How much of priceless life were spent With men that every virtue decks, And women models of their sex, Society’s true ornament,-- Ere we dared wander, nights like this, Through wind and rain, and watch the Seine, And feel the Boulevart break again To warmth and light and bliss?
I know! the world proscribes not love; Allows my finger to caress Your lips’ contour and downiness, Provided it supply a glove. The world’s good word!--the Institute! Guizot receives Montalembert! Eh? Down the court three lampions flare: Put forward your best foot!
-- St. 3. Guizot: Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot, French statesman and historian, b. 1787, d. 1874. Montalembert: Charles Forbes Rene, Comte de Montalembert, French statesman, orator, and political writer, b. 1810, d. 1870. Guizot receives Montalembert: i.e., on purely conventional grounds.
Oh, to be in England now that April’s there, And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England--now! And after April, when May follows And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows! Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field and scatters on the clover { 10} Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray’s edge-- That’s the wise thrush: he sings each song twice over Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, And will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children’s dower --Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
{ despite this stanza being numbered 1, there is apparently no 2.}
Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the north-west died away; Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay; Bluish mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay; In the dimmest north-east distance, dawned Gibraltar grand and gray; “Here and here did England help me,--how can I help England?”--say, Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray, While Jove’s planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.
The morn when first it thunders in March, The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say. As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch Of the villa-gate this warm March day, No flash snapped, no dumb thunder rolled In the valley beneath where, white and wide And washed by the morning water-gold, Florence lay out on the mountain-side.