No More Learning

You'll take back your Grand-duke?
My French fought nobly with reason,--
Left many a Lombardy nook
Red as with wine out of season.
Little we grudged what was done there,
Paid freely your ransom of blood:
Our heroes stark in the sun there
We would not recall if we could.
You'll call back the Grand-duke?

X.

You'll take back your Grand-duke?
His son rode fast as he got off
That day on the enemy's hook,
When _I_ had an epaulette shot off.
Though splashed (as I saw him afar--no
Near) by those ghastly rains,
The mark, when you've washed him in Arno,
Will scarcely be larger than Cain's.
You'll call back the Grand-duke?

XI.

You'll take back your Grand-duke?
'T will be so simple, quite beautiful:
The shepherd recovers his crook,
. . . If you should be sheep, and dutiful.
I spoke a word worth chalking
On Milan's wall--but stay,
Here's Poniatowsky talking,--
You'll listen to _him_ to-day,
And call back the Grand-duke.

XII.

You'll take back your Grand-duke?
Observe, there's no one to force it,--
Unless the Madonna, Saint Luke
Drew for you, choose to endorse it.
_I_ charge you, by great Saint Martino
And prodigies quickened by wrong,
Remember your Dead on Ticino;
Be worthy, be constant, be strong--
Bah! --call back the Grand-duke! !


FOOTNOTES:

[14] The Italian tricolor: red, green, and white.




CHRISTMAS GIFTS.

~hos basilei, hos theps, hos nekrps. ~
GREGORY NAZIANZEN.


I.

The Pope on Christmas Day
Sits in Saint Peter's chair;
But the peoples murmur and say
"Our souls are sick and forlorn,
And who will show us where
Is the stable where Christ was born? "

II.

The star is lost in the dark;
The manger is lost in the straw;
The Christ cries faintly . .