November: 1674
Cloked in gray threadbare poverty, and blind,
Age-weak, and desolate, and beloved of God;
High-heartedness to long repulse resign’d,
Yet bating not one jot of hope, he trod
The sunless skyless streets he could not see;
By those faint feet made sacrosanct to me.
Yet on that laureate brow the sign he wore
Of Phoebus’ wrath; who,–for his favourite child,
When war and faction raised their rancorous roar,
Leagued with fanatic frenzy, blood-defiled,
To the sweet Muses and himself untrue,–
Around the head he loved thick darkness threw.
–He goes:–But with him glides the Pleiad throng
Of that imperial line, whom Phoebus owns
His ownest: for, since his, no later song
Has soar’d, as wide-wing’d, to the diadem’d thrones
That, in their inmost heaven, the Muses high
Set for the sons of immortality.
Most loved, most lovely, near him as he went,
Vergil: and He, supremest for all time,
In hoary blindness:–But the sweet lament
Of Lesbian love, the Parian song sublime,
Follow’d:–and that stern Florentine apart
Cowl’d himself dark in thought, within his heart
Nursing the dream of Church and Caesar’s State,
Empire and Faith:–while Fancy’s favourite child,
The myriad-minded, moving up sedate
Beckon’d his countryman, and inly smiled:–
Then that august Theophany paled from view,
To higher stars drawn up, and kingdoms new.
(Francis Turner Palgrave)
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Based on Topics: Love Poems, God Poems, Mind Poems, Time Poems, Heaven Poems, Dreams Poems, Christianity Poems, Hope Poems, Thought & Thinking Poems, Belief & Faith Poems, Sons PoemsBased on Keywords: countryman, florentine, fanatic, repulse, cowl, parian, supremest, leagued, laureate, pleiad, rancorous