And thus he wandered, dumb
Till evening, when he paused, thoroughly spent
On a blind hill-top: down the gorge he went,
Yielding himself up as to an embrace.
The moon came out; like features of a face,
A querulous fraternity of pines,
Sad blackthorn clumps, leafless and grovelling vines
Also came out, made gradually up
The picture; 'twas Goito's mountain-cup
And castle.

And here, from Book iii., is Spring when Palma, dreaming of the man she
can love, cries that the waking earth is in a thrill to welcome him--

"Waits he not the waking year?
His almond-blossoms must be honey-ripe
By this; to welcome him fresh runnels stripe
The thawed ravines; because of him the wind
Walks like a herald."

This is May from Book ii.; and afterwards, in the third book, the months
from Spring to Summer--

My own month came;
'Twas a sunrise of blossoming and May.
Beneath a flowering laurel thicket lay
Sordello; each new sprinkle of white stars
That smell fainter of wine than Massic jars
Dug up at Baiae, when the south wind shed
The ripest, made him happier.

Not any strollings now at even-close
Down the field path, Sordello! by thorn-rows
Alive with lamp-flies, swimming spots of fire
And dew, outlining the black cypress-spire
She waits you at, Elys, who heard you first
Woo her, the snow month through, but, ere she durst
Answer 'twas April. Linden-flower-time long
Her eyes were on the ground; 'tis July, strong
Now; and, because white dust-clouds overwhelm
The woodside, here, or by the village elm
That holds the moon, she meets you, somewhat pale.

And here are two pieces of the morning, one of the wide valley of
Naples; another with which the poem ends, pure modern, for it does not
belong to Sordello's time, but to our own century. This is from the
fourth book.

Broke
Morning o'er earth; he yearned for all it woke--
From the volcano's vapour-flag, winds hoist
Black o'er the spread of sea,--down to the moist
Dale's silken barley-spikes sullied with rain,
Swayed earthwards, heavily to rise again.

And this from the last book--

Lo, on a heathy brown and nameless hill
By sparkling Asolo, in mist and chill,
Morning just up, higher and higher runs
A child barefoot and rosy. See! the sun's
On the square castle's inner-c