With half-drooped lids, and smooth, round brow,
  And eye remote, that inly sees
Fair Beatrice’s spirit wandering now
  In some sea-lulled Hesperides,
Thou movest through the jarring street,
Secluded from the noise of feet
  By her gift-blossom in thy hand,
  Thy branch of palm from Holy Land;—­
No trace is here of ruin’s fiery sleet.

Yet there is something round thy lips
  That prophesies the coming doom,
The soft, gray herald-shadow ere the eclipse
  Notches the perfect disk with gloom;
A something that would banish thee,
And thine untamed pursuer be,
  From men and their unworthy fates,
  Though Florence had not shut her gates,
And Grief had loosed her clutch and let thee free.

Ah! he who follows fearlessly
  The beckonings of a poet-heart
Shall wander, and without the world’s decree,
  A banished man in field and mart;
Harder than Florence’ walls the bar
Which with deaf sternness holds him far
  From home and friends, till death’s release,
  And makes his only prayer for peace,
Like thine, scarred veteran of a lifelong war!

ON THE DEATH OF A FRIEND’S CHILD

Death never came so nigh to me before,
Nor showed me his mild face:  oft had I mused
Of calm and peace and safe forgetfulness,
Of folded hands, closed eyes, and heart at rest,
And slumber sound beneath a flowery turf,
Of faults forgotten, and an inner place
Kept sacred for us in the heart of friends;
But these were idle fancies, satisfied
With the mere husk of this great mystery,
And dwelling in the outward shows of things. 10
Heaven is not mounted to on wings of dreams,
Nor doth the unthankful happiness of youth
Aim thitherward, but floats from bloom to bloom,
With earth’s warm patch of sunshine well content: 
’Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up,
Whose golden rounds are our calamities,
Whereon our firm feet planting, nearer God
The spirit climbs, and hath its eyes unsealed.

True is it that Death’s face seems stern and cold,
When he is sent to summon those we love, 20
But all God’s angels come to us disguised;
Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death,
One after other lift their frowning masks,
And we behold the seraph’s face beneath,
All radiant with the glory and the calm
Of having looked upon the front of God. 
With every anguish of our earthly part
The spirit’s sight grows clearer; this was meant
When Jesus touched the blind man’s lids with clay. 
Life is the jailer, Death the angel sent 30
To draw the unwilling bolts and set us free. 
He flings not ope the ivory gate of Rest,—­
Only the fallen spirit knocks at that,—­
But to benigner regions beckons us,
To destinies of more rewarded toil. 
In the hushed chamber, sitting by the dead,