Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

Aubrey Thomas de Vere (1814–1902)

Extracts from Mediæval Records and Sonnets: Browning

MOURN, Italy, with England mourn since both

He sang with song’s discriminating love;

Thy towers that flash the wooded crag above;

Thy trellised vineyard’s purple overgrowth;

Thy matin balm; thy noontide’s pleasing sloth;

Thy convent bell, dim lake, and homeward dove;

Thine evening star that through the bowered alcove

Silvers the white flight of the circling moth.

He sang thy best and worst; false love, fierce war,

Renaissance craft, child-graces, saintly Art,

Old pomps from “Casa Guidi’s” Windows seen:

There dwelt he happy; there that Minstrel-Queen

Who shared his poet-crown but gladdened more

To hold unshared her Poet’s manly heart.