Sir John Hanmer (1809–1881)

NOT vainly didst thou sing thy lifetime long,

Petrarca, of a fair and gentle dame;

And with the winds fan love’s enduring flame,

Wandering the hills and the quick streams among;

For Time hath listened to thy passionate song;

Whose years like pilgrims to Valchiusa came.

Sighing thou wentest all thy days; but Fame

Filled her clear trump with thine imagined wrong;

Then from the banks of that Provençal river,

Soared loftier accents, ’neath the Alps’ blue gleam;

And at thy voice rose one who would deliver

His Rome and thine; O noble poet-dream!

The Belisarian weeds did stir and shiver

On her old walls at that electric theme.