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 EX_L1BKJS UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 JOHN HENRY NASH LIBRARY 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO <8> 
 
 PRESENTED ID THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 MR.ANDMRS.MILTON S.RAY 
 CECILY, VIRGINIA AND ROSALYN RAY 
 
 AND THE 
 
 RAY OIL BURNERCDMPANY 
 
 

 
 I 
 
 \\" W ' * 
 
 
 
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THE 
 
 SONNETEERING OF 
 PETRARCHINO 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 WALTER M. HILL 
 
 MCMXXI 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY WALTER M. HILL, CHICAGO 
 
 PRINTED BY JOHN HENRY NASH, SAN FRANCISCO 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 Hark! 
 
 As little" Wolferl" through old Salzburg straying 
 And clambering some spidery stair, mistaken 
 For his good father's, may have found forsaken 
 A spinet in the dusty loft decaying, 
 And with his baby hands to sweet obeying 
 Charmed the stiff, yellow keys so long unshaken 
 By touch of fingers, may have made awaken 
 Its night-numbed song to sun-rise of his playing, 
 
 So now a master greater than Mozart, 
 Of melody and harmony the lord, 
 Would turn the musings of my inmost elf 
 To singing strings, and of my antique heart 
 Fashion a quaintly jangling harpsichord 
 To play his welcome to the Dawn, yourself. 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 July Night 
 
 The ravelled veils of salmon cloud forsake 
 A sky of peacock blue, as fireflies 
 With gay, inconstant mimic improvise 
 A Milky Way along the bluff. A flake ' f 
 Of late syringa, eager to o'er take 
 Its fellow, falls, and on the warm grass lies 
 In invitation. Now the moon will rise, 
 Like a great golden galleon, from the lake. 
 
 Up in the dark tree tops a fainting breath 
 Stirs waxen leaves; below, as soft as death, 
 Only the moth wings flutter. Now my hand 
 Reaches for yours, and does not understand 
 Its absence, which can turn so cruelly 
 All summer's opulence to beggary. 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 Memories of Greece 
 
 From Lycobettos still, in memory, 
 I can look out above the evening mist 
 Beyond th' Acropolis where yet persist 
 Th' immortal violets, and farther see, 
 Past Corinth's gulf of lapis-lazuli, 
 Great Erymanthus, like a Titan's fist 
 Clenched in a glove of deepening amethyst, 
 Cellene, wrapt in purple dignity. 
 
 Since then have many travellers from that slope 
 Watched the warm colours die on Argolis. 
 Not one remembers better! without hope 
 I always hoped to know again in this 
 Plain world that perfed scene. After long wait, 
 I see it in your eyes, regenerate. 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 Vistas 
 
 Oh for some island, far enough to balk 
 
 The curious voyager, where hours and days 
 
 And months pass cloudlessly, whose shimmering bays 
 
 No anchor ripples; only sea birds walk 
 
 Its sunny sands. Above it nightly stalk 
 
 Achernar and Canopus, and their rays 
 
 Silver its beaches. Silence there betrays 
 
 Secrets too deep ever to rise in talk. 
 
 In such a paradise, with years to spend, 
 I might pursue each vista, and explore 
 The country of your heart to its last shore 
 And highest hill, but know that at the end 
 There still would lie in hiding from your lover 
 Some new delight for him to yet discover. 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 Long After "the Prince of Poets " 
 
 I can not hope, like laurel-crowned Petrarch, 
 
 To give my love six centuries of fame, 
 
 Or weave such magic romance 'round your name 
 
 As he did, when he lit against the dark 
 
 Of sleeping ages, like a little spark, 
 
 The song which burst into a deathless flame. 
 
 My flint I strike with high and eager aim, 
 
 But know that few its tiny flash may mark. 
 
 Enough for me, if, when keen, frosty age 
 O'er takes you on your mortal pilgrimage 
 And drives you to seek solace by the fire, 
 You then take down this little book, desire 
 To warm yourself by dear, remembered times 
 And, glad I loved you, softly croon my rhymes. 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 Sun-rising 
 
 
 
 Alone tonight by light of candle lean 
 
 I dream how somewhere now the sun is making 
 
 Anew the day, his tangent radiance flaking 
 
 A silver sea with golden damascene, 
 
 Or how above deep valleys' darkling green 
 
 Some snowy-cheeked, unclouded peak is breaking 
 
 Into high flame, when lover-like awaking 
 
 Startles to rose her virginal demesne. 
 
 And I muse on how Love's sun freshly rising 
 Ever discovers oceans unexplored, 
 Or Himalayan mountain chains, surprising 
 Reludant beauty in their fastness stored: 
 With each advancing day he finds unfurled 
 Some fairer landscape of your heart, my world. 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 Midsummer Nights Dream 
 
 Such a night sings! Some Lydian shepherd's song 
 Is by the milky moonlight softly trilled 
 'Neath tall black trees in gray-green shadows filled 
 With errant satellites, now led awrong 
 From pale, moon-banished stars. The lawn along 
 An over-flow of Heaven has been spilled 
 In stillest beauty, from which Love 's distilled 
 His ancient melody, sweet, sanguine, strong. 
 
 Such a night sings, and asks for audience 
 No harking of the scholar's hand-cupped ear 
 That analyses sound but song can 't hear, 
 Nor worldling's glib, impertinent pretense. 
 It wants but lovers, so I pray that we 
 May be sometime its close-clasped auditry. 
 
 cn 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 Wood-gods 
 
 Old books reveal that the deep woods near Treves 
 Long challenged Christ. No zealot might disbark 
 On missionary quest beyond that mark. 
 Diana's followers there sought to brave 
 The Syrian cult, and in their secret nave 
 Of moss-stained oaks/ till days of Joan of Arc, 
 They flashed like fireflies in the early dark, 
 Or sunny rocks against a smileless wave. 
 
 Along the Chinese rivers travellers tell 
 How the wind-worn, time-twisted trees are spared 
 Since in their trunks ancestral spirits dwell, 
 As in the grove about my house seems snared 
 Some pagan protestant, who makes renew 
 Each starry night my worshipping of you. 
 
 .. 
 
 DO 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 Al Fresco 
 
 Crisp as cut stone, or vague as faint perfume, 
 Fantastic clouds like Chinese creatures old 
 And fabulous, on screens of lemon gold, 
 People the changing sky. The drooping plume 
 Of one tall elm nods darkly at the room 
 Rimpling above it. From the western wold 
 The tentacles of mounting mists uphold 
 Earth's plan to swallow heaven in its gloom. 
 
 Before this is a spacious table set 
 With creamy cloth, silver, wine-gilded glass 
 And candles flickering as the whispers pass 
 From field to lake. All is inviting, yet 
 Without your smile to crown the carnival, 
 My eyes see only Laughter's funeral. 
 9 
 
 EE 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 To My Stone St. Hilarion 
 
 You were, perhaps, carved for some straitened nook 
 
 In a steep arch, above the human taint 
 
 Entering beneath you. There your mute compkint 
 
 Of Earth's misuse, your prayer-pinched, tear-smeared look 
 
 Summoned old sinners to the bell and book, 
 
 Inviting all to that immense constraint 
 
 Which seared your brow, proclaiming you a saint 
 
 Who knew all sin and each glad sin forsook. 
 
 Pupil you were of Anthony, men say, 
 
 The Anthony who frowned all loving down, 
 
 To his eternal, damnable renown. 
 
 For your apostasy I gladly pay 
 
 Ransom in flowers, trusting now you '11 be 
 
 A lover's saint, new-born in charity. 
 
 ,0 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 Orion 
 
 Confessed a comrade of the year's old age, 
 A tardy tippler at the starry feast, 
 Ruddy Orion staggers up the east, 
 And, shaking off a summer's villainage, 
 Again assumes his wintry heritage. 
 Aldebaran and Altair have increased 
 Their light to lend him honour, and the least, 
 Last comet owns his silent seignorage. 
 
 Far-flaming stars, like satrap satellites, 
 In vasty space of crystal vacancy, 
 Make court before his august empery, 
 Whose sudden sun-burst lightens and benights 
 The rest of heaven, as for me your star 
 Dark-lights the world, Love's final avatar. 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 Parthenos 
 
 Sometimes I wonder if the Parthenon 
 
 Was just so perfed when it sparkled new, 
 
 Fresh from the Phidian mallet, when withdrew 
 
 First from its side the builders' skeleton 
 
 And bade astonished Athens look upon 
 
 Its bright-hued splendour. Now the winds imbrue 
 
 Its beauty with eternity, the dew 
 
 Paints it more perfed, dew and Attic sun. 
 
 As kindly Time rounds the too rigid line 
 Of squared foundation, sharply chiselled plinth, 
 And warms to tenderness the chill above 
 Of pediment and fluted labyrinth, 
 So may your beauty on itself refine, 
 Perfedion change for perfedness, through love. 
 
 12 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 November Chill 
 
 The wastrel wind scatters the legacies 
 Of golden August's richly- verdured nights 
 In soon-spent leaves; improvidently blights 
 The last unheeded asters; soon will freeze 
 The pools, deep-shadowed, which the panoplies 
 Of steely skies light from inverted heights, 
 Whence Rigel, prince of Autumn's proselytes, 
 Peers through the tangled rigging of the trees. 
 
 Half-numb I am. No spoil of fruitful garth, 
 Doubly-distilled, nor fraud of fond romance, 
 No noisy hickory snapping on the hearth 
 From creeping cold vouchsafes deliverance, 
 'Till your far face recalled my blood unchains 
 And wakes the summer sleeping in my veins. 
 
 13 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 Small Pence 
 
 If I could coin my heart's full treasury 
 Into the counters which are common pay, 
 Or if the world's exchequer would assay 
 The honest bullion of my sympathy, 
 And try the riches of my poverty 
 With test of acid, ring, and bite and weigh 
 With every scale that shortage might betray, 
 I know that it must pass that currency. 
 
 But my dull mind seems powerless to make 
 The gold to guilders, or to press imprint 
 Of face unless on farthings, is no mint 
 To stamp my love in ducats, so, dear, take 
 These crude, clipped coppers of my blunted wit, 
 And know, at least, they are not counterfeit. 
 
 14 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 Day-break 
 
 This morning through my graying windows blow 
 Winds from the woods, my drowsy forehead stroking 
 With damp caresses from a forest smoking 
 In exhalations of the melted snow. 
 Down gurgling spouts and sobbing gutters flow 
 Streams to a dream of summer brooks provoking, 
 And from some misty distance comes the croaking 
 And querulous complaint of brother crow. 
 
 'Tis winter yet ! A mind so long discreet, 
 Incredulous, by February thaw 
 Or crow's profane, anachronistic caw 
 Surely should not be tricked, but since, my Sweet, 
 The thought of you dawns on me with the day, 
 In brownest buds I see the bloom of May. 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 Ronsard 
 
 I can not think he was but chanticleer, 
 Crowing the easy conquests of a court 
 In careless stanzas, chanted half in sport 
 And half in hope his flattery might endear 
 To arching brows their facile sonneteer. 
 Rather I mark the vital soul's import, 
 Grave 'neath the smiles, too candid to distort 
 To a mere elegance his mood sincere. 
 
 So I have called him master and have sung 
 My fondest songs feigning to follow him, 
 And longing that my plaintive lips rnight limn 
 My love in some faint echo of his tongue. 
 Taut are the strings and tuneful of my heart, 
 Could I but pluck them with the master's art. 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 On a Twelfth Century Missal 
 
 No creature of a papal chancery, 
 To drudgery conventual dismissed, 
 Conceived these characters, no copyist 
 Flourished so freely and so legibly 
 These Latin lines of round calligraphy: 
 Rather some transcendental humanist, 
 In adoration raised to rhapsodist, 
 Here hymned the Virgin in his ecstasy. 
 
 Through Life's broad book he made his pilgrimage, 
 Swinging the censer of a heart whose scent 
 To Heaven rose from his still hermitage. 
 Oh! That to you my hermit heart's intent 
 May raise an incense from this studied page 
 Fragrant as his sweet-smelling sacrament. 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 Clearing 
 
 The wind grown hoarse with shouting thunderously 
 His savage song, and winding fanfares loud, 
 Falters at last in whispers. Now unbowed, 
 The regal oaks raise weary heads to see 
 What realm remains after the anarchy, 
 And stretch their arms, still unsubdued and proud, 
 Strongly to Heaven, across whose fields, storm-plowed, 
 Race the gray ranks of winter's cavalry. 
 
 The cloudy armies scatter fast and far, 
 
 The gusty sighs diminish, pause, and cease, 
 
 Clear in the east a solitary star 
 
 Signals the triumph and return of peace. 
 
 I know it for an omen to foretell 
 
 That lovers' skies shall clear of storms as well. 
 
 18 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 The Centaur An Intaglio 
 
 How shepherds stared on the Thessalian plain, 
 When for one burnished moment, statue-still, 
 They saw you drinking at the drowsy rill ! 
 A snort, a stamp, a startled toss of mane, 
 And you were gone, a dappled hurricane, 
 Crashing o'er asphodel and daffodil 
 Until among the laurels on the hill 
 Your quivering fad: became a myth again. 
 
 'Twas Phoebus sired you and bade you be 
 Manlike in mischief, even excelling them, 
 And from your mother, Hebe, you'd no lack 
 Of license or of mad audacity. 
 Now do I find you prisoned in this gem, 
 Quite tamed, a tiny Eros on your back. 
 
 19 
 
THE SONNETEERING OF PETRARCHINO 
 
 Finale 
 
 If I had sought to praise some other face 
 Not perfed: so nor so with Love conspiring, 
 And if my hand, more temperate in desiring, 
 Had tried some lesser loveliness to trace, 
 Then from my pack of wordy commonpkce 
 I might have drawn, meet for my mood's requiring, 
 Drab, homespun phrases for the plain attiring 
 Of any other but one lyric Grace. 
 
 But I have striven to pilfer from the birds 
 Their lilt, and from the stars I love so well 
 Their choired song, in hope with these to tell 
 A beauty past the portraiture of words. 
 And, having failed, I break the lute in two 
 That shall not sound, unless it honours you. 
 
 20 
 
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