Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection

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      IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS
      AND POEMS: A SELECTION

               By
       WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR




CONTENTS


IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS

          Marcellus and Hannibal

          Queen Elizabeth and Cecil

          Epictetus and Seneca

          Peter the Great and Alexis

          Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn

          Joseph Scaliger and Montaigne

          Boccaccio and Petrarca

          Bossuet and the Duchess de Fontanges

          John of Gaunt and Joanna of Kent

          Leofric and Godiva

          Essex and Spenser

          Lord Bacon and Richard Hooker

          Oliver Cromwell and Walter Noble

          Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney

          Southey and Porson

          The Abbe Delille and Walter Landor

          Diogenes and Plato

          Alfieri and Salomon the Florentine Jew

          Rousseau and Malesherbes

          Lucullus and Caesar

          Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa

          Dante and Beatrice

          Fra Filippo Lippi and Pope Eugenius the Fourth

          Tasso and Cornelia

          La Fontaine and de La Rochefoucault

          Lucian and Timotheus

          Bishop Shipley and Benjamin Franklin

          Southey and Landor

          The Emperor of China and Tsing-Ti

          Louis XVIII and Talleyrand

          Oliver Cromwell and Sir Oliver Cromwell

          The Count Gleichem: the Countess: their Children, and Zaida


THE PENTAMERON

          First Day's Interview

          Third Day's Interview

          Fourth Day's Interview

          Fifth Day's Interview


POEMS

       I. She I love (alas in vain!)

      II. Pleasure! why thus desert the heart

     III. Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives

      IV. Ianthe! you are call'd to cross the sea!

       V. The gates of fame and of the grave

      VI. Twenty years hence my eyes may grow

     VII. Here, ever since you went abroad

    VIII. Tell me not things past all belief

      IX. Proud word you never spoke, but you will speak

       X. Fiesole Idyl

      XI. Ah what avails the sceptred race

     XII. With rosy hand a little girl prest down

    VIII. Ternissa! you are fled!

     XIV. Various the roads of life; in one

      XV. Yes; I write verses now and then

     XVI. On seeing a hair of Lucretia Borgia

    XVII. Once, and once only, have I seen thy face

   XVIII. To Wordsworth

     XIX. To Charles Dickens

      XX. To Barry Cornwall

     XXI. To Robert Browning

    XXII. Age

   XXIII. Leaf after leaf drops off, flower after flower

    XXIV. Well I remember how you smiled

     XXV. I strove with none, for none was worth my strife

    XXVI. Death stands above me, whispering low

   XXVII. A Pastoral

  XXVIII. The Lover

    XXIX. The Poet who Sleeps

     XXX. Daniel Defoe

    XXXI. Idle Words

   XXXII. To the River Avon




IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS




MARCELLUS AND HANNIBAL


_Hannibal._ Could a Numidian horseman ride no faster? Marcellus! oh!
Marcellus! He moves not--he is dead. Did he not stir his fingers?
Stand wide, soldiers--wide, forty paces; give him air; bring water;
halt! Gather those broad leaves, and all the rest, growing under the
brushwood; unbrace his armour. Loose the helmet first--his breast
rises. I fancied his eyes were fixed on me--they have rolled back
again. Who presumed to touch my shoulder? This horse? It was surely
the horse of Marcellus! Let no man mount him. Ha! ha! the Romans, too,
sink into luxury: here is gold about the charger.

_Gaulish Chieftain._ Execrable thief! The golden chain of our king
under a beast's grinders! The vengeance of the gods hath overtaken the
impure----

_Hannibal._ We will talk about vengeance when we have entered Rome,
and about purity among the priests, if they will hear us. Sound for
the surgeon. That arrow may be extracted from the side, deep as it is.
The conqueror of Syracuse lies before me. Send a vessel off to
Carthage. Say Hannibal is at the gates of Rome. Marcellus, who stood
alone between us, fallen. Brave man! I would rejoice and cannot. How
awfully serene a countenance! Such as we hear are in the islands of
the Blessed. And how glorious a form and stature! Such too was theirs!
They also once lay thus upon the earth wet with their blood--few other
enter there. And what plain armour!

_Gaulish Chieftain._ My party slew him; indeed, I think I slew him
myself. I claim the chain: it belongs to my king; the glory of Gaul
requires it. Never will she endure to see another take it.

_Hannibal._ My friend, the glory of Marcellus did not require him to
wear it. When he suspended the arms of your brave king in the temple,
he thought such a trinket unworthy of himself and of Jupiter.