University of Virginia Library


276

XVIII. CASTELAMARE.

O cool and healthful nights! O peaceful gloom!
O winding sands that in your beauteous zone
Clasp the dim watery plain, how oft alone
I paced your marge, inhaling the perfume
Which forests bursting with invisible bloom
Poured from their mountain ambush! Moon was none:
But with such strength the lamp of Venus shone,
Descending nightly over Virgil's tomb,
That, like the moonbeam, her long lustre lay
On distant waves to meet that radiance swelling;
A long bright ladder from the Star of Love
Touched, as it seemed, our lower world. Above,
The nightingale her sorrows wept away;
And all the echoes of her wrong were telling.