MEMORABILIA.

1.

Aн, did you once see Shelley plain, And did he stop and speak to you? And did you speak to him again? How strange it seems, and new!

I crossed a moor with a name of its own And a use in the world no doubt,

Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone 'Mid the blank miles round about –

4.

For there I picked up on the heather
And there I put inside my breast
A moulted feather, an eagle-feather
Well, I forget the rest.

-

BUT do not let us quarrel any more,

No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once:
Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.
You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?
I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear,
Treat his own subject after his own way,
Fix his own time, accept too his own price,
And shut the money into this small hand
When next it takes mine.

Will it? tenderly?

Oh, I'll content him, but to-morrow, Love!

I often am much wearier than you think,

This evening more than usual, and it seems

As if- forgive now

should you let me sit

Here by the window with your hand in mine
And look a half hour forth on Fiesole,
Both of one mind, as married people use,
Quietly, quietly, the evening through,

I might get up to-morrow to my work
Cheerful and fresh as ever.

Let us try.

To-morrow how you shall be glad for this!

Your soft hand is a woman of itself,

And mine the man's bared breast she curls inside.
Don't count the time lost, either; you must serve
For each of the five pictures we require-
It saves a model. So! keep looking so
My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds!

How could you ever prick those perfect ears,
Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet-
My face, my moon, my everybody's moon,
Which everybody looks on and calls his,
And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn,

While she looks no one's very dear, no less!
You smile? why, there's my picture ready made.
There's what we painters call our harmony!
A common grayness silvers every thing,
All in a twilight, you and I alike

-You, at the point of your first pride in me

(That's gone you know,) — but I, at every point; My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole.

There's the bell clinking from the chapel-top;
That length of convent-wall across the way
Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside;
The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease
And autumn grows, autumn in every thing.
Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape
As if I saw alike my work and self

And all that I was born to be and do,

A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God's hand.

How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead! So free we seem, so fettered fast we are:

I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie!

All that's behind us! you don't understand
Nor care to understand about my art,

But you can hear at least when people speak;

And that cartoon, the second from the door

- It is the thing, Love! so such things should be

Behold Madonna, I am bold to say.

I can do with my pencil what I know,
What I see, what at bottom of my heart
I wish for, if I ever wish so deep-
Do easily, too when I say perfectly
I do not boast, perhaps yourself are judge
Who listened to the Legate's talk last week,
And just as much they used to say in France.
At any rate 'tis easy, all of it,

No sketches first, no studies, that 's long past -
I do what many dream of all their lives

Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do, And fail in doing. I could count twenty such On twice your fingers, and not leave this town, Who strive - you don't know how the others strive To paint a little thing like that you smeared Carelessly passing with your robes afloat, Yet do much less, so much less, some one says, (I know his name, no matter) so much less! Well, less is more, Lucrezia! I am judged.

There burns a truer light of God in them,

In their vexed, beating, stuffed and stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.
Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,
Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,
Enter and take their place there sure enough,
Though they come back and cannot tell the world.
My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.
The sudden blood of these men! at a word
Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too.
I, painting from myself and to myself,
Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame
Or their praise either. Somebody remarks
Morello's outline there is wrongly traced,

His hue mistaken - what of that? or else,

Rightly traced and well ordered what of that?

-

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a Heaven for? all is silver-gray

Placid and perfect with my art

the worse!

I know both what I want and what might gain
And yet how profitless to know, to sigh

"Had I been two, another and myself,

Our head would have o'erlooked the world!"

doubt.

Yonder's a work, now, of that famous youth

No

The Urbinate who died five years ago.

('Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.)

Well, I can fancy how he did it all,