University of Virginia Library

Realm of the Sun! bright Italy! farewell!
My parting lay receive!
Now, as beneath this waving canopy,
The green leaf purpled by the beam of eve,
On the fern's fragrant bed I lonely lie,
Where one broad oak o'erhangs the haunted well,
And dreams of pleasures past in summer woodlands dwell.

Haunts of my childhood! and thou, lone retreat,
'Mid these wild woods, rude scenes, for whom I left
Augusta's festive seat!
I come in your still sanctuary once more,
To dedicate my summer holiday,
As oft in years of yore,
To Peace, that builds her cell in solitude.
So might I, haply, charm awhile away
Thoughts unsubdued:
Unquiet thoughts, that no festivities,
Nor dream from haunted well, or charmed wood,
Can from the soul dissever. Rise! arise,
Vision of Italy! and thou, my lay,
Go from these forest glades,
These solitary shades,
To bright Italia's realm pursue thy way:
If aught of northern clime,
Rude as my artless rhyme,
With kindly greeting may her gifts repay,
To bright Italia's realm pursue thy destin'd way.

Tell her, tho' many a moon has past
With lingering grief o'ercast,
And woe eclips'd the sun and summer day,
Since that delightful hour
I breath'd the fragrance of th' Hesperian bow'r:
Her voice, her viol, mute,
Untouch'd the witching lute,
That drew the moonbeam to the Syren main:
Tho' nought now round me heard,
Save the self-echoing bird,
Or bleat of the shy doe that bounds along the plain:
Yet—when I raise to Saturn's realm the strain,
The voice, the lute, the moon, the Syren sea,
And each enchanting scene
Of glen and valley green,
And wreathings of the crystal waterfall,
And all of fruit and flow'r
That robes th' Italian bow'r,
In vision round these wilds her paradise recall.

Tell her, again I feel
The transport of that moment, when, at first
Freed from tempestuous Simplon's gloom profound,
And earth in ice-chain bound,
From hail-stones and the frozen gale I burst,
And view'd the purple cluster wreath'd
Round green Dovredo's brow,
And felt, from opening paradise below,
Airs that of Eden breath'd;
The while I pass'd two different worlds between,
Beholding either scene:
Behind me, lay
Winter with all his storms, with all his night:
Before my way
Summer, with all her pomp, with all her light:
Italia's sun, in summer's noontide glow,
Beam'd on a world, where, visibly imprest,
The glory of its Maker seem'd to rest:
A world without a woe.

Go, thou, my lay! salute the Alpine height,
On whose ice-throne the golden orb of day,
With ineffectual ray,
Looks, wondering, down: and bids the earth behold,
And all of mortal mould,
Their Maker in the marvels of his might,
The God Creator.—Ye, whose race reside
In peace on pleasant places, where free rills
Feed the green vales, or down the pastur'd hills
In tuneful murmurs glide:
And ye, 'mid pomp of cities, that abide
Where rivers, rolling thro' the marble arch,
Pursue their stately march,
And with your treasures freight th' encumber'd tide:
Deem not that yonder mountains but uphold
A theatre, for Nature to display
Her grandeur, when the mists of Morn unfold,
And the young Day walks on the rocks in gold:
Or when a diadem of roseate glow
Circles their monarch's crest,
To bid at eve the wearied sunbeams rest,
And wreathe their radiance round th' eternal snow,
While darkness hides the giant Alps below.

Let others, labouring up the steep ascent
With wearied footstep slow,
Envy the lonely Chalet, where content
Dwells with the mountain boy, whose Alpine note
So wild, so sweet, at twilight heard to float,
Where the free herd wind, pasturing, to and fro
Thro' ice-crown'd vales, the wanderer recalls,
Home-caroling the way 'mid crystal waterfalls.
Let the adventurous native scale the crest
That guards the geyer's nest:
Or search the haunt where lone, 'mid realms of snow,
The chamois lurks: and oft, a voice, a word,
A breathing by the watchful avalanche heard,
Hurls swoln destruction on a world below.
Let others on Mont-Blanc's sublimity,
At noon-tide, underneath the sunbeams, stand,
In speechless awe, and view the heav'n expand,
And, 'mid the host that gem the blue, blue sky,
Trace in their course the planets, one by one,
Wheel round the central sun.
Thou, on that eminence, that ice-crown'd stone,
Whose granite base is sepulchred in night,
Adore thy Maker's might.

Thron'd on Mont-Blanc, on Europe's topmost stone,
A minist'ring servant of Omnipotence,
Winter reigns alone:
And as th' Etesian gales o'er ocean blow,
And clouds on clouds, o'ershadowing, as they roll,
The realm's outstretch'd below,
Bear the wing'd waters to their destin'd goal,
With his petrific sceptre stays their flight:
And compassing the Alps with icy belt,
Draws from the marble ether thickly down
The frozen flood.—Meanwhile, from fathomless snows
That 'neath th' eternal congelations melt,
Ceaselessly, day and night, without repose,
Vast waters flow, and bursting into day,
Boldly through ice-built arches force their way,
'Mid cavernous rocks: and as they onward sweep,
Majestic in the fulness of their might,
Down the worn channels to their parent deep,
'Mid realms of life and light,
New robe the purple hill, the grove, the plain,
And make earth's shouting bed a sea of golden grain.

Thus Nature lives perpetually renew'd.
Th' Etesian gales, the mountain, and the main
Link her connected chain.
One aim, one end, thro' all alike pursu'd:
One—the Creator God—in each vicissitude.

Resistless Adige! thou, whose torrent force
Cleaves the Tyrolian mountain's barrier chain:
And thou, Eridanus! whose length of course
From its ice-cradle, on the Alpine brow,
Wide-wand'ring to and fro,
Looks down on the luxuriance of the plain,
Where Labour, with Briarean hands,
Guardian of the region, stands,
Mound heaps on mound, and loftier rears
The rampart of a thousand years,
To stem th' invading floods:—Ye too, ye lakes!
Who spread your mirror to the orb of day:
Whose nectar draught th' o'er-wearied pilgrim slakes:
Whether the fresh springs from their flinty cave
Feed your translucent wave:
Or snow-floods, deluging the vales, outspread
Th' exuberant waters on your level bed:
Ye cool and crystal lakes! receive my farewell lay!—
Como and Alban, and the princely-isl'd,
Proud Borromee! ye, on your liquid glass,
Who view'd beneath a sun that ceaseless smil'd,
My slow sail pass,
As if its lingering shadow fain would rest
On your unheaving breast:
And Garda, on whose margin bloom the trees,
The garden of th' Hesperides,
Whose high-arch'd groves, of golden glow,
Seem'd rising from the flood below:
While not a Zephyr stirr'd to wake
The sleep that lay upon the lake;
Or with a touch, too rude, confuse
Tints that outrivall'd nature's hues:—
Thou too, whose loveliness awhile detain'd
My charmed footstep on that fairest morn,
Of sun and summer born,
Thy silent water, silver Thrasymene!
Thou, in thy rest, so pure, so peaceful, seen:
As if no Punic war-hoof ere had trod
Thy flow'r-enamell'd sod;
Nor taint of Roman blood e'er stain'd thy crystal sheen.

Thou, last, thou midland main,
Tuscan and Adrian, hear my farewell strain!
Tho' tempests lash thy billows; tho', at times,
'Tis said, that when the mountains have sent forth
A voice, and rous'd the spirit of the storm,
From thy profound abyss a pillar'd form
Has ris'n, and to the thunder's roar replied,
And midway met the column of the cloud,
Incumbent on the billows raging wide,
And launch'd the lightning from its riven shroud,
Spouting the torrent tide:
But thou, oh, midland main!
Whene'er my willing foot approach'd thy shore,
Wert rob'd in loveliness: and, evermore,
Thy voice—if voice ere heard—
Mild as the murmur of the halcyon bird,
That broods on thy charm'd billow: and the light,
That in its quivering radiance from thee broke,
Unlike the fire-bolt's fitful stroke,
From thousand and ten thousand sunbeams glanc'd,
As wave pursuing wave,
In wreathed smiles innumerable, danc'd,
Brush'd by the Zephyr's wing.—Such wert thou seen,
So bright that sea, when from Sorrento's steep,
At daybreak, while the rosy-finger'd dawn
From nature had the silvery veil withdrawn,
I view'd, where Ocean lay in silent sleep,
The Syren's verdant isle—the Emerald of the Deep.

But lovelier far that sea which woo'd my way
To Spezzia's myrtle bay:
When Genoa the superb, her Pharos' tow'r,
That blaz'd on the commanding cliff, and lit
Afar the smooth sea-line;
Her marble terraces, and each fair bow'r
That, like enchantment, bloom'd her rocks between,
And palaces that regal domes outshine,
Had gradual sank from sight;
Nor gleam'd from my felucca, lamp, or light,
Lest its attractive ray, at distance seen
In that still summer night,
Might haply lure the lurking Algerine!
And when the night-breeze died, no sound e'er came
Along the deep serene,
Save when at times the outstretch of the oar,
That round me show'r'd large drops of liquid flame,
Struck on the rocky shore,
Where tow'r'd, to meet the moon, Liguria's mountains hoar.

These may from memory pass,
The Syren isle at day-spring, and at noon
Bright Venice pictur'd in her liquid glass,
The sea without a wave,
Her cradle—and her glory—and her grave:
But never more from Memory's mirror bright
Shall fade away thy charm, thou blue-rob'd main!
That fix'd me, spell-bound, on Bocchetta's height:
When first I saw thy world of living light
In all its splendour glow:
While o'er Liguria's cliffs unseen below
The westering orb of day, that downward roll'd,
Slow in dilating majesty descended,
Till where the heav'n and sea their boundaries blended,
It burst their crimson zone, and plung'd 'mid waves of gold.

Yet—more attractive than all, loveliest seen
From steep Bocchetta's mountain hoar,
Or on the Alban lake, or Thrasymene;
And, to the musing spirit, more sublime
Than Terni's rush and roar:
Or palm-trees, in the pride of Syria's clime,
Cresting the radiant rock of Terracine:
Th' “Eternal City” tow'rs my sight before,
And the rapt vision rests on Tyber's hallow'd shore.

Again I gaze on Rome; again behold
The broad sun burst from crimson glow
On lone Soracte's crest of snow,
Or wheel around the dome his car of gold:
Or robe with purple light,
The far Campagna fading into night:
And still, where'er incline my lonely way
Thro' dark woods, or along the sunny glade,
Or on the pebbly beach where sea-maids play:
Above the mountains of my native land
Rome's sev'n-thron'd hills arise;
And thro' the gloom of Albion's clouded skies,
Her gold sun, and blue element, expand:
And all that breathes of Rome,
Rent arch, and ruin'd fane, and swelling dome,
The sparkling fountain, and the orange grove,
Around me seem to move:
Shrill rings her ilex 'mid my native trees,
And slow her cypress bends, sway'd by the passing breeze.

Ah! never will the hour of after-time,
Tho' gliding peaceful by,
Present a scene so sweet to Fancy's eye,
Or breathe a sound so sweet to Fancy's ear,
As that I wont to hear,
When at still summer eve's delightful close,
Amid colossal wrecks I lonely stood,
Relumining the glory,
Of Rome's immortal story,
By the pale gleaming of her yellow flood,
While slowly, waking from its long repose,
The voice of ages past from Tyber's flow arose.