inconstant latitudes delay, O not too late from the unbeloved north Trim your escape! For soon shall this low roof Resound indeed with rain, soon shall your eyes Search the foul garden, search the darkened rooms, Nor find one jewel but the blazing log.

p. 25

12 Rue Vernier, Paris.

p. 26XIII—TO H. F. BROWN

p. 26

(Written during a dangerous sickness.)

I sit and wait a pair of oars On cis-Elysian river-shores. Where the immortal dead have sate, ’Tis mine to sit and meditate; To re-ascend life’s rivulet, Without remorse, without regret; And sing my Alma Genetrix Among the willows of the Styx.

sit

And lo, as my serener soul Did these unhappy shores patrol, p. 27And wait with an attentive ear The coming of the gondolier, Your fire-surviving roll I took, Your spirited and happy book; [27] Whereon, despite my frowning fate, It did my soul so recreate That all my fancies fled away On a Venetian holiday.

p. 27

Now, thanks to your triumphant care, Your pages clear as April air, The sails, the bells, the birds, I know, And the far-off Friulan snow; The land and sea, the sun and shade, And the blue even lamp-inlaid. For this, for these, for all, O friend, For your whole book from end to end— p. 28For Paron Piero’s muttonham— I your defaulting debtor am.

p. 28

Perchance, reviving, yet may I To your sea-paven city hie, And in a felze, some day yet Light at your pipe my cigarette.

p. 29XIV—TO ANDREW LANG

p. 29

Dear Andrew, with the brindled hair, Who glory to have thrown in air, High over arm, the trembling reed, By Ale and Kail, by Till and Tweed: An equal craft of hand you show The pen to guide, the fly to throw: I count you happy starred; for God, When He with inkpot and with rod Endowed you, bade your fortune lead Forever by the crooks of Tweed, Forever by the woods of song And lands that to the Muse belong; Or if in peopled streets, or in The abhorred pedantic sanhedrim, p. 30It should be yours to wander, still 

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