XIV
Love, you saw me gather men and women,
Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy, 130
Enter each and all, and use their service,
Speak from every mouth—­the speech, a poem. 
Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows,
Hopes and tears, belief and disbelieving: 
I am mine and yours—­the rest be all men’s,
Karshish, Cleon, Norbert and the fifty. 
Let me speak this once in my true person,
Not as Lippo, Roland or Andrea,
Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence;
Pray you, look on these my men and women, 140
Take and keep my fifty poems finished;
Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also! 
Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things. 
Not but that you know me!  Lo, the moon’s self! 
Here in London, yonder late in Florence,
Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured. 
Curving on a sky imbrued with color,
Drifted over Fiesole by twilight,
Came she, our new crescent of a hair’s-breadth. 
Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato, 150
Rounder ’twixt the cypresses and rounder,
Perfect till the nightingales applauded. 
Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished,
Hard to greet, she traverses the houseroofs,
Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver,
Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish.

XVI
What, there’s nothing in the moon noteworthy? 
Nay:  for if that moon could love a mortal,
Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy),
All her magic (’tis the old sweet mythos), 160
She would turn a new side to her mortal,
Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman—­
Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,
Blind to Galileo on his turret,
Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats—­him, even! 
Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal—­
When she turns round, comes again in heaven,
Opens out anew for worse or better! 
Proves she like some portent of an iceberg
Swimming full upon the ship it founders, 170
Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals? 
Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire
Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain? 
Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu
Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest,
Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire. 
Like the bodied heaven in his clearness
Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work,
When they ate and drank and saw God also!

XVII
What were seen?  None knows, none ever shall know. 180
Only this is sure—­the sight were other,
Not the moon’s same side, born late in Florence,
Dying now impoverished here in London. 
God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her!