Читать книгу The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell - James Russell Lowell - Страница 199

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Can this be thou who, lean and pale,

With such immitigable eye

Didst look upon those writhing souls in bale,

And note each vengeance, and pass by

Unmoved, save when thy heart by chance

Cast backward one forbidden glance,

And saw Francesca, with child's glee,

Subdue and mount thy wild-horse knee

And with proud hands control its fiery prance?

With half-drooped lids, and smooth, round brow,

And eye remote, that inly sees

Fair Beatrice's spirit wandering now

In some sea-lulled Hesperides,

Thou movest through the jarring street,

Secluded from the noise of feet

By her gift-blossom in thy hand,

Thy branch of palm from Holy Land;—

No trace is here of ruin's fiery sleet.

Yet there is something round thy lips

That prophesies the coming doom,

The soft, gray herald-shadow ere the eclipse

Notches the perfect disk with gloom;

A something that would banish thee,

And thine untamed pursuer be,

From men and their unworthy fates,

Though Florence had not shut her gates,

And Grief had loosed her clutch and let thee free.

Ah! he who follows fearlessly

The beckonings of a poet-heart

Shall wander, and without the world's decree,

A banished man in field and mart;

Harder than Florence' walls the bar

Which with deaf sternness holds him far

From home and friends, till death's release,

And makes his only prayer for peace,

Like thine, scarred veteran of a lifelong war!