the eternal change? Soul, if She meet us there, will any rumour Of havens more high and courts desirable Lure us beyond the cloudy peak of Riva? ERAT HORA   "Thank you, whatever comes." And then she turned And, as the ray of sun on hanging flowers Fades when the wind hath lifted them aside, Went swiftly from me. Nay, whatever comes One hour was sunlit and the most high gods May not make boast of any better thing Than to have watched that hour as it passed. EPIGRAMS I O ivory, delicate hands! O face that hovers Between "To-come" and "Was," Ivory thou wast, A rose thou wilt be. II  (THE SEA OF GLASS)  I looked and saw a sea roofed over with rainbows, In the midst of each two lovers met and departed; Then the sky was full of faces with gold glories behind them. LA NUVOLETTA  "Dante to an unknown lady, beseeching her not to interrupt his cult of the dead Beatrice. From "Il Canzoniere," Ballata II. Ah little cloud that in Love's shadow lief Upon mine eyes so suddenly alightest, Take some faint pity on the heart thou smitest That hopes in thee, desires, dies, in brief. Ah little cloud of more than human fashion Thou settest a flame within my mind's mid space With thy deathly speech that grieveth; Then as a fiery spirit in thy ways Createst hope, in part a rightful passion, Yet where thy sweet smile giveth His grace, look not! For in Her my faith liveth. Think on my high desire whose flame's so great That nigh a thousand who were come too late, Have felt the torment of another's grief. ROSA SEMPITERNA A rose I set within my "Paradise" Lo how his red is turned to yellowness, Not withered but grown old in subtler wise Between the empaged rime's high holiness Where Dante sings of that rose's device Which yellow is, with souls in blissfulness. Rose whom I set within my paradise, Donor of roses and of parching sighs, Of golden lights and dark unhappiness, Of hidden chains and silvery joyousness, Hear how thy rose within my Dante lies, O rose I set within my paradise. THE GOLDEN SESTINA FROM THE ITALIAN OF PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA In the bright season when He, most high Jove, From welkin reaching down his glorying hand, Decks the Great Mother and her changing face, Clothing her not with scarlet skeins and gold But with th' empurpling flowers and gay grass, When the young year renewed, renews the sun, When, then, I see a lady like the sun, One fashioned by th' high hand of utmost Jove, So fair beneath the myrtles on gay grass Who holdeth Love and Truth, one by each hand, It seems, if I look straight, two bands of gold Do make more fair her delicate fair face. Though eyes are dazzled, looking on her face As all sight faileth that looks toward the sun, New metamorphoses, to rained gold, Or bulls or whitest swans, might fall on Jove Through 

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