The Burden of Itys

       Table of Contents

      This English Thames is holier far than Rome,

       Those harebells like a sudden flush of sea

       Breaking across the woodland, with the foam

       Of meadow-sweet and white anemone

       To fleck their blue waves,

       — God is likelier there,

       Than hidden in that crystal-hearted star the pale monks bear!

       Those violet-gleaming butterflies that take

       Yon creamy lily for their pavilion

       Are monsignores, and where the rushes shake

       A lazy pike lies basking in the sun

       His eyes half-shut, — He is some mitred old

       Bishop in partibus! look at those gaudy scales all green and gold!

       The wind the restless prisoner of the trees

       Does well for Palaestrina, one would say

       The mighty master’s hands were on the keys

       Of the Maria organ, which they play

       When early on some sapphire Easter morn

       In a high litter red as blood or sin the Pope is borne

       From his dark house out to the balcony

       Above the bronze gates and the crowded square,

       Whose very fountains seem for ecstasy

       To toss their silver lances in the air,

       And stretching out weak hands to East and West

       In vain sends peace to peaceless lands, to restless nations rest.

       Is not yon lingering orange afterglow

       That stays to vex moon more fair than all

       Rome’s lordliest pageants! strange, a year ago

       I knelt before some crimson Cardinal

       Who bare the Host across the Esquiline,

       And now — those common poppies in the wheat seem twice as fine.

       The blue-green beanfields yonder, tremulous

       With the last shower, sweeter perfume bring

       Through this cool evening than the odorous

       Flame-jewelled censers the young deacons swing,

       When the gray priest unlocks the curtained shrine,

       And makes God’s body from the common fruit of corn and vine.

       Poor Fra Giovanni bawling at the mass

       Were out of tune now, for a small brown bird

       Sings overhead, and through the long cool grass

       I see that throbbing throat which once I heard

       On starlit hills of flower-starred Arcady,

       Once where the white and crescent sand of Salamis meets the sea.

       Sweet is the swallow twittering on the eaves

       At daybreak, when the mower whets his scythe,

       And stock-doves murmur, and the milkmaid leaves

       Her little lonely bed, and carols blithe

       To see the heavy-lowing cattle wait

       Stretching their huge and dripping mouths across the farmyard gate.

       And sweet the hops upon the Kentish leas,

       And sweet the wind that lifts the new-mown hay,

       And sweet the fretful swarms of grumbling bees

       That round and round the linden blossoms play;

       And sweet the heifer breathing in the stall,

       And the green bursting figs that hang upon the red-brick wall.

       And sweet to hear the cuckoo mock the spring

       While the last violet loiters by the well,

       And sweet to hear the shepherd Daphnis sing

       The song of Linus through a sunny dell

       Of warm Arcadia where the corn is gold

       And the slight lithe-limbed reapers dance about the wattled fold

       And sweet with young Lycoris to recline

       In some Illyrian valley far away,

       Where canopied on herbs amaracine

       We too might waste the summer-tranced day

       Matching our reeds in sportive rivalry,

       While far beneath us frets the troubled purple of the sea.

       But sweeter far if silver-sandalled foot

       Of some long-hidden God should ever tread

       The Nuneham meadows, if with reeded flute

       Pressed to his lips some Faun might raise his head

       By the green water-flags, ah! sweet indeed

       To see the heavenly herdsman call his white-fleeced flock to feed.

       Then sing to me thou tuneful chorister,

       Though what thou sing’st be thine own requiem!