De Gustibus---

I.

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 bean-flowers' boon,

   And the blackbird's tune,

   And May, and June!

II.

What I love best in all the world

Is a castle, precipice-encurl

ed,In a gash of the wind-grieved ApennineOr 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,Rough 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, for ever 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 malice    Lost 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!