Classic Poem

So, Florence, you have shown to me
All your wild region by the sea;
The pines, mysterious to us both,
Distorted with a sidelong growth
Of boughs irregularly spread,
And rough trunks ivy-garlanded;
The pathways indistinct and brief
Littered with droppings of the leaf;
The bents' precarious and scant
Life on the mounds extravagant
Of sand towards the abysmal sea
Crumbling for ever silently;
The rain-worn gully; the embrowned
Curve, sweeping half the horizon round,
Of low beach smooth to the content
Of the caressing element;
The glad waves' unconstrained advance,
And simultaneous resonance,
And silvery flash, the roving skiff,
And Bournemouth's pier, and Swanage cliff,
Dulling its line of keenest white
In the warm prevalence of light;
And now we sit, you smile, I sigh;
What think we, Florence, you and I?

This vision to my fancy brought
Another, Florence, I have thought
Of a remote, more azure sea,
Ship-bringer unto Italy.
Not where the sullied wave reflects
The smoke Vesuvius ejects,
Or ripplings wreathe their radiant smiles
Under Ligurian campaniles,
Or where the classic waters bring
Music around the ruining
Of the lost Baiae they inter
Blithely, or are the theatre
Where marvelling Messina sees
Morgana's airy witcheries:
But where forlorner floods have placed
Salt lips against the Pisan waste
Of sand the dry sirocco has
Heaped lavishly, and reeds and grass
Fed by lagoons and swampy chains
Of ponds, where sole the heron reigns,
Till wroth and dissonant he goes,
Scared by the charging buffaloes,
Yet almost everywhere you see
The violet's blue fragility
Nestling her little store of sweet
'Mid the stained sheddings at the feet
Of the old pine-trees that appear
As universal there as here.

What welds the subtle link between
The English and the Tuscan scene?
Not merely their accordant mood
Of independent solitude;
Not only that the eye might scan,
Ranging the realm Etrurian,
In pine, and knoll, and sand, and sea,
Almost this region's mimicry;
But that one Spirit doth efface
The differences of either place,
Making of each the same obscure
Ground of one radiant portraiture—
That soul of planetary birth,
Tempered for some more prosperous Earth,
Haply by error or by guile
Rapt from the star most volatile
That speeds with fleet and fieriest might
Next to the kernel of all light,
Fallen unwelcome, unaware
On this low world of want and care,
Mistake, misfortune, and misdeed,
Passion and pang, where not indeed
Ever might envious dæmon quell
The ardour indestructible;
The mood scarce human or divine,
Angelic half, half infantine;
The intense unearthly quivering
Of rapture or of suffering;
The lyre, now thrilling wild and high,
Now stately as the symphony
That times the solemn periods,
Comings and goings of the Gods,
And smitten with as free a hand
As if the plectrum were a wand
Gifted with magic to unbar
The silver gate of every star:—
And truly, Shelley thine were strains
Tuned for thy spirit's old domains,
Breathed less intelligibly for
The duller earthly auditor.

Yes, Shelley loved the forests dim
By Pisa's coast, here they love him!
Italian shades could only give
A refuge to the fugitive.
Whom these retreats, where never came
His wandering foot, and with his name
Only fortuitously blent,
Own as their boast and ornament:—
These woods, dark borderers of the wave
From Percy's shrine to Mary's grave,
Whose sombre and perennial woof
Screens from the spray the cheerful roof
O'er high saloons and galleries spread,
The relïc-chambers of the dead.
There, Florence, like a daisy's bloom
Fair on some old heroic tomb
In modesty and ignorance,
The sweetness of your sunny glance
Descries, untutored to discern,
The secret of the silver urn
Shrining the ashes chill and grey
Of the rich heart that glowed alway,
The shredded locks—all trifles else
Where worth Affection only tells
With her still count—of all the most,
Those drops from the heart's innermost
Shed on the scrawled and blotted page,
Which when at last its spells engage
The free enthusiastic mood
And poetry of maidenhood—
Then shall not even this meaner chant
Be ineffectual ministrant
To wing the spirit, taught its strength
With aspiration, till at length
Another look shall occupy
The brown arena of the eye
Fixed on me now with half distress
And wonder at my pensiveness.