyre is piled. What agony's crown attained,
What shadow of Death the Boy's fair brow subdues
Who holds that blood wherewith the porch is stained
By Zachary the priest? John binds the shoes
He deemed himself not worthy to unloose;
And Mary culls the bitter herbs ordained.

MARY MAGDALENE.

AT THE DOOR OF SIMON THE PHARISEE.

(For a Drawing.*)

'WHY wilt thou cast the roses from thine hair?
Nay, be thou all a rose,-wreath, lips, and cheek.
Nay, not this house,-that banquet-house we seek ;
See how they kiss and enter; come thou there.
This delicate day of love we two will share

Till at our ear love's whispering night shall speak.
What, sweet one,-hold'st thou still the foolish
freak?

Nay, when I kiss thy feet they'll leave the stair.'

'Oh loose me ! See'st thou my Bridegroom's face
That draws me to Him? For His feet my kiss,
My hair, my tears He craves to-day :—and oh!
What words can tell what other day and place
Shall see me clasp those blood-stained feet of His ?
He needs me, calls me, loves me : let me go!'

SAINT LUKE THE PAINTER.

(For a Drawing.)

GIVE honor unto Luke Evangelist;

For he it was (the aged legends say)

Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray. Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist

*In the drawing Mary has left a festal procession, and is ascending by a sudden impulse the steps of the house where she sees Christ. Her lover has followed her and is trying to turn her back.

Of devious symbols: but soon having wist

How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day
Are symbols also in some deeper way,

She looked through these to God and was God's priest.

And if, past noon, her toil began to irk,
And she sought talismans, and turned in vain
To soulless self-reflections of man's skill,-
Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still
Kneel in the latter grass to pray again,
Ere the night cometh and she may not work.

LILITH.

(For a Picture.)

OF Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told

(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,)

That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive, And her enchanted hair was the first gold.

And still she sits, young while the earth is old,

And, subtly of herself contemplative,

Draws men to watch the bright net she can weave,

Till heart and body and life are in its hold.

The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where
Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?

Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent,

And round his heart one strangling golden hair.

SIBYLLA PALMIFERA.

(For a Picture.)

UNDER the arch of Life, where love and death,
Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw

Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe, I drew it in as simply as my breath.