LITMIR.BIZ

      I sit and wait a pair of oars

      On cis-Elysian river-shores.

      Where the immortal dead have sate,

      ’Tis mine to sit and meditate;

      To re-ascend life’s rivulet,

      Without remorse, without regret;

      And sing my Alma Genetrix

      Among the willows of the Styx.

      And lo, as my serener soul

      Did these unhappy shores patrol,

      And wait with an attentive ear

      The coming of the gondolier,

      Your fire-surviving roll I took,

      Your spirited and happy book; 1

      Whereon, despite my frowning fate,

      It did my soul so recreate

      That all my fancies fled away

      On a Venetian holiday.

      Now, thanks to your triumphant care,

      Your pages clear as April air,

      The sails, the bells, the birds, I know,

      And the far-off Friulan snow;

      The land and sea, the sun and shade,

      And the blue even lamp-inlaid.

      For this, for these, for all, O friend,

      For your whole book from end to end —

      For Paron Piero’s muttonham —

      I your defaulting debtor am.

      Perchance, reviving, yet may I

      To your sea-paven city hie,

      And in a felze, some day yet

      Light at your pipe my cigarette.

      Dear Andrew, with the brindled hair,

      Who glory to have thrown in air,

      High over arm, the trembling reed,

      By Ale and Kail, by Till and Tweed:

      An equal craft of hand you show

      The pen to guide, the fly to throw:

      I count you happy starred; for God,

      When He with inkpot and with rod

      Endowed you, bade your fortune lead

      Forever by the crooks of Tweed,

      Forever by the woods of song

      And lands that to the Muse belong;

      Or if in peopled streets, or in

      The abhorred pedantic sanhedrim,

      It should be yours to wander, still

      Airs of the morn, airs of the hill,

      The plovery Forest and the seas

      That break about the Hebrides,

      Should follow over field and plain

      And find you at the window pane;

      And you again see hill and peel,

      And the bright springs gush at your heel.