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THE GUARDIAN-ANGEL:

A PICTURE AT FANO.

I.

Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave
That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!
Let me sit all the day here, that when eve

Shall find performed thy special ministry
And time come for departure, thou, suspending
Thy flight, mayst see another child for tending,
Another still, to quiet and retrieve.

II.

Then I shall feel thee step one step, no more,
From where thou standest now, to where I gaze,
And suddenly my head is covered o'er

With those wings, white above the child who prays
Now on that tomb-and I shall feel thee guarding
Me, out of all the world; for me, discarding

Yon heaven thy home, that waits and opes its door!

III.

I would not look up thither past thy head
Because the door opes, like that child, I know,
For I should have thy gracious face instead,

Thou bird of God! And wilt thou bend me low

Like him, and lay, like his, my hands together,
And lift them up to pray, and gently tether

Me, as thy lamb there, with thy garment's spread?

IV.

If this was ever granted, I would rest

My head beneath thine, while thy healing hands Close-covered both my eyes beside thy breast,

Pressing the brain, which too much thought expands, Back to its proper size again, and smoothing Distortion down till every nerve had soothing, And all lay quiet, happy and supprest.

V.

How soon all worldly wrong would be repaired!
I think how I should view the earth and skies
And sea, when once again my brow was bared
After thy healing, with such different eyes.
O world, as God has made it! all is beauty:
And knowing this, is love, and love is duty.
What further may be sought for or declared?

VI.

Guercino drew this angel I saw teach

(Alfred, dear friend)—that little child to pray, Holding the little hands up, each to each

Pressed gently, with his own head turned away Over the earth where so much lay before him Of work to do, though heaven was opening o'er him, And he was left at Fano by the beach.

VII.

We were at Fano, and three times we went
To sit and see him in his chapel there,
And drink his beauty to our soul's content

--My angel with me too: and since I care
For dear Guercino's fame (to which in power
And glory comes this picture for a dower,
Fraught with a pathos so magnificent),

VIII.

And since he did not work so earnestly

At all times, and has else endured some wrong, I took one thought his picture struck from me, And spread it out, translating it to song.

My Love is here. Where are you, dear old friend?
How rolls the Wairoa at your world's far end?
This is Ancona, yonder is the sea.

CLEON.

"As certain also of your own poets have said

Cleon the poet (from the sprinkled isles,

Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea,

And laugh their pride when the light wave lisps "Greece")

To Protos in his Tyranny: much health!

They give thy letter to me, even now:
I read and seem as if I heard thee speak.
The master of thy galley still unlades
Gift after gift; they block my court at last,
And pile themselves along its portico

Royal with sunset, like a thought of thee:
And one white she-slave from the group dispersed
Of black and white slaves (like the chequer-work
Pavement, at once my nation's work and gift,
Now covered with this settle-down of doves),
One lyric woman, in her crocus vest

Woven of sea-wools, with her two white hands
Commends to me the strainer and the cup
Thy lip hath bettered ere it blesses mine.

Well-counselled, king, in thy munificence ! For so shall men remark, in such an act

Of love for him whose song gives life its joy,
Thy recognition of the use of life;

Nor call thy spirit barely adequate

To help on life in straight ways, broad enough
For vulgar souls, by ruling and the rest.
Thou, in the daily building of thy tower,
Whether in fierce and sudden spasms of toil,
Or through dim lulls of unapparent growth,
Or when the general work 'mid good acclaim
Climbed with the eye to cheer the architect,
Didst ne'er engage in work for mere work's sake-
Hadst ever in thy heart the luring hope

Of some eventual rest a-top of it,

Whence, all the tumult of the building hushed, Thou first of men mightst look out to the east. The vulgar saw thy tower; thou sawest the sun. For this, I promise on thy festival

To pour libation, looking o'er the sea,

Making this slave narrate thy fortunes, speak
Thy great words, and describe thy royal face-
Wishing thee wholly where Zeus lives the most,
Within the eventual element of calm.

Thy letter's first requirement meets me here. It is as thou hast heard: in one short life I, Cleon, have effected all those things Thou wonderingly dost enumerate. That epos on thy hundred plates of gold Is mine,-and also mine the little chaunt So sure to rise from every fishing-bark When, lights at prow, the seamen haul their nets. The image of the sun-god on the phare, Men turn from the sun's self to see, is mine;

D D

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