"De Gustibus--"
Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees,(If our loves remain)In an English lane,By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.Hark, those two in the hazel coppice--A boy and a girl, if the good fates please,Making love, say,--The happier they!Draw yourself up from the light of the moon.And let them pass, as they will too soon,With the beanflower's boon,And the blackbird's tune,And May, and June!
What I love best in all the worldIs a castle, precipice-encurled,In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine.Or look for me, old fellow of mine,(If I get my head from out the mouthO' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands,And come again to the land of lands)--In a sea-side house to the farther South,Where the baked cicala dies of drouth,And one sharp tree--'tis a cypress--stands,By the many hundred years red-rusted,Bough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted,My sentinel to guard the sandsTo the water's edge. For, what expandsBefore the house, but the great opaqueBlue breadth of sea without a break?While, in the house, forever crumblesSome fragment of the frescoed walls,From blisters where a scorpion sprawls.A girl bare-footed brings, and tumblesDown on the pavement, green-flesh melons,And says there's news to-day--the kingWas shot at, touched in the liver-wing,Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling:--She hopes they have not caught the felons.Italy, my Italy!Queen Mary's saying serves for me--(When fortune's maliceLost her, Calais)Open my heart and you will seeGraved inside of it, "Italy."Such lovers old are I and she:So it always was, so shall ever be!
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