Fabien Dei Franchi: To My Friend Henry Irving
- The silent room, the heavy creeping shade,
- The dead that travel fast, the opening door,
- The murdered brother rising through the floor,
- The ghost’s white fingers on thy shoulders laid,
- And then the lonely duel in the glade,
- The broken swords, the stifled scream, the gore,
- Thy grand revengeful eyes when all is o’er,-
- These things are well enough,- but thou wert made
- For more august creation! frenzied Lear
- Should at thy bidding wander on the heath
- With the shrill fool to mock him, Romeo
- For thee should lure his love, and desperate fear
- Pluck Richard’s recreant dagger from its sheath-
- Thou trumpet set for Shakespeare’s lips to blow!
Phedre: To Sarah Bernhardt
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- How vain and dull this common world must seem
- To such a One as thou, who should’st have talked
- At Florence with Mirandola, or walked
- Through the cool olives of the Academe:
- Thou should’st have gathered reeds from a green stream
- For goat-foot Pan’s shrill piping, and have played
- With the white girls in that Phaeacian glade
- Where grave Odysseus wakened from his dream.
-
- Ah! surely once some urn of Attic clay
- Held thy wan dust, and thou hast come again
- Back to this common world so dull and vain,
- For thou wert weary of the sunless day,
- The heavy fields of scentless asphodel,
- The loveless lips with which men kiss in Hell.
I. Portia: To Ellen Terry
- I marvel not Bassanio was so bold
- To peril all he had upon the lead,
- Or that proud Aragon bent low his head,
- Or that Morocco’s fiery heart grew cold:
- For in that gorgeous dress of beaten gold
- Which is more golden than the golden sun,
- No woman Veronese looked upon
- Was half so fair as thou whom I behold.
- Yet fairer when with wisdom as your shield
- The sober-suited lawyer’s gown you donned
- And would not let the laws of Venice yield
- Antonio’s heart to that accursed Jew-
- O Portia! take my heart; it is thy due:
- I think I will not quarrel with bond.
Written at the Lyceum Theatre
II. Queen Henrietta Maria: To Ellen Terry
- In the lone tent, waiting for victory,
- She stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain,
- Like some wan lily overdrenched with rain;
- The clamorous clang of arms, the ensanguined sky,
- War’s ruin, and the wreck of chivalry,
- To her proud soul no common fear can bring:
- Bravely she tarrieth for her Lord the King,
- Her soul a-flame with passionate ecstasy.
- O Hair of Gold! O crimson lips! O Face
- Made for the luring and the love of man!
- With thee I do forget the toil and stress.
- The loveless road that knows no resting place,
- Time’s straitened pulse, the soul’s dread weariness,
- My freedom and my life republican!
Written at the Lyceum Theatre
III. CAMMA: To Ellen Terry
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- As one who poring on a Grecian urn
- Scans the fair shapes some Attic hand hath made,
- God with slim goddess, goodly man with maid,
- And for their beauty’s sake is loath to turn
- And face the obvious day, must I not yearn
- For many a secret moon of indolent bliss,
- When is the midmost shrine of Artemis
- I see thee standing, antique-limbed, and stern?
-
- And yet- methinks I’d rather see thee play
- That serpent of old Nile, whose witchery
- Made Emperors drunken,- come, great Egypt, shake
- Our stage with all thy mimic pageants! Nay,
- I am growing sick of unreal passions, make
- The world thine Actium, me thine Anthony!
Written at the Lyceum Theatre
