FOR

SPRING,

BY SANDRO BOTTICELLI.

(In the Accademia of Florence.)

WHAT masque of what old wind-withered New-Year Honors this Lady?* Flora, wanton-eyed

For birth, and with all flowrets prankt and pied: Aurora, Zephyrus, with mutual cheer

Of clasp and kiss: the Graces circling near,

'Neath bower-linked arch of white arms glorified : And with those feathered feet which hovering glide O'er Spring's brief bloom, Hermes the harbinger.

Birth-bare, nor death-bare yet, the young stems stand,
This Lady's temple-columns: o'er her head
Love wings his shaft. What mystery here is read
Of homage or of hope? But how command

Dead Springs to answer? And how question here
These mummers of that wind-withered New-Year?

FIVE ENGLISH POETS.

I. THOMAS CHATTERTON.

WITH Shakspeare's manhood at a boy's wild heart,Through Hamlet's doubt to Shakspeare near allied, And kin to Milton through his Satan's pride,— At Death's sole door he stooped, and craved a dart ; And to the dear new bower of England's art,—

Even to that shrine Time else had deified,

The unuttered heart that soared against his side,— Drove the fell point, and smote life's seals apart.

*The same lady, here surrounded by the masque of Spring, is evidently the subject of a portrait by Botticelli formerly in the Pourtalès collection in Paris. This portrait is inscribed "Smeralda Bandinelli."

Thy nested home-loves, noble Chatterton;

The angel-trodden stair thy soul could trace

Up Redcliffe's spire; and in the world's armed space Thy gallant sword-play :-these to many an one Are sweet for ever; as thy grave unknown

And love-dream of thine unrecorded face.

II. WILLIAM BLAKE.

(TO FREDERICK SHIELDS, ON HIS SKETCH OF BLAKE'S WORKROOM AND DEATH-ROOM, 3, FOUNTAIN COURT, Strand.)

THIS is the place. Even here the dauntless soul,
The unflinching hand, wrought on; till in that nook,
As on that very bed, his life partook

New birth, and passed. Yon river's dusky shoal,
Whereto the close-built coiling lanes unroll,

Faced his work-window, whence his eyes would stare, Thought-wandering, unto nought that met them there,

But to the unfettered irreversible goal.

This cupboard, Holy of Holies, held the cloud
Of his soul writ and limned; this other one,
His true wife's charge, full oft to their abode
Yielded for daily bread the martyr's stone,
Ere yet their food might be that Bread alone,
The words now home-speech of the mouth of God.

III. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

His Soul fared forth (as from the deep home-grove
The father-songster plies the hour-long quest,)
To feed his soul-brood hungering in the nest;
But his warm Heart, the mother-bird, above
Their callow fledgling progeny still hove

With tented roof of wings and fostering breast
Till the Soul fed the soul-brood. Richly blest
From Heaven their growth, whose food was Human
Love.

Yet ah! Like desert pools that show the stars

Once in long leagues,—even such the scarce-snatched hours

Which deepening pain left to his lordliest powers :

Heaven lost through spider-trammelled prison-bars.
Six years, from sixty saved! Yet kindling skies
Own them, a beacon to our centuries.

IV. JOHN KEATS.

THE weltering London ways where children weep And girls whom none call maidens laugh,—strange road

Miring his outward steps, who inly trode.

The bright Castalian brink and Latmos' steep:-
Even such his life's cross-paths; till deathly deep

He toiled through sands and Lethe; and long pain,
Weary with labor spurned and love found vain,
In dead Rome's sheltering shadow wrapped his sleep.
O pang-dowered Poet, whose reverberant lips
And heart-strung lyre awoke the Moon's eclipse,-
Thou whom the daisies glory in growing o'er,-
Their fragrance clings around thy name, not writ
But rumor'd in water, while the fame of it
Along Time's flood goes echoing evermore.

V. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

(INSCRIPTION FOR THE COUCH, STILL PRESERVED, ON WHICH HE PASSED THE LAST NIGHT OF HIS LIFE.)

"TWIXT those twin worlds,—the world of Sleep, which gave

No dream to warn,—the tidal world of Death,

Which the earth's sea, as the earth, replenisheth,— Shelley, Song's orient sun, to breast the wave, Rose from this couch that morn. Ah! did he brave Only the sea?—or did man's deed of hell

Engulph his bark 'mid mists impenetrable? ... No eye discerned, nor any power might save.

When that mist cleared, O Shelley? what dread veil Was rent for thee, to whom far-darkling Truth Reigned sovereign guide through thy brief ageless youth?

Was the Truth thy Truth, Shelley !-Hush? All-Hail, Past doubt, thou gav'st it; and in Truth's bright sphere

Art first of praisers, being most praised here.

TIBER, NILE, AND THAMES.

THE head and hands of murdered Cicero,
Above his seat high in the Forum hung,

Drew jeers and burning tears. When on the rung Of a swift-mounted ladder, all aglow,

Fulvia, Mark Antony's shameless wife, with show
Of foot firm-poised and gleaming arm upflung,
Bade her sharp needle pierce that god-like tongue
Whose speech fed Rome even as the Tiber's flow.

And thou, Cleopatra's Needle, that hadst thrid
Great skirts of Time ere she and Antony hid

Dead hope!—hast thou too reached, surviving death, A city of sweet speech scorned,-on whose chill stone Keats withered, Coleridge pined, and Chatterton, Breadless, with poison froze the God-fired breath?

THE LAST THREE FROM TRAFALGAR

AT THE ANNIVERSARY BANQUET,

21ST OCTOBER, 187*.

IN grappled ships around The Victory,

Three boys did England's Duty with stout cheer, While one dread truth was kept from every ear, More dire than deafening fire that churned the sea: For in the flag-ship's weltering cockpit, he

Who was the Battle's Heart without a peer, He who had seen all fearful sights save Fear, Was passing from all life save Victory.

And round the old memorial board to-day,

Three graybeards—each a warworn British Tar— View through the mist of years that hour afar : Who soon shall greet, 'mid memories of fierce fray, The impassioned soul which on its radiant way Soared through the fiery cloud of Trafalgar.

CZAR ALEXANDER THE SECOND.

(13TH MARCH, 1881.)

FROM him did forty million serfs, endow'd
Each with six feet of death-due soil, receive
Rich freeborn lifelong land, whereon to sheave
Their country's harvest. These to-day aloud
Demand of Heaven a Father's blood,—sore bow'd
With tears and thrilled with wrath; who, while they
grieve,

On every guilty head would fain achieve
All torment by his edicts disallow'd.

He stayed the knout's red-ravening fangs; and first
Of Russian traitors, his own murderers go
White to the tomb. While he,-laid foully low
With limbs red-rent, with festering brain which erst
Willed kingly freedom,-'gainst the deed accurst
To God bears witness of his people's woe.

WORDS ON THE WINDOW-PANE.*

DID she in summer write it, or in spring,
Or with this wail of autumn at her ears,
Or in some winter left among old years
Scratched it through tettered cark? A certain thing
That round her heart the frost was hardening,

Not to be thawed of tears, which on this pane
Channelled the rime, perchance, in fevered rain,
For false man's sake and love's most bitter sting.

Howbeit, between this last word and the next
Unwritten, subtly seasoned was the smart,

And here at least the grace to weep: if she,
Rather, midway in her disconsolate text,
Rebelled not, loathing from the trodden heart
That thing which she had found man's love to be.
* For a woman's fragmentary inscription.