■«»■ 
 
 r9
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNT/E^SITY OF CALIFORfilA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 Ex Libris 
 ISAAC FOOT
 
 
 71 
 
 '^i
 
 MIMMA BELLA
 
 MIMMA BELLA 
 
 BY EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON 
 
 WITH PORTRAIT OF AUTHOR 
 
 LONDON 
 
 WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 
 MCMIX
 
 
 Copyright, London, 1909, dy William Heinemann
 
 Preface. 
 
 IN 1894 a volume entitled "Sonnets of the Wingless 
 Hours " placed Eugene Lee-Hamilton indisputably among 
 the masters of the sonnet. 
 
 Not until this book had captured the critics was it known 
 that the writer of so many distinguished volumes of verse 
 had been lying for twenty years in the twilight of a cruel 
 and mysterious malady. 
 
 The sonnets were a cry from the living grave in which his 
 youth had been buried. 
 
 He had written : 
 
 " And now my manhood goes where goes the song 
 Of captive birds, the cry of crippled things ; 
 It goes where goes the day that unused dies. 
 The cage is narrow, and the bars are strong, 
 In which my restless spirit beats its wings ; 
 And round me stretch unfathomable skies." 
 
 Thus it seemed no less than miraculous when, after twenty 
 years, Eugene Lee-Hamilton rose from that living grave to 
 take his place again in the world of men. 
 
 Youth was gone beyond recall ; but hope came to him, 
 and, after a while, love ; and still later the promise of a 
 bright young life to retrieve the lost years. 
 
 The promise ended in denial, the pain of which called 
 forth a more poignant cry, the sonnet sequence " Mimma 
 Bella; In Memory of a Little Life." 
 
 Eugene Lee-Hamilton was born in London in 1845. 
 He lost his father early, and his mother, a woman of marked
 
 force and individuality, superintended his education under 
 tutors in France and Germany. 
 
 At nineteen he went to Oriel College, Oxford, where he 
 took the Taylorian Scholarship for Modern Languages and 
 Literature. 
 
 He entered the Diplomatic Service in 1869, and after 
 a term in the Foreign Office was attached to the British 
 Embassy at Paris. 
 
 He served three years under Lord Lyons, and in 1871 
 went to Geneva as interpreter for the Alabama Arbitration. 
 
 During the changes necessitated by the Franco-German 
 War and the Commune he accompanied the Embassy to 
 Tours, Bordeaux, and Versailles. 
 
 He was appointed to the Legation at Lisbon in 1873; 
 and here illness shattered an always delicate constitution. 
 Anaemia and alarming disturbances of the circulation showed 
 themselves ; and he left Lisbon in a semi-paralysed condition 
 that gave no hope of recovery. His brief and distinguished 
 diplomatic career was ended. 
 
 They took him to Florence, to the wheeled bed on which 
 he was to lie night and day for twenty years. 
 
 The heavy gloom of those wingless hours was lightened 
 by his mother's devotion, and the loving companionship of 
 his brilliant young half-sister, later to be known in literature 
 as Vernon Lee. 
 
 After a while friends could be seen ; and soon names 
 distinguished in literature, art, politics, gathered round the 
 brother and sister. The room where he spent the afternoon 
 in the intervals of suffering became in those days one of the 
 most notable centres in the intellectual life of Florence. 
 
 Then, little by little, he could bear to be read to ; he 
 could dictate a fragment of verse, the sextet of a sonnet, 
 
 TU
 
 sometimes one line only. And so he built his books. He 
 tells us himself what poetry meant to him in those terrible 
 years. 
 
 " I think the fairies to my christening came ; 
 But they were wicked sprites, and envious elves 
 Who brought me gall as bitter as themselves 
 In tiny tankards wrought with fairy flame. 
 
 They wished me love of books — each little dame — 
 With power to read no book upon my shelves ; 
 Fair limbs for numbness, Dead Sea fruit by twelves, 
 And every bitter blessing you can name. 
 
 But one good elf there was, and she let fall 
 A single drop of Poesy's wine of gold 
 In every little tankard full of gall. 
 
 So year by year, as woes and pains grow old, 
 The little golden drop is in them all ; 
 But bitterer is the cup than can be told." 
 
 In 1 878 he published his first volume, " Poems and Tran- 
 scripts.'' This was followed in 1880 by " Gods, Saints, and 
 Men " ; and then, at wide distances, by " The New Medusa," 
 " Apollo and Marsyas," " Imaginary Sonnets," " The Foun- 
 tain of Youth,'' and " Sonnets of the Wingless Hours." 
 
 The *' Sonnets of the Wingless Hours" (1894) were to 
 be the last of the series written in helplessness. There were 
 signs of a change in the disease. Slowly and gradually move- 
 ment came back. In 1896 the prisoner was free and restored 
 to the outer world. His delight in life, birds, trees, sunshine, 
 ix b
 
 was pathetic and very beautiful. Everything was new to 
 him. It was a boy's soul looking out of the eyes of fifty 
 years. He was eager for new experiences, new scenes and 
 countries. He went to Canada and the United States. 
 
 It was soon after his return that I met him in Florence, in 
 1897, and the following year we were married. 
 
 In 1900 we moved out from Florence to the Villa Bene- 
 dettini, among the olives on the hill-slope above the city. 
 
 He was a charming host, a brilliant causeur, and the 
 grey old villa was soon alive with social and literary activity. 
 My husband's translation of Dante's " Inferno " had already 
 appeared, as well as a little volume of poems, " Forest 
 Notes," which we had written together in the New Forest 
 during the honeymoon. Now he set to work on the 
 " Purgatorio." 
 
 He compiled a selection from his poems for the " Canter- 
 bury Poets " series ; and wrote two novels, " The Lord of 
 the Dark Red Star " and " The Romance of the Fountain." 
 
 In 1 903 our little girl was born. We called her Persis — 
 " The Beloved " ; but the kindly Italians rechristened her 
 " Mimma Bella " (the Beautiful Baby), and she became 
 Mimma Bella to us all. 
 
 The child filled her father's life ; it was almost as if she 
 gave him back something of what he had lost. 
 
 Every morning he worked beside her cot at his translation, 
 or at his new tragedy, " Ezelin " ; every evening he wove 
 rhymes for her, walking up and down the long room 
 carrying her. 
 
 His only lyrics now were the songs he made and sang to 
 her ; his only verses the nonsense rhymes he recited while 
 she sat, charmed, on his knee. 
 
 He never wearied of planning her life, dreaming of her 
 
 XI
 
 future. The best of earth was to be stored and poured out 
 for her. 
 
 The dream lasted nearly two years. In 1904 she died. 
 
 He had dipped his pen in delicate fancy to write on the 
 death of Puck. He dipped it now in his heart's blood to 
 write his child's elegy. When " Mimma Bella " was written 
 his work was done ; for life had dealt him too hard a blow, 
 and his strength was spent. 
 
 Weakness and depression culminated in a stroke of 
 paralysis ; and after months of tragic suffering death came. 
 
 He died at Villa Pierotti, Bagni di Lucca, on September 7, 
 1907 ; and was brought to Florence to lie beside his mother 
 and his child. 
 
 And now on June nights, when the fireflies sparkle among 
 the olives in the lonely villa garden, I see another garden 
 where they flash about the laurels and the cypresses and the 
 crowding graves, lighting the bronze letters that plead softly, 
 " Greet Persis the Beloved." 
 
 Annie Lee-Hamilton. 
 
 Villa Benedettini, Florence, 
 November 1908, 
 
 xm
 
 Contents, 
 
 Preface : p. v. 
 
 The Weaving of the ;^ Sonnets : p. i. 
 
 Mimma Bella : p. 3. 
 
 Last Sonnets : p. 6 1 . 
 
 XT
 
 The Weaving of the Sonnets. 
 
 As in the banner'd and emblazon'd room 
 Of some great feudal keep, in days of old, 
 White queenly fingers wrought in cloth of gold 
 Fantastic patterns on a royal loom ; 
 Wrought tendril, magic leaf, and lily bloom 
 Where dragon, lynx, and pawing pard were scroll'd, 
 Or those strange roses sainted queens behold 
 Who, pale hands folded, sleep in minster gloom : 
 
 So Fancy works upon the frame of Time 
 
 Her pageantry with gold eternal rays 
 
 Into the web of even fate and odd. 
 
 Till gleams some sonnet, where a hem of rhyme 
 
 Borders such dream-shapes as, for angel gaze, 
 
 Shine, in the pattern on the Stole of God.
 
 Mimma Bella. 
 
 In Memory of a Little Life. 
 
 I. 
 
 Have dark Egyptians stolen thee away, 
 O Baby, Baby, in whose cot we peer 
 As down some empty gulf that opens sheer 
 And fathomless, illumined by no ray ? 
 
 And wilt thou come, on some far-distant day. 
 With unknown face, and say, " Behold ! I'm here. 
 The child you lost " ; while we in sudden fear. 
 Dumb with great doubt, shall find no word to say ? 
 
 One darker than dark gipsy holds thee fast ; 
 One whose strong fingers none has forced apart 
 Since first they closed on things that were too fair ; 
 
 Nor shall we see thee other than thou wast. 
 But such as thou art, printed in the heart. 
 In changeless baby loveliness still there.
 
 II. 
 
 Two springs she saw — two radiant Tuscan springs, 
 What time the wild red tulips are aflame 
 In the new wheat, and wreaths of young vine frame 
 The daffodils that every light breeze swings ; 
 
 And the anemones that April brings 
 
 Make purple pools, as if Adonis came 
 
 Just there to die ; and Florence scrolls her name 
 
 In every blossom Primavera flings. 
 
 Now, when the scented iris, straight and tall, 
 Shall hedge the garden gravel once again 
 With pale blue flags, at May's exulting call, 
 
 And when the amber roses, wet with rain, 
 Shall tapestry the old grey villa wall, 
 We, left alone, shall seek one bud in vain.
 
 III. 
 
 'Tis March ; and on the hills that stretch away 
 In misty furrows in the growing night 
 The peasants keep their old Etruscan rite, 
 And wave strange fires, like will-o'-wisps at play ; 
 
 Chanting an incantation that shall lay 
 The spirits that bring drought and hail and blight, 
 And keeping with the sheaves of straw they light 
 In the green wheat all demon spite at bay. 
 
 Ah me ! this spring we have no seed to shield 
 
 From Life's dark possibilities of ill ; 
 
 Nor look we on the hills where wave the fires ; 
 
 Nor, hopeful as the tillers of the field, 
 Repeat the words of magic that they still 
 Intone in March, as did their antique sires.
 
 IV. 
 
 If we could know the silent shapes that pass 
 Across our lives, we should perchance have seen 
 God's Messenger with dusky pinions lean 
 Above the cot, and scan as in the glass 
 
 Of some clear forest water, framed in grass, 
 The likeness of his own seraphic mien ; 
 And heard the call, implacably serene, 
 Of Him Who is, Who will be, and Who was. 
 
 O Azrael, why tookest thou the child 
 'Neath thy great wings, that lock as in a vice, 
 From all that is alive and warm and fond. 
 
 To where a rayless sun that never smiled 
 Looks down on his own face in the pale ice 
 Of vast and lifeless seas in the Beyond ?
 
 V. 
 
 O, rosy as the lining of a shell 
 
 Were the wee hands that now are white as snows ; 
 
 And like pink coral, with their elfin toes, 
 
 The feet that on life's brambles never fell. 
 
 And with its tiny smile, adorable 
 
 The mouth that never knew life's bitter sloes ; 
 
 And like the incurved petal of a rose 
 
 The little ear, now deaf in Death's strong spell. 
 
 Now, while the seasons in their order roll, 
 
 And sun and rain pour down from God's great dome. 
 
 And deathless stars shine nightly overhead, 
 
 Near other children, with her little doll. 
 
 She waits the wizard that will never come 
 
 To wake the sleep-struck playground of the dead. 
 
 II
 
 VI. 
 
 What wast thou, little baby, that art dead — 
 A one day's blossom that the hoar-frost nips ? 
 A bee that's crushed, the first bright day it sips ? 
 A small dropped gem that in the earth we tread ? 
 
 Or cherub's smiling gold-encircled head. 
 That Death from out Life's painted missal rips ? 
 Or murmured prayer that barely reached the lips ? 
 Or sonnet's fair first line — the rest unsaid ? 
 
 O, 'tis not hard to find what thou wast like ; 
 The world is full of fair unfinished things 
 That vanish like a dawn-admonished elf. 
 
 Life teems with opening forms for Death to strike 
 The woods are fuU of unfledged broken wings ; 
 Enough for us, thou wast thy baby self. 
 
 13
 
 VII. 
 
 We found a baby tortoise, whose green shell 
 Seemed carved by elfin hands ; whose feet and head 
 Peeped shy and tiny on the garden bed 
 That was the world wherein God bade it dwell. 
 
 We watched it for some mornings. Then befell 
 The cruelty of Fate. The careless tread 
 Of some unconscious foot : and lo, 'twas dead ; 
 While Nature coldly smiled, and said : " All's well." 
 
 All's well ? — O God, why bring into the world 
 A living thing, whose smallest dainty parts 
 Exceed man's nicest art ; and then and there, 
 
 Tortoise or babe, or blossom half unfurled, 
 
 Crush it beneath the fatal foot that starts 
 
 None knows from whence, and hurries none knows where ? 
 
 IS
 
 VIII. 
 
 Where Mimma lies, some nameless children sleep, 
 
 Whose graves, in the obliterating grass, 
 
 Sink slowly, as the empty seasons pass. 
 
 And look like waves on Time's slow-heaving deep. 
 
 No tears, no flowers ; save when spring-clouds weep 
 Upon them ; or the breeze with faint " Alas ! " 
 Brings them stray petals from the flowery mass 
 Upon some grave that Love and Sorrow keep. 
 
 Who were they ? No one knows. But theirs this wreath 
 Of fourteen berries, that a stranger brings 
 With blossoms for his child that lies beneath. 
 
 For Life, their names are faint forgotten things ; 
 But now, within the larger book of Death, 
 Their names are written with the names of kings. 
 
 17
 
 IX. 
 
 Keep not the sunshine from our Mimma's grave, 
 Nor screen her memory from the sweet fresh air ; 
 Speak of her still as if she still were here ; 
 Let thought and word around her freely wave. 
 
 Give her back now the little smile she gave, 
 Nor treat her thought as one too sharp to bear, 
 But as a thing for ever sweet and fair, 
 That we would fain from shade and silence save. 
 
 O ye, who stopped and gazed into her face, 
 And knew her for the dainty babe she was, 
 Fear not to pain us, uttering her name ; 
 
 Nor fear to cast the sunlight on the place 
 Where memory keeps the sweetest thing it has, 
 As fresh as on the day on which she came. 
 
 19
 
 X, 
 
 'Tis Christmas, and we gaze with downbent head 
 On something that the post has brought too late 
 To reach thee, Mimma, through the narrow gate. 
 From one who did not know that thou art dead ; 
 
 A picture-book, to play with on thy bed ; 
 
 And we, who should have heard thee laugh and prate 
 
 So busily, sit here at war with Fate, 
 
 And turn the pages silently instead. 
 
 O that I knew thee playing 'neath God's eyes, 
 
 With the small souls of all the dewy flowers 
 
 That strewed thy grave, and died at Autumn's breath ; 
 
 Or with the phantom of the doll that lies 
 Beside thee for Eternity's long hours, 
 In the dim nursery that men call Death ! 
 
 21
 
 XI. 
 
 O bless the law that veils the Future's face ; 
 For who could smile into a baby's eyes, 
 Or bear the beauty of the evening skies, 
 If he could see what cometh on apace? 
 
 The ticking of the death-watch would replace 
 The baby's prattle for the over-wise ; 
 The breeze's murmur would become the cries 
 Of stormy petrels where the breakers race. 
 
 We live as moves the walker in his sleep, 
 Who walks because he sees not the abyss 
 His feet are skirting as he goes his way : 
 
 If we could see the morrow from the steep 
 
 Of our security, the soul would miss 
 
 Its footing, and fall headlong from to-day. 
 
 23
 
 XII. 
 
 Mantled in purple dusk, Imperial Death, 
 Thy throne Time's mist, thy crown the clustered stars, 
 Thy orb the world ; — did Nature's countless wars 
 Yield insufficient incense for thy breath ? 
 
 Hadst not enough with all who troop beneath 
 Thy inward-opening gates, whose shadowy bars 
 Give back nor kings in their triumphal cars. 
 Nor the worn throngs that old age hurrieth ? 
 
 O sateless Death, most surely it was thou, 
 (A thousand ages, yea, and longer still, 
 Before the words were heard in Galilee) 
 
 That saidst with dark contraction of thy brow. 
 While through all Nature ran an icy chill : 
 " Now let the little children come to me." 
 
 25
 
 XIII. 
 
 One day, I mind me, now that she is dead. 
 When nothing warned us of the dark decree, 
 I crooned, to lull her, in a minor key, 
 Such fancies as first came into my head. 
 
 I crooned them low, beside her little bed ; 
 And the refrain was somehow " Come with me 
 And we will wander by the purple sea"; 
 I crooned it, and — God help me ! — felt no dread. 
 
 O Purple Sea, beyond the stress of storms, 
 Where never ripple breaks upon the shore 
 Of Death's pale Isles of Twilight as they dream. 
 
 Give back, give back, O Sea of Nevermore, 
 
 The frailest of the unsubstantial forms 
 
 Who leave the shores that are for those that seem ! 
 
 ^^
 
 XIV. 
 
 O brook that fell too soon into the sea, 
 That never mingled with the broader streams, 
 To roll through mighty cities, where the steams 
 Of vice and woe obscure the pageantry ; 
 
 Nor passed where glorious summits, standing free. 
 Catch the full measure of the midday gleams ; 
 Nor crossed the Gorges of the Evil Dreams, 
 And Valley of the Hopes that May not Be : 
 
 We went beside it for a little while, 
 Watching its play, the ripple of its smile, 
 Its babble as it wandered on its way ; 
 
 And lo, its course was run, and it was lost, 
 
 As quickly as an evanescent frost. 
 
 In Death's dim Ocean that before us lay. 
 
 '9
 
 XV. 
 
 How patiently they did their work of old, 
 Those cowled illuminators of the cells, 
 Painting their vellum from the small ribbed shells 
 That held the mystic carmine and the gold ; 
 
 Matching God's tints in every glowing fold, 
 In nimbus, wing, and robe ; and by their spells 
 Seizing the living glory in the wells 
 Of some great sunrise that His hand had scrolled. 
 
 They made immortal cherubs that retain, 
 In spite of Time and his effacing trace, 
 Their pristine loveliness from age to age ; 
 
 As Death, the cowled one, with his brush of pain, 
 
 Illuminates some lovely baby face 
 
 In sunrise tints on Memory's missal page. 
 
 31
 
 XVI. 
 
 It is the season when the elves of Spring 
 
 Help up the first anemones that peep 
 
 Through the young corn, and rouse from out their sleep 
 
 The pale green hellebores for March to swing ; 
 
 Before they bid the field narcissus fling 
 Its perfume on the furrows that they keep, 
 Or let the wild red tulip's flame upleap 
 In honour of great April's Fairy King. 
 
 O God, to think that In a spring or two 
 When she had learnt to run, we were to stroll 
 Among the fields where work the busy elves, 
 
 And see her pick the daffodils that strew 
 Each olive-planted terrace and sweet knoll. 
 And the wild tulips on the grassy shelves ! 
 
 33
 
 XVII. 
 
 Now Florence fills her lap with buds of May, 
 And all, with roses, be they rich or poor, 
 Stream through the great cathedral's brazen door, 
 To get them blessed upon the Roses' Day. 
 
 Roses and yet more roses, brought away 
 From hundreds of wild gardens. Spring's great store, 
 Are blessed ; but, crushed on the cathedral floor, 
 Lies many a bud that caught the dawn's first ray. 
 
 And so we cried : " O Priest, a bud we'll bring 
 For thee to bless, fresh-sprinkled by the morn, 
 When myriad roses crown triumphant Spring. 
 
 Late to the breeze it came, through many a thorn, 
 On our grey villa wall, a frail sweet thing, 
 Of sun and rain, of smile and sorrow born." 
 
 35
 
 XVIII. 
 
 O pale pressed Rose-bud in the Book of Death, 
 Where thou outbloomest many a perfect rose 
 That strews her petals at her full life's close 
 Beneath November's violating breath ; 
 
 Too well thou heardest what the Spring wind saith 
 To the small buds of which the gods compose 
 Their fatal wreaths, and what May sings to those 
 That shall not hear what Autumn uttereth. 
 
 When Azrael turns slowly one by one 
 
 The leaves of his great Book, by pale gleam lit, 
 
 And sees thee whom he plucked by morn's bright sun, 
 
 Perhaps, O Rose-bud, in that silent place, 
 A wistful smile, as of regret, may flit 
 O'er his inscrutable angelic face. 
 
 37
 
 XIX. 
 
 We search the darkness from the villa's height, 
 Guessing where cupola and dome and spire 
 Of Florence lie ; till eyes begin to tire 
 'Mid the illusive shadows of the night. 
 
 Then suddenly there sparkles into sight 
 A mighty dome, rimmed round in points of fire, 
 Its segments outlined as by glowing wire ; 
 And fairy towers follow, fiery bright. 
 
 An evanescent city built of stars, 
 The fair illumination of an hour, 
 Born of the night, and quenched before the dawn ; 
 
 Like the bright dream on Life's horizon bars 
 That held us for a moment in its power, 
 Ere Death's dark curtain over it was drawn. 
 
 39
 
 XX. 
 
 Do you remember how, with Fancy's hand, 
 We shaped her future as in living clay ; 
 Modelled her life, and saw the child display 
 Each day fresh charm, and beauty's lines expand ? 
 
 And how, before our love could understand 
 What Fate was working, lo, we found one day 
 The image finished as but God's hand may ; 
 And it was Death's chill marble that we scann'd ? 
 
 How well I see her on her cold white bed. 
 Between the branch of olive and the palm, 
 The little cross of pearls upon her breast ; 
 
 And oh, the frozen beauty of the head, 
 The clear-cut lips, interminably calm. 
 The eyelids sealed in pale seraphic rest ! 
 
 41
 
 XXI. 
 
 I pass the Innocent! * in the square 
 
 That Ferdinand eternally rides through 
 
 In bronze on his bronze steed ; — where, white on blue, 
 
 Stand the swathed babies made of Robbia ware ; 
 
 Babies that brave the centuries ; — still fair 
 Up high on their round discs ; that never drew 
 With woman's milk pain's certainty, nor knew 
 Life's joy and woe, its triumph, its despair. 
 
 What of the real living babes within ; — 
 
 Some carved by Love, the Lord of Careless Years, 
 
 And many by the leering sculptor Sin ; 
 
 Some fair enough, and others that appal ; 
 Modelled in clay of sorrow, damped with tears. 
 And left for Death to play with, one and all ? 
 
 • The great Foundling Hospital of Florence. 
 
 43
 
 XXII. 
 
 of old the shuddering mother rang a bell, 
 And laid, by night, the babe she loathed or feared 
 In a small crib that suddenly appeared 
 From out the wall, and vanished as by spell, 
 
 While high above her, shrined in azure shell. 
 With one dim lamp, the Mother that has heard 
 Uncounted orisons for babe conferred 
 Smiled on Her aureoled Child where faint light fell. 
 
 O irony — that mother's hand should throw 
 Her unweaned offspring, like a thing that's dead, 
 Into that gulf of namelessness and woe, 
 
 When we, resisting the remorseless Powers 
 That lay their leaguer round a baby's bed. 
 Fought inch by inch to save the smile of ours ! 
 
 45
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Do you recall the scents, the insect whirr, 
 
 Where we had laid her in the chestnut shade ? 
 
 How discs of sunlight through the bright leaves played 
 
 Upon the grass, as we bent over her ? 
 
 How roving breezes made the bracken stir 
 
 Beside her, while the bumble-bee, arrayed 
 
 In brown and gold, hummed round her, and the glade 
 
 Was strewn with last year's chestnuts' prickly fur ? 
 
 There in the forest's ripe and fragrant heat 
 
 She lay and laughed, and kicked her wee bare feet. 
 
 And stretched wee hands to grasp some woodland bell ; 
 
 And played her little games ; and when we said 
 " Cuckoo,'' would lift her frock, and hide her head, 
 Which now, God knows, is hidden but too well. 
 
 47
 
 XXIV. 
 
 We walk by Shelley's sea, upon the sands 
 Where he was cast, whom Air, and Earth, and Brine 
 Gave up to Flame — their brother more divine — 
 Who held him in his hundred fluttering hands ; 
 
 And gaze where in the cloudless heaven stands 
 Carrara's jagged purple mountain line, 
 Snow-sprinkled, over tufted woods of pine 
 That stretch away in bright green sunlit bands. 
 
 The children with their sunburnt naked feet, 
 Ripple-pursued, with laughter and shrill cry 
 Play in and out, where land and water meet. 
 
 So once we thought, O Mimma, thou wouldst play ; 
 Forgetful of how dumb the threat can lie, 
 As in yon guilty depths, all sun to-day. 
 
 49
 
 XXV. 
 
 O little ship that passed us in the night, 
 What sunrise wast thou bound for, as we sailed 
 Our longer voyage in the wind that wailed, 
 Across dark waves, with few great stars in sight ? 
 
 Or wast thou bound for where, in dim half-light, 
 The Isles-that-None-Return-From lie thick-veiled 
 In their eternal mist ; and, shrunk and paled. 
 The sun of Ghostland shines from changeless height ? 
 
 We had but time to hail and ask her name. 
 
 It sounded faint, like " Persis," and we heard 
 
 *' God's haven " as the port from which she came ; 
 
 Bound for . . . But in the sobbing of the wind, 
 And clash of waves, we failed to catch the word, 
 And she was gone ; and we were left behind. 
 
 51
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Lo, through the open window of the room 
 That was her nursery, a small bright spark 
 Comes wandering in, as falls the summer dark, 
 And with a measured flight explores the gloom, 
 
 As if it sought, among the things that loom 
 Vague in the dusk, for some familiar mark, 
 And like a light on some wee unseen bark. 
 It tacks in search of who knows what or whom ? 
 
 I know 'tis but a fire-fly ; yet its flight. 
 
 So straight, so measured, round the empty bed, 
 
 Might be a little soul's that night sets free ; 
 
 And as it nears, I feel my heart grow tight 
 With something like a superstitious dread. 
 And watch it breathless, lest it should be she. 
 
 53
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Once, breaking open an Etruscan tomb, 
 Men came upon a figure, lying there 
 In seeming sleep, pale, young, and very fair. 
 Wearing a small gold locket in the gloom. 
 
 But scarce the breeze had filled the buried room, 
 The form fell in : robe, pallid cheek, and hair 
 Turned to white ash beneath the newer air ; 
 And on that ash they saw the gold still loom. 
 
 So Mimma Bella for a moment passed 
 Before us like a vision ; then was snatched 
 Back into night, and vanished in Death's cold. 
 
 But, as in Griefs dim sepulchre we watched 
 Her beauty's crumbling ash that whitened fast, 
 Lo, the faint gleam of uncorroded gold. 
 
 55
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 What alchemy is thine, O little Child, 
 Transmuting all our thoughts, thou that art dead. 
 And making gold of all the dross of lead 
 That leaves the soul's pure crucible defiled ; 
 
 A vaporous gold, which I would fain have piled 
 Upon my palette, and with light brush spread 
 On Death's dark background, that thy baby head 
 Might wear a nimbus where the angels smiled ? 
 
 Thus had I given back what thou hast wrought 
 In my own soul, and placed thee high among 
 The cherubs that are aureoled in glow ; 
 
 Rimming thy brow with fine red gold of thought, 
 In such fair pictures as the English tongue 
 Shrines in its sanctuaries while ages flow. 
 
 57
 
 XXIX. 
 
 What essences from Idumean palm, 
 
 What ambergris, what sacerdotal wine, 
 
 What Arab myrrh, what spikenard would be thine. 
 
 If I could swathe thy memory in such balm ! 
 
 O for wrecked gold, from depths for ever calm, 
 To fashion for thy name a fretted shrine ; 
 
 for strange gems, still locked in virgin mine, 
 
 To stud the pyx, where thought would bring sweet psalm ! 
 
 1 have but this small rosary of rhyme, — 
 
 No rubies but heart's drops, no pearls but tears. 
 To lay upon the altar of thy name, 
 
 O Mimma Bella ; — on the shrine that Time 
 Makes ever holier for the soul, while years 
 Obliterate the roll of human fame. 
 
 59
 
 LAST SONNETS.
 
 1. 
 
 The Black Caravan. 
 
 The desert. Sand and salt. The fall of night. 
 And suddenly you see a long-drawn string 
 Of coffin-laden camels, hurrying 
 Across the waste of thirst in the dim light. 
 
 And swerving wide, you shudder from the sight. 
 As you'd shrink back from some ill-omened thing, 
 While pass the captives of the Shadowy King, 
 Who thirst no more, no more look left or right. 
 
 So, sometimes in the Desert of the Years 
 A ghostly train, a convoy of the Dead, 
 In a soul's twilight suddenly appears ; 
 
 Dead aims and dead ideals, once athirst 
 
 For Life's bright wells ; now stark and dumb and dread. 
 
 And wrapped in horror, like a thing accurst. 
 
 63
 
 II. 
 
 Purple Shadows. 
 
 We stand upon the terrace, looking down 
 On Florence, that the sunset rays have kissed, 
 And that is robing in her purple mist 
 As the slow daylight wanes upon the town ; 
 While her great dome, in deeper purple shown. 
 Seems, for a moment, built of amethyst, 
 Ere blending with the shadows that insist, 
 And with the hills that Evening makes his own. 
 
 Then out of the still city, as it looms 
 Dreamy and restful, suddenly there booms 
 The deep reverberation of a bell ; 
 Recalling what the unrelenting year 
 Has swept away, of lives that were too dear. 
 And sounding their illimitable knell. 
 
 65
 
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