And spake, as o’er it shone
      That bright Pentameron,
  And his own vines again and chestnuts heard
    Boccaccio:  nor swift Elsa’s chime
Mixed not her golden babble with Petrarca’s rhyme.

39.

No lovelier laughed the garden which receives
  Yet, and yet hides not from our following eyes
With soft rose-laurels and low strawberry-leaves,
  Ternissa, sweet as April-coloured skies,
Bowed like a flowering reed when May’s wind heaves
  The reed-bed that the stream kisses and sighs,
In love that shrinks and murmurs and believes
  What yet the wisest of the starriest wise
      Whom Greece might ever hear
      Speaks in the gentlest ear
  That ever heard love’s lips philosophize
      With such deep-reasoning words
      As blossoms use and birds,
  Nor heeds Leontion lingering till they rise
    Far off, in no wise over far,
Beneath a heaven all amorous of its first-born star.

40.

What sound, what storm and splendour of what fire,
  Darkening the light of heaven, lightening the night,
Rings, rages, flashes round what ravening pyre
  That makes time’s face pale with its reflex light
And leaves on earth, who seeing might scarce respire,
  A shadow of red remembrance?  Right nor might
Alternating wore ever shapes more dire
  Nor manifest in all men’s awful sight
      In form and face that wore
      Heaven’s light and likeness more
  Than these, or held suspense men’s hearts at height
      More fearful, since man first
      Slaked with man’s blood his thirst,
  Than when Rome clashed with Hannibal in fight,
    Till tower on ruining tower was hurled
Where Scipio stood, and Carthage was not in the world.

41.

Nor lacked there power of purpose in his hand
  Who carved their several praise in words of gold
To bare the brows of conquerors and to brand,
  Made shelterless of laurels bought and sold
For price of blood or incense, dust or sand,
  Triumph or terror.  He that sought of old
His father Ammon in a stranger’s land,
  And shrank before the serpentining fold,
      Stood in our seer’s wide eye
      No higher than man most high,
  And lowest in heart when highest in hope to hold
      Fast as a scripture furled
      The scroll of all the world
  Sealed with his signet:  nor the blind and bold
    First thief of empire, round whose head
Swarmed carrion flies for bees, on flesh for violets fed.[1]

42.

As fire that kisses, killing with a kiss,
  He saw the light of death, riotous and red,
Flame round the bent brows of Semiramis
  Re-risen, and mightier, from the Assyrian dead,
Kindling, as dawn a frost-bound precipice,
  The steely snows of Russia, for the tread
Of feet that felt before them crawl and hiss
  The snaky lines of blood violently shed.