I know these slopes; who knows them if not I? But many a dingle on the loved hillside, With thorns once studded, old, white-blossomed trees, Where thick the cowslips grew, and, far descried, High towered the spikes of purple orchises, Hath since our day put by The coronals of that forgotten time; Down each green bank hath gone the ploughboy's team, And only in the hidden brookside gleam Primroses, orphans of the flowery prime. Where is the girl, who, by the boatman's door, Above the locks, above the boating throng, Unmoored our skiff, when, through the Wytham flats, Red loosestrife and blond meadowsweet among, And darting swallows, and light water-gnats, We tracked the shy Thames shore? Ill-fated Chief! there are whose hopes are built Upon the ruins of thy glorious name; Who, through the portals of one moment's guilt, Pursue thee with their deadly aim! O matchless perfidy! portentous lust Of monstrous crime!- that horrorstriking blade, Drawn in defiance of the gods, hath laid The noble Syracusan low in dust! Shuddered the walls, the marble city wept,And sylvan places heaved a pensive sigh; But in calm peace the appointed As he had fallen, in magnanimity Of one that loved, not wisely, but too well; Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought, Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand, Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes, Albeit unused to the melting mood, Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees Their medicinal gum. Set you down this, And say, besides, that in Aleppo once, Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk Beat a Venetian, and traduced the state, I took by the throat the circumcisèd dog, And smote him-thus. [Stabs himself. SHAKSPEARE. |