 | Queen Berengaria's Courtesy, and Other Poems |  |
26
SONNET.
[On dread Vesuvius' treacherous soil I stood]
On dread Vesuvius' treacherous soil I stood;A thousand years their giant shadows threw
Around me there;—the Heaven's delicious blue,
A Heaven of Italy, did seem to brood,
With something of a melancholy mood,
O'er that historic scenery: swiftly flew
My thoughts to the olden times, and mournful grew,
Hovering o'er old oblivion's frozen flood.
Gazing from thence, oh! what a wondrous scene
Attracts, astonishes, delights, dismays:
There Naples sits, a glorious ocean-queen,
Upon her throne of waves and hills—the gaze,
Then on the mountain with its threatening mien,
Sinks back—and there, for long in gloomy trance delays.
| Queen Berengaria's Courtesy, and Other Poems | |