Impressions of Italy and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

How deep a sanctity this grave-ground wears,
Oh! what an over-burthening weight of years
Rests on this solemn soil; oh! what a weight
Of human interest and of human fate!—
Trembling, my foot this drear enclosure nears,
Yet start no warm, no quick, no natural tears,
From my sad rivetted eyes—too dull and cold,
Is all I here confront—I here behold;
I feel I cannot weep—cold, cold, and dim,
The cup of death here filled up to the brim,

The dark and rugged cup of death appears,
And all too distant, yet too deep for tears;
And shadowed, fixed, and frozen o'er by time,
To something more mysteriously sublime,
Something the mind can scarcely comprehend;
Formless, vague, dim, abstracted—without end,
Without beginning—something which the thought
Recoils from, shuddering!—Death, thou seem'st thus fraught
With terrors not thine own—a deeper shade
Upon thy sombre semblance here is laid,
With more of drear obscurity endowed,
Thou lowerest round—a cloud-encinctured cloud,
New attributes of awe invest thee here,
I gaze, I tremble, but I shed no tear!
Death, Death! and can thy form of shadowy gloom,
By Time's petrific sceptre touched, become
More dim and icelike than before? Ah, why?
Is Time not thy sworn friend, thine old ally,
Thy zealous minister and faithful mate,
The sure abettor still of thee and Fate.

Time, who with thee still hand in hand hath gone,
Making all bow before thy cloud-black throne;
And if thy sharp stroke thou hast awhile forborne,
And left bright hopes uncrushed, dear ties untorn,—
And left awhile upon its stalk the rose,
To blush and smile in its most sweet repose,
Or the proud pine on its commanding height—
Unhurt by buffeting storm or withering blight,
Aye, if some favoured few thou hast thus passed o'er,
And left to enjoy their happiness' bright store,
Themselves unstricken by thy mortal dart,
Nor wounded through some dearer kindred heart;
He, blind as Justice' self, rough, rude, and hoar,
Plucks them from their vain tenure evermore,
And sweeps them one by one to thine embrace,
Their doom fulfilled, and closed their lengthened race.
The obsequious servant—and the officious friend—
Who biddeth all before thee cower and bend!
Still over thee a shadow he hath thrown,
Deeper, and yet more dismal than thine own!

Yea! over thee a shadow he hath flung,
Darker than all that erewhile round thee hung,
Until the surcharged spirit inly saith,
“This is the very ghost of ghostly Death!
The phantom's dreamy phantasm!” yet not less
But more, doth it dispirit and oppress.
Still, still 'tis strange, that Time should darkly spread
Round thee a dreariment more stern and dread,
Round thee, who in a moment changeth all
Beneath thy withering touch and ruinous thrall,
Who in one moment doth assert thy power,
That hideous victory in one fleeting hour—
At once that conquest doth resistless gain,
Which thou shalt ever unopposed maintain.
Aye, and its ghastlier after-revel too,
Dost thou with stern and savage zeal pursue,
Ere oft, with smooth and measured movements true,
Those hours have sped through their accustomed bounds,
Those hours have run their oft-repeated rounds,

Their courses never changed of day and night,
Sustaining ever their harmonious flight!
How seizest thou at once on thy marked prey,
Converting them to worthless dust and clay,
While the whole spirit is then at once expelled,
And the whole frame in leaden durance held;
Thus the dread change is direfully complete,
And low thy victim crouches at thy feet.
'Tis done! the work of terror and dismay
Look on the brow of one dead yesterday.
'Tis done! the work of horror and of woe,
Nor can the tyrant's self that work undo,
Nor can the tyrant's self that chain unwind
With which each pulse he could so strictly bind.
Look on the brow of one dead yesterday,
How full, how sweeping is the conqueror's sway;
How wide, how perfect is the drear divorce,
Clay! to thy clod! free spirit! to thy source.
A thousand barriers seem at once to rise,
(Where e'er we turn our foiled and baffled eyes)

Betwixt the quick and dead!—yea, dread and deep,
Rise those huge barriers between those that sleep,
And those that still must watch, and still must wake,
And toil and travail, and brief respite take,
Save when a slumber, not so deep nor sweet,
After the day's harsh tumult and fierce heat,
Comes to refresh their taxed and failing powers,
To enable them to bear the weight of hours,
The weight of feverish human hours again,
With all their tedium, and with all their pain.
Oh! stern and strong those frowning barriers are,
And none may lift the intermediate bar,
And none the intervenient pit may leap,
While life is theirs—that gloomy pit, and deep,
Which yawns, the living and the dead betwixt;
Howe'er before their very souls were mixed
In love or sympathy, or interest keen,
As though nought, nought could e'er be forced between!
'Tis done!—and they are sundered wide and far,
Dead! to your rest! ye living! to the war!

For what, indeed, is vexed and troublous life
But one long conflict—one protracted strife?

Look on the face of one dead yesterday,
Alas! of sense, of consciousness no ray
Doth there remain, that blank so dull and drear,
To fill, or even to make less harsh appear,
Far, far beyond our searching glance and thought,
Hath flown the spirit, then all vainly sought,
And what we look on, is, and can be, nought.
Yea, far that spirit is removed from earth,
As though it ne'er had known a mortal birth.
No ages can increase the vast gulph spread,
Between the soul to its new mansions sped,
And this low little world where once it dwelt,
And hoped, and dreamt, and knew, and proved, and felt.
No centuries can that yawning chasm extend,
Nor stretch the abyss that hath nor bounds nor end;
No chances and no change that may betide
Can make that separation yawn more wide;

No! when the soul hath gained its long release,
No time that dread partition can increase,
Nor e'er estrange the exiled being more,
From earth's forsaken and forgotten shore,
Than he is utterly and all estranged,
Soon as for Death's dim realm this earth's exchanged;
Nor shall a heavier interdict e'er sound,
To bar from all communion with this ground—
This mortal ground, of old so freely trod,
Ere the changed frame was laid beneath the sod,
Than was pronounced, when first the soul took flight,
What time the armed spectre sternly stooped to smite,
What time were closed the dimmed and clouded eyes,
'Gainst all fair Nature owns, and Heaven supplies;
Nor can the spirit be more lost to us
Than 'twas immeasurably then and thus.
Never may it more utterly be lost
Than 'twas when first the fatal bridge it crossed,
Lost unto us, to time, and to the world;
Even in a brief and breathless moment hurled

From all that it had ever loved or known,
To be the Great Eternity's alone!
The soil, heaped crumbling for a thousand years,
Above the mournful freight earth's bosom bears,
In stern selected spots of funeral gloom,
Drear, sombre, solemn privacies of the tomb,
Can ne'er a veil more frowning interpose
'Twixt us who breathe this free, fresh air, and those
Who are laid beneath in their deep dreamless rest,
(Like sleeping children cradled in her breast),
Than doth the fresh-strewn mould just press'd upon
Some all forgetful and unconscious one,
Whose earthly race is newly closed and done;
Where, brown and bare, the kindred earth appears,
Nor aught of borrowed beauty smiling wears;
By shadowing grass and wild flowers unadorned,
Blank as the clay the winged soul hath scorn'd,
The clay that mingleth a few feet below,
With those dull clods, in union chill and slow.

No, no—that loosely-heaped and fresh-strewn mould,
Doth all as close and rigidly enfold
The imprison'd sleeper in its darksome bed,
Left to the eternal silence of the dead,
As doth the o'ergrown soil for ages laid
Above the reliques that have there decayed;
As sternly doth it round its captive throw
A funeral mystery none may pierce below,
And yet—yet—while we walk 'mongst recent tombs,
A more familiar guise the grave assumes;
Death's awful presence there we recognize,
Nor shudderingly avert our conscious eyes,
Nor turn with faint and faultering step aside,
As though a mournful voice within us cried,
“Invade not the pale realms so long consigned
To the stern conqueror of all humankind!”
'Tis different all!—that consecrated ground
Where swells full many a lately fashioned mound,
Scarce seems all his dominion!—he must share
His reign with other Powers and Rulers there.

The Angel and Genius of bright life appears
To hover round that place of unstaunched tears;
And by that dread companion, yet unscared,
To keep o'er every grave a watchful guard;
And thus thy form, thou stern and terrible Death,
Seems almost shrouded and concealed beneath
A thousand linked associations sweet,
And freshly-twined remembrances, that cheat
The hard reality of half its gloom,
And throw a living beauty round the tomb!
The spot calls forth a thousand tender dreams,
Illusions soft, and visions blest, whose gleams
O'er all around a smiling lustre cast,
And mediate 'twixt the present and the past.
Of its most dreary shades the scene's deprived;
Amidst the dead we feel—but that they lived;
We picture to ourselves what once they were,
How strong, how brave, how noble, or how fair;
How full of human feelings, human hopes,
Though now assembled in such passive groupes;

And how alive to all that passed around,
Though now in apathy so frozen bound.
Their names—sweet sounds!—familiar to our ears,
Which, haply, old aoquaintanceship endears—
Their names in characters all uneffaced,
On their smooth tombstones are distinctly traced;
Their children move with soft steps round their graves,
And many a tear the mournful hillock laves;
The sheltering tree that late waved o'er their heads,
Still to the breeze its mighty foliage spreads;
The bower they fondly trimmed with careful hands,
Still in its frail fantastic beauty stands;
The hawthorn-sweetened way they ofttimes trod,
Still breathes its rustic incense far abroad;
Almost their very footsteps we might find,
While they are gone, like clouds seized by the wind,
And carried wildly, utterly away—
Whither no heart can dream, nor tongue can say.
Yet something doth it soothe the pensive soul
To pore o'er Memory's deeply-written scroll,

To dwell upon the thoughts of what hath been,
And from the past's tried, trodden field to glean
Pale scattered treasures, which faint-glistening seem,
Like aëry fragments of some broken dream—
Still, scarcely so; for, while we muse, we feel
It is the Truth that thus doth softening steal
Along the chastened and uplifted mind,
By tender feeling hallowed and refined;
And ever as we lingering brood and muse,
That Truth arrays itself in deepening hues;
That which hath been distinctly reappears,
Delivered from the yoke of breathless years.
Oh, Time! how dealest thou with all mortal things,
Shaking them off like dewdrops from thy wings,
Scoffer and fearful spoiler that thou art!—
And yet we open spread the burning heart
Unto thy ruthless stroke, and rashly load
Those wings with our soul's treasures, that o'erflowed
As they would flood the Eternity—to be
Ruined, undone, and overborne by thee!

But then our souls revenge themselves, and cast
Their own sweet light upon the o'ershadowed past;
And Memory, with her magic, magic wand,
Strikes down the blunted scythe from thy foiled hand.
We feed on recollections, until nought
But what is past seems present to our thought;
The tomb's pale prisoners burst their leaden bands;
For them afresh flow the hour's exhausted sands;
They are, once more—still growing on our souls,
We feel the cloud of death its gloom unrolls,
And the wan forms it veiled from our vain gaze,
On every side slow-opening, it displays.
These haunt us in full many a startling guise,
Passing—repassing—oft before our eyes;
These haunt us still where'er we turn and tread,
The strong—the mighty—yea, the immortal dead!
We feel their being so within—without,
'Tis but of their unbeing we can doubt!
We see the gorgeous universe they saw,
Fulfilling still each bright eternal law;

Still in perfection's radiant robe arrayed,
Unwithered, undespoiled, and undecayed,
The universe of which they formed a part.
And doth not something whisper at the heart
They are not, and they cannot be destroyed,
Since thus they leave no shadow, cause no void?
How perfect, how complete seems all around,
And are they vanished to be no more found?
Yet not one ray the less, one cloud the more,
To mourn that they are exiles from life's shore;
That they are silent prisoners of the past,
Fallen on annihilation's void at last;
They, whose quick thoughts were Form, Light, Life, Time, Space,
Since each they could reflect, and all embrace;—
Whose thoughts out-lightened the winged lightnings sent
In fierce resplendence from the firmament;
Transpierced dense matter, marked creation's laws,
And traced back that Creation to its Cause!

And can the Life, the Thought, the Breath, the Heart,
Unmissed, unmourned, thus ignobly depart?
Dream it not—fear it not! it cannot be,
'Twere, oh! too terrible a mystery.
Look in the face of yon transcendant sun;
Age after age his proud race he hath run
In undiminished strength and light, and seen
Myriads borne down to dust, himself serene
As when he first commenced his bright career,
The lord of light and life, the central sphere,
The chief of worlds, the monarch of the year!
Look on the empurpled heavens, the irradiate earth,
All beauteous as at their first splendid birth,
And think ye such a glory can have past
Still Life by Life, away from these, nor cast
A sad and sombre tint o'er all around?
That sun, that sky, the sea, the air, the ground—
A heavy cloud of change o'er these—o'er all
A something like the spreading of a pall,

By slow but sure degrees—no pause between—
O'er the whole boundless, Universal Scene,
While victory after victory swept to exalt
That conqueror's march who never knows to halt!
Aye! if the bonds were rent for evermore,
That linked her children to her breast before,
Would no fond pang be felt at nature's core?
No mournful faintness overspread her face,
And shadow o'er her glory and her grace?
If 'twere for ever they were snatched away,
Would not victorious Death, and strong Decay
Their cloudy banners haughtily display,
And with imperious exultation wave,
O'er this chill world—one death-bed and one grave?
Yea! their dark banners gloryingly unfold,
And tell the suns and stars that they were old;
And bid them shake before those boding tones
Even on the pillared firmness of their thrones,—
Still, step by step, advancing—hour by hour—
From strength to strength—from sovereign power to power—

Would not those dread and giant Terrors sweep
All, all before them to destruction's deep?

What! shall the Sense, the Feeling, and the Will
Be the chief spoil—the chosen victim still?
The wond'rous faculties of the ardent mind,
Free as the light, and strong as the unchained wind,
Be at one stroke extinguished and suppressed,
And all the quick thoughts which that mind confessed—
One moment all seemed theirs—say, dispossessed,
Even of the clay that clothed them, are they hurled
For ever from a proud surviving world?
For ever are they crushed and trampled down,
No place, no power, no will, no way their own?
Fear it not—dream it not, it may not be;
'Tis Reason's grand impossibility!
Learn nobler things of earth, and sky, and air,
Read brighter, purer, prouder meanings there.
Doth not that sky, that air, that eloquent earth,
Startle the soul to thoughts of loftier birth?

Doth not their fair, harmonious show dispense
A happier and a holier confidence?
Surely, in their perfection's strength, they know
That it may not be—that it is not so!
They know that 'tis not so, while we, hedged round
With sorrow and with sin, and strictly bound
By chains, which earth's lost habitants have rent
With doubts, and fears, and hopes together blent,
Too oft go trembling on our clouded way,
And close our eyes on the uncreated day:
The light that all creation's frame pervades—
The light that never sets—that never fades—
Shall that not pierce dim human nature's shades?
Surely they know it is not so! and own,
Even like a living mantle round them thrown,
A Presence—and a Passion—and a Power!
Since, gorgeous universe! the all regal dower,
Say, art thou not of those crowned spirits freed,
That snatch at last the palm—the wreath—the meed—
That burst at last from their restraining bars,
To o'erflow with added light the immortal stars;

With added fire and light the imperious sun
Glorying his lone, proud, central throne upon;
And to suffuse the ether and the air
With subtlest powers, pure, exquisite, and rare;
To impregnate the elements, and all that is
With their own essence—trebly blessed through this!
Thus they rejoin Creation's mighty whole—
The Pulse of nature, and of space the Soul!
A Motion—and a Feeling—and a Will—
And shall not many a quick, responsive thrill,
Deep quivering through that tranced creation go;
Oh! who shall rashly say it is not so?
Shall not an instinct of rich consciousness
The universal system kindling bless?
Shall not a glorious sympathy intense—
A strong vibration—an electric sense—
An answering impulse—an accordant glow—
A deep, reciprocating feeling's flow
Be felt through all the Almighty Maker's works,
Where many a hidden power unrecked-of lurks?

And most, where most at their mysterious springs
Quicken the eternal energies of things?
There most that consciousness shall pierce, inform,
There most inspire, control, illume, and warm,
Till all shall wake, glow, breathe, and live, and move,
In one existence of unbounded love!
One mighty and transcendant unity,
That shall eternal as consummate be;
One wond'rous harmony, that still shall spread.—
Oh! what are they whom we miscall the dead?

Who that hath lost a tried and trusted friend,
With whose deep soul his own rejoiced to blend
In free communion, hallowed and refined,
Spirit with spirit linked, and mind with mind;
Who that remembers the intercourse of hearts,
The soul's sublime escapes and thrilling starts,
As to the electric touch of some charmed wand
Waved by a mighty, though a viewless, hand;
When some chance word, some accidental tone,
Pierced through its depths and bade it, kindling, own

A thousand splendid sympathies august,
That nought in common have with earth and dust;
And to strong, eloquent life its silence woke,
As by the quick shock of a lightning-stroke!
The spirit's wild upspringings and keen flights,
And pinings for its liberties and rights;
The yearnings for a life more proud and free,
The hungerings after immortality,
Which, in so many and such various ways,
Man's restless nature evermore displays.
Who, that remembers this, can turn away
From strong conviction, open as the day?
Oh! who, remembering thus, in friendship's hours
Of confidential breathings (when to ours
Another's heart was clearly open laid,
With all its wond'rous change of light and shade),
How strong the impassioned aspirations were
For a more cloudless sky, a purer air;
How keen the questionings after secret things;
How great the impulse to spread forth its wings,

And bid the liberated spirit soar
To those empyreal heights ne'er scaled before!
How deep the love in the aching bosom set,
For those far realms, unreached, unviewed, as yet,
Can for one moment hesitate to own,
That truth so glorious, so distinctly shown.
Or who that recollects the living look,
(With all the immixed expressions which it took,)
Of one once bound to him by slighter ties,
Yet dear and hallowed in his softened eyes;
Of one o'er whom the dense veil now is cast,
For whom all things of earth are sealed and past;
Of one now banished from the light and air,
And darkly pent, and coldly prisoned there!
Who that remembers, too, that voice that seemed
The soul's best vehicle, the voice that teemed
With ever-varying modulations still,
Whether the speaker's soul was moved by ill
Or cheered by good—the voice of one now dumb,
Now speechless, 'mid the loud incessant hum;

(The unpausing din that echoeth not the less
Because they are fallen on silent nothingness;)
The thousand bright outbreakings of the soul,
That undesignedly bared to us the whole,
With its deep secrets and mysterious springs,
Its strange anomalies and wond'rous things,
Its gorgeous treasuries and exhaustless mines,
And shadowed sanctuaries, and dim-veiled shrines
(Yet, no!—not so!—of that deep human soul
No living eye hath yet embraced the whole;
Nor even can friendship's hand that veil upraise,
Which guards the inner being from the gaze;
That mighty veil o'er each existence thrown,
Each, each its own deep world—apart—alone.
Still those outbreakings, those unmaskings, told
Full many a thought and feeling—fold in fold,
That lay before religiously concealed,
As though on earth they might not be revealed.)
Who, that remembers these, can fail to feel,
Though worldly, vain pursuits may stain or steel,

Though worldly prejudice may bar and blind,
Or worldly sin with cramping chains may bind,
That the deep soul that there in might o'erflowed,
That there in all its native vigour glowed,
Can never alter and can never die?
The child and heir of all eternity!

Nay! who that looks back on his own past years,
While slow the shadowy prospect spreads and clears,
While Memory's soft pathetic light is cast
O'er the pale scenery of the buried past;
Who, that remembers the endless thoughts and dreams
That have illumed his spirit with their gleams,
The strange, mysterious, deep impressions there,
From time to time, stamped strongly, full, and fair;
That spirit's bright expectancies and hopes,
Its vigorous zeal that with Fate's harshness copes;
Its heavenly foretastes of a suture state,
Which it springs forward to anticipate;

Its fervent yearnings for its own far home,
Which, ever and anon, will startling come,
Strange as the fairy melodies that dwell
In the echoing windings of the ocean shell,
So spiritually delicate and clear,
We almost seem to feel them, more than hear.
Yet, oh! how deeply do they, murmuring, tell
Those magic sounds in the ocean's haunted shell,
Sweet tidings of their far off place of birth—
That surgy moan—no! 'tis not of the earth;
And still they breathe their long eternal sigh,
Sad as a breaking harp-string's plaintive cry!
Even so those promptings and those prophet tones
Which the pierced bosom tremulously owns,
Seem in one farthest heart of hearts enshrined,
Of our blest native regions to remind.
Who, that remembers these, can thrust aside
That heavenly hope, with all that's bright allied—
Can for one instant deign or dare to doubt,
That truth impressed within, inscribed without,

Inscribed in radiant characters sublime,
O'er all the shadowy things of earth and time,
In fulgent characters of living light,
More clearly traced than stars on blackest night.

Thou ancient, stern, and solemn burial-place,
Where sleep in peace a long-forgotten race,
Like waves that ran their bright, brief course of yore,
And broke and melted on the lonely shore.
Like leaves that the autumns of the pale Past shed
Upon their silent and discoloured bed;
Like clouds that long since from Heaven's marbled face
Have passed away, to leave no shadowy trace;
Like sparks trod out on hearths of other days,
Where now no light, no quick flame flickering plays;
Thou stern and solemn burial place of old,
Where rest in their securest, firmest hold,
The silent, shrouded dead, of ages dead!
Like them with mantling shadows overspread—
Like them for ever lost, for ever fled!

Thou canst no sweet, consoling visions bring
To bid bright Hope from faint Dejection spring.
No! when a friend's dear head is low-laid near,
Love, mighty love, is strong to banish fear.
In thought we follow to a happier sphere—
In thought we then in distant regions meet,
And track the soul to its august retreat;
We feel the light we saw in that loved eye
Was not created to decay—or die;
Nay! even if those, stretched near in their cold trance,
Had crossed our paths from time to time, perchance;
From time to time, as through life's walks we ranged,
With us had greetings and kind words exchanged;
Their well-remembered aspects rise once more
Our thoughtful-lingering, faint-drooped eyes before!
And can we call to mind each buried face,
Without remembering that deep eloquent trace
Which the immaterial and the undying part
Stamped on the features, as the skill of art
Stamps on the unmeaning canvas glorious forms,
Until it breathes, wakes, smiles, speaks, glows, and warms!

The soul's own sun-like image there forget?
Or not forgetting, deem it e'er could set?
No, surely no; the homeliest features wear
An impress of the spirit glowing there;
The living rays are brightly streaming seen
To light the least inspired, least thoughtful mien,—
And o'er the unloveliest lineaments to throw
A something that naught else can match below;
Aye! something is stamped there which claims at once
From kindred conscious natures deep response;
Something is there the eagle's eye must lack,
Though it hath flashed in glorious daring back
The sun's fierce, sultry lustre, when at noon
He seemed as he would fire Heaven's red depths soon,
Superbly scattering forth in kingly pride
His royal treasures, free, and full, and wide;
Something the lion's lordly front ne'er bore,
Though armed with awful terrors evermore;
Though the wild creatures of the forest fly
Before the tyrannous threatenings of his eye—

Though not the boldest of them dare to brook
The glorious savage's life-withering look;
Something with still, small voice, that startling saith,
“I am—and I am ne'er to stoop to death.”
The mighty ray of immortality
Gleams proudly forth from the least lustrous eye!
While some, oh! some rare aspects brightly shine
With angel-graces radiant and divine,
And the everlastingness of the unseen soul
Seems stamped thereon, as on a glowing scroll,
Where every look—the least and lightest glance—
The very stillness of the countenance
Bear a triumphant meaning, clear and deep,
From whence we may the august assurance reap!
That countenance illumined from within,
Seems but a light, transparent veil, and thin,
Between us and the immortal soul that lies
Deep in its shrine, one world of mysteries—
Deep in its living shrine, yet softly shown,
And by no light, no lustre but its own,
Unto the kindred mind even thus made known.

Aye! some transcendant countenances seem,
While with expression's radiant prints they teem,
All music, inspiration, light, and fire,
And like the fuming of an incense-pyre,
Scattering its subtle treasures far and wide,
Its delicate luxuries free on every side;
These seem to exhale a glorious effluence
Of pure and exquisite intelligence;
Celestial emanations quickening flow
From the lit eye, wreathed lip, and flashing brow;
While glows the cheek with many a varying hue,
As though you saw how the eloquent soul wrought through;
As though the quick thoughts ever as they past
Across the aspect, keen and kindling cast
Their burning shadows there, full, free, and fast!
As though from those flushed shadows still more bright,
And all transpierced with the inward-streaming light,
The living tablet of the human face,
Stamped with full many a clear and radiant trace,
Was as some lighted vase, through which we see
The flame's winged motions wavering swift and free;

Some alabaster vase of delicate mould,
Designed the glittering, quivering lamp to hold;
The lamp whose every flash there sostened plays,
No crest of wild-wreathed spires and scattered rays,
That break in many a luminous streak, and part,—
And with a meteor-brilliance wildering dart,
And stream,—and shoot,—and shift—an hundred ways,
But one smooth, undulating, mellowed blaze.
Thus, thus the etherial and effulgent mind
Within its living casket deep enshrined,
Shines clear unto the rapt beholder's view,
The lighted features brightly-kindling through,
Still to its strong, triumphant influence true;
The many-coloured thoughts that quickening dart
Along the mind, we may not mark apart;
Not as within the ever-coining brain,
In bright succession and luxuriant train,
They take their glowing and their winged way,
And in a thousand strange, wild flickerings play;
But as they are gathered, mingled, massed, combined,
In one fine finished harmony of mind—

One glorious unity, so perfect seems
That delicate confluence of those countless beams,
Which through the impressive aspect startling streams;
While breathes, and breaks, and brightens thro' the whole
A hue—a light—a motion of the soul!

But these that now around me silent dwell,
The clayey captives of the clayey cell—
But these, their eyes ne'er answered back our own,
Our ears ne'er drank their accent's varying tone;
We never marked the soul's own glorious trace,
In bright suffusions trembling o'er their face.
We never saw the immortal meanings rise,
Fraught with rich confirmation in their eyes!
These are the strangers of a severed age,
Their history is for us a close-sealed page;
Their children's children are like them inurned,
Like them have to the embodying dust returned!
Haply with age weighed down into the grave,
Whose peaceful shelter they were fain to crave;

Our fathers' fathers looked not on their face,
For them they were a past forgotten race!
For them they were a people of the tomb,
Nor knew they of them but their common doom.
Our children's children in the times to come,
Shall not be more estranged than we are now,
From these long swept, like dew-drops, from the bough.

Therefore my mind, from sympathy withdrawn,
Contemplates this deep scene, till slowly dawn
Clearer reflections on its struggling sense,
And springs a happier, tenderer mood from thence.
And gradually unfolding, come again
Familiar images to heart and brain,
(Though by that heart and brain shaped, moulded, coined!)
With human sensibilities conjoined,
And influences more gracious and more kind,
With soft controul prevail o'er my soothed mind.
Unto my quickened sense and deepened sight
The estranged from earth rise imaged forth aright;

Reason resumes her reign—I feel, I know,
These bore their measured share of bliss and woe,
The curious, complex, countless links and ties,
With deep emotions then I recognize,
Which bind, while ages their stern task fulfil,
To generation—generation still!
These deep traits too which time can ne'er efface,
Which reconcile the past and present race!

Ah! me! how lost to every feeling now,
That stamps humanity's ingenuous brow,
That thrills humanity's capacious heart,
That bids young smiles to shine, quick tears to start,
Are these cold slumberers, laid our feet beneath,
In all the still unconsciousness of death;
Though once, ere smitten by fate's envious blow,
Once, ere consigned to hungering worms below;
Though once, ere exiled to death's cheerless clime,
The paths, the various paths of good and crime,
They surely followed, and though once within
Their breasts glowed quick emotions, we can win

But little from these monuments to expose,
But little from these carved tombs to disclose,
Their deeds, their dooms, their aims, their joys, and woes!
And what but these dumb monuments remain,
To say they breathed, who ne'er must breathe again;
What but these tombs, these sepulchres are found,
To speak of them in earthy durance bound;
And of their death most, most, these speak and tell,
Most on that fearful consummation dwell!
And there 'tis made the chief, great, one event,
O'er all besides, how sternly prominent!
Thou mightiest Death! thou here remainest alone,
Conspicuous, on thine isolated throne!
Robed in the lengthened shadows of thy reign,
Attended but by thine own spectral train;
Girt proudly round with all thy state, that suits
Thy sombre emblems, and stern attributes.
Thou dwell'st here a palmed victor 'midst thy spoils,
While from thy contact the chill'd heart recoils;
Thou makest thyself a tyrant monarch here,
And rulest through prostrate awe and palsied fear;

Thou pullest down the pride of glorying life,
With its vain triumphs and tempestuous strife,
And makest it own itself a fleeting breath,
Before thy conquering might, thou mastering Death!
Thou seizest on its proud and daring hope,
And bidd'st it sickening wane and withering droop,
In harsh reprisals for the fiery scorn,
With which it joyed to paint thee still as shorn
Of each redeeming attribute of good,
Traduced, avoided, and misunderstood!
With which it sought thy memory still to erase
From each blessed haunt, each loved abiding place,
And still to wipe away thine every trace,
And to despoil thee of thy rightful share,
In all that chains men's thoughts, and claims men's care;
In harsh reprisals for the old disrespect,
The indignities, dishonour, and neglect,
To which thou'rt here exposed for evermore,
Where haughty life thus triumphs, passing o'er
Thy triumphs stern, oft spread her eyes before!

These long-bound tenants of the tomb, sleep well,
Earth's noisy strife ne'er shakes them in their cell;
And, oh! how long their slumber hath endured,
How long have they thus strictly been immured;
The race of beings that they left behind,
Are gone, like whirling dust upon the wind;
The hands that laid their reliques in this spot,
Long since their strength and cunning have forgot;
The tears that mourned them long since have been dried,
And those that wailed their deaths themselves have died,
Mourner and mourned here slumber side by side.

Lo! of their hues of life all disarrayed,
The beautiful, the valourous here are laid
Beneath our feet, their beauty is effaced,
Their valour tamed and crushed, and all that graced
Or glorified their past existence, seems
Gone, like that froth of nothingness—our dreams;
So far removed from our regards are they,
So far removed, so darkly rapt away,

That scarce can we our doubting minds persuade,
That once in mortal lineaments arrayed,
They moved along—no shadows of a shade,
No bodiless dreams—no imaged things ideal,
But living glowing forms, substantial, real;
No visionary phantoms, thin as air,
That momently appeared, then melted there;
But beings full of energies and hope,
Strong, strong with all, save one brief pang to cope!
And unto us while thus we muse and gaze,
And vainly strive oblivion's pall to raise,
Even of another different world unknown,
Appear to have been those parted ones and flown;
Yea, of some different world to ours, they seem
To have been the denizens, we scarce can deem
They once were, as ourselves—most futile dream!
It is not so! all that we are, they were,
The Votaries of the self-same hope and care,
The Followers of the same unwise pursuits,
From whence they reaped like rough and bitter fruits.

The Apostles of the same unheavenly creeds,
(For they, like us, leant still on faithless reeds),
That by example, practice, works, and deeds,
Too, too persuasive preaching, to their way
Haply won heedless converts, drawn astray—
The Adorers of the same vain idols too;
For what beneath the unvarying sun is new?
The Pilgrims of the same dull beaten road,
Bent, fainting bent, beneath the same harsh load;
That our bruised shoulders long o'er burthened bear
The crushing load of sufferings and of care!
The tired Performers on the same cramped stage,
The sad Possessors, too, from youth to age,
Still of the same dark dangerous heritage.
The struggling Prisoners of the same vile clay,
Pressed down to earth, as we are pressed to-day,
Subject to all the evils, trials, pains,
Which fetter us in close and galling chains;
The tasked Probationers, through wrong and strife,
Even of the same proud everlasting life!

And would we look on them indeed, and know
The secrets of their sojourn here below,
The counsels of their breasts, we must begin,
By gazing unreservedly within—
By lifting from our souls the covering veil,
And not disguising what is false and frail;
What wild and wayward in ourselves concealed,
Then much that was suppressed, shall be revealed;
Then shall we firmlier grasp, and clearer guess,
Far less confusing, and mistaking less,
Those truths that seemed before our search to evade,
Lost in a labyrinth of cloud and shade.
No florid flatteries carved on sculptured stone,
No heart-felt tributes, in affection's tone
Couched fondly, on the monumental urn,
That might even touch the cold and melt the stern;
No close details, no wrought descriptions long,
Where mingleth false with real, and right with wrong;
No pompous titles, spread in haughty style,
Graved on the funeral slab, the trophy pile;

No ostentatious blazonries embossed
On deep-dyed banners that had once been tossed,
By stormy winds, on battle's stirring plain,
Then mouldering hung o'er mouldering bones in vain,
With dust and cobwebs on each trailing fold,
With clouded broideries thick, and tarnished gold,
Can so discover, so betray, and show
The mysteries of their pilgrimage below,
As our own opened, probed, stripped, sounded breasts,
Where all life's feelings are by turns the guests,
As our own naked and dissected hearts
Their mirrors, shadows, nay, their counterparts;
For almost thus do they become at last,
When through life's various trials they have past.
Tinged to one colour, to one level brought,
Tuned to one key, and to one texture wrought;
Ruled by one law, and by one influence swayed,
And in one mould impressed, one balance weighed!
Oh! uniform our various natures grow,
Through life's too equalizing care and woe;

Aye, even in differing we resemble still,
As leaves that on the verdurous branches thrill;
Whose very veins and lines, that may to the eye
Of keen research, prove strange diversity,
Unto the common gaze but make appear
Their strong similitude more close and clear,
Their strict conformity more nice and near.

Their Counterparts, their Histories, too, are there,
Just chronicle, and copy, close and fair.
Lo! to have loved, lost, struggled, failed, and drooped,
Rallied, resisted, dreamed, dared, trusted, hoped;
To have essayed, and laboured, and endured;
To have been crossed, discouraged, reassured,
Chastened and tried, and shaken and subdued;
By hope misguided, by regrets pursued.
Is't not the Universal History, say,
The rapid summary of life's little day—
The general record of the sons of clay?

Their History is, indeed, in our own hearts,
That ape their passions, and that act their parts;
Chapter for chapter oft alike are found,
Column for column, as the web's unwound—
Character even for character might there
Be ofttimes traced, if marked with watchful care.
And, blazoned on the same dark treacherous ground,
Deep—shadowy—clouded—stretching without bound—
That ground of passions, feelings, frailties, dreams,
Where gleam out fond designs and cherished schemes,
(That still are meant unfailingly to lead
To radiant happiness, the all-worshipped meed),
That oft, too oft, in blank confusion end.
While dark Reality doth scowling rend
The veil from Fancy, and the wreath from Hope,
To bid the strong mind quail, the quick heart droop;
While Disappointment's harsh and angry train
Comes to distract the thought and cloud the brain;
Sharp discontents, regrets, and gnawing cares,
And sick despondencies and stern despairs,

And all varieties of chill disgusts—
For this the vain head plots, the fond heart trusts;
For this our restless spirits we consume,
And banish from our cheeks youth's healthful bloom.
Still looking forward, forward, as though nought
But what were far were worthy to be sought;
The future 'tis that must each wish fulfil—
Oh! could we look a little farther still!
Beyond life's tangled web—its restless wave,
And rest our eyes and hopes upon the grave!
This history—still repeated—still renewed,
Is theirs—is ours—is man's at once reviewed;
Mortality's brief tales are trite and poor,
Their course the same, and their conclusions sure;
And modelled in the same terrestrial mould
As those that suffered and succumbed of old;
Outline for outline oft, and trait for trait,
Feature for feature, we belike display
Unconsciously to others and ourselves;
For deep the pit that black Oblivion delves,

Wherein the nations of the past remain,
Though thus they rise up in their heirs again.
Another Resurrection than the one
Which waits them when the course of Time is done—
A Resurrection to the stir—the strife—
The strangely-mingling Heaven-and-Hell of life!
But happily for them, unfelt, unknown,
Their pangs are ours, their peace all, all their own;
We bear their cross, we struggle with their chain,
While they—they have forgotten toil and pain!

The deeper lineaments, broad, clear, and strong,
In greater or in less degree belong
To all that think and feel, to all that live,
And with the bondage and the burthen strive.
Doth not the phantom-demon, rampant Pride,
In every bosom in some shape reside?
What e'er the name it takes, the line it tries,
What e'er its revelation or disguise;
And still the love of power and love of praise
Break forth in thousand forms, in thousand ways;

Though smothered long, or disappointed oft,—
It is our nature's bent to soar aloft!
And still the eternal passion, love, is found
In every living bosom's throbbing bound;
Whether it be that vain, weak, worldlier love,
Too many a breast doth lightly, poorly prove,
Dyed with the rainbow, built upon the sands,
Which scarce its object's happiness demands;
But narrowed, lowered, still in its petty scope,
Fostered by Vanity and fed by Hope,
Begins and ends in Self—in self alone,
In sooth, the truest idol it hath known!
Or that deep passion, raised, sublimed, refined,
The love of heart and brain, and soul and mind,
That standing like the Sun sees all around,
In its own chains of burning glory bound,
With its own luminous tendrils wreathed and wound;
That may not know what 'tis to change or cease,
The law of whose bright Being is increase;
Still pouring forth its riches and its might,
Until it floods the universe with light,

By its own radiant gifts more glorious made!
Throned amidst living, glowing worlds, arrayed
In love, and light, and beauty—worlds that cast
A lustre round where else had frowned a waste,
And throw redoubled pomp of splendours o'er
Their glory's heavenly source, so bright before!
All-powerful passion! thus thou shedd'st around
Thy soul—thy self—thine essence without bound;
And all by thee is girt, and lit, and crowned;
Thou givest for ever from thy boundless store,
And ever as thou givest receivest more!

Oh! if aright their records we would read,
No distant paths must we divergent tread.
Nor let our judgment prompt—our fancies lead;
Their Histories are our Hearts!—each pulse that beats,
Some portion of their Annals still repeats,
Some fragment of their Story doth unfold,
Till throb by throb the whole strange tale is told!
The fevered burning, and the withering chill,
The aching, and the yearning, and the thrill;

The rich o'erflowing, and the yawning void,
The ecstatic sense—but waked to be destroyed;
These—these now—oh! too poignantly our own,
In all their shades and stages they have known!
No pang—no glow, can reach the bosom's core,
That they have felt not thrillingly before;
No joy unchecked—no ill unsoothed, uncured,
That they have not experienced and endured!
And met too, haply, in the self-same way
As we have met—as we do meet—to-day;
For strong similitudes connect our clay.
Howe'er we boast, while 'mid Life's wastes we pine,
That we chalk out our course and choose our line;
Or that to different fortunes we were born,
And differently from them rejoice, or mourn;
From them—long since from Earth's oppressive chain
Delivered, ne'er to know its weight again.
Not in this world—this narrow space—not here—
Not on this worn, dull, unelastic sphere,
Can aught original and new appear;

Alike our Nature's tendency and tone,
And all seem shaped and modelled after one.
Alike, the settled aspect and the hue
(Unto the unprejudiced, impartial view)
Of different passions and of various moods,
O'er which the eye of Contemplation broods;
And like to birds let loose in stranger woods,
That soon grow practised and experienced there,
And soar, and flock, and perch, and build, and pair,
And trim the plume, and trill the unstudied chaunt;
Choose their frequented bough, their favourite haunt;
Skim the clear pool, and pierce the embowering shades,
While every memory of their birth-place fades,
And with their feathered brethren play their part,
And, bold and buoyant, through the bright air dart
As though they recked not of that alien air,
And all things unaccustomed, strange, and rare.
Even thus Earth's practised denizens we grow,
And hold our way with all the rest below.
Too soon do we initiated become
In all the mysteries of our mortal home;

Too soon, too soon familiarised with all
The sinful thoughts man frameth since his fall,
And no exceptions—no exemptions start
In proud relief, distinguished and apart
From Life's dense mass—but all on this earth bend
Beneath stern influences, that chill descend
Upon this fated and o'ershadowed sphere,
(Which yet well-known, familiar things endear),
And with unconscious watchfulness minute,
Our conduct we to other's conduct suit;
While still we boast with exultation proud,
We walk not with the million—with the crowd!
And ofttimes dream, with self-complacent glow,
We lead the way, and the example show.
Oh! with the same temptations, trials, pains,
The same hopes, wants, trusts, duties, blessings, banes,
And with one end, one quest, one doom, one aim,
Humanity's another, and the same!

Well may this spot charm down to silent rest
The myriad feelings battling in the breast,

And even withdraw us from our worldly bliss,
If bliss be ours—or that which more than this
Chokes up the soul with earth's dross—its pursuit,
That oft yields bitterest ashes—'stead of fruit!
Here, for one calm hour, it is well to stay—
To muse—to moralize—to adore—to pray,
Until we feel uplifted for awhile
From Earth's vain care, and strife, and gloom, and toil,
And from its atmosphere of trouble borne,
Mount as upon the rushing wings of morn.
Such hour should teach sage lessons, strong and deep,
Yet every thought in peace religious steep,
And show the vanity of earthly things,
And stir the feelings in their inmost springs,
And loosen, too, the thousand thread-like ties
That bind to earth—while Time—for ever—flies!
Such hour might seem a touchstone of the past,
And Truth's own colours o'er its surface cast,
And make us prize alone those joys that last;
Those real and solid joys that know no end;
Whose memories pure, with heavenly hopes may blend!

Nor should it teach ennobling truths alone,
But make the soul their bright attractions own—
But make the soul even rapturously confess,
That they alone can lead to happiness!
These lessons are the loftiest we can learn,
And dull or rash are they who slight or spurn.
And yet, however forcible and true,
Such lessons may be—they're nor rare nor new.
Have we not met them oftentimes before,
And carelessly glanced o'er the sacred lore?
Each day—each hour that passes should proclaim,
And doth—would we but deign to attend—the same.
Each day—each hour that hurrieth o'er our head,
As on some great momentous message sped,
While still by sure degrees we're onwards led,
Minute by minute, nearer to our tomb,
While all things join to warn us of our doom.
The evanished cloud—the exhausted, ebbing breeze,
That moans in dying cadence through the trees;
The evaporating drop—the extinguished flame,
The shattered mirror in its fractured frame;

The scorched grass of the field—the harp's riven string,
In Nature and in Art, each several thing
Still speaks, with startling voice—of perishing!
And as we onwards on our progress wend,
Still all things ending, mind us of our end.
All that we love or prize, or seek or share,
All that we know, view, meet, trust, claim, or bear,
Still, still reminds us of the mighty change,
As though our thoughts from human things to estrange,
Still bears the impress of the great decay,
Which wide extends the terrors of its sway.
You need not quicken back to Life—old Dust!
To show us all the weakness of our trust—
The emptiness and folly of our aims,
The rash presumption of our baseless claims;
The vanity of all our cherished schemes,
The specious mockery of our worshipped dreams;
The illusions of our fond expectancy,
The uncertainty of all beneath the sky—
The slippery surface of the paths we try;

The narrowness, the meanness of our views,
The brittle nature of the tools we use,
In all our undertakings—our designs—
While some masked Power our vain work undermines!
The slight materials of the towers we build,
The bluntness of the weapons that we wield;
The imperfection of our Earth-formed ties—
While Passion changes and Affection dies!
(Alas! our towers too oft change to our tombs,
Our paths conduct but to Fate's funeral glooms;
Our arms are aidless—and our tools are toys,
Thraldom our cherished ties—and jests our joys.
Our schemes—the bright insanity of Hope;
Our dreams—the sparkles on the dewy slope;
Our trusts, our aims, our claims, all weak or wild,
Though to the last we move by these beguiled),
These are the truths that dimly must o'ercloud
All hopes encouraged—all delights enjoyed;
But ye need not arise from your repose,
Cold ashes!—to confirm these—or disclose;

Our own experience should suffice full well
To play the prompter and the oracle.
The evidence of every day should come
Home to our feelings, to our bosoms home,
And serve to teach us, as on truth's own page,
And make the thoughtless think—the senseless, sage.
You need not startle back to Life, cold clay,
To bring us these stern tidings of dismay,
Since Man's and Nature's works combine to show
How false and fleeting are all things below;
Since every being, every object here,
Unite to prove that Change and Death are near;
Yet we're so wedded to each dear deceit,
So bigotted to every gilded cheat,
So pledged to all delusions we have made
Our treasures and our idols, and arrayed
In coloured light that we must yet see fade,
That all proves insufficient to remove
From these our fond, deep, rooted, 'stablished love.
Deafened are we by our own Folly's din,
Blinded by cloudy vapours of our sin,

Involved in dire and ever-spreading snares,
Which our own prejudice or pride prepares;
Fettered by chains, forged, fixed by our own hands—
Too surely fixed—too closely fastened bands,
And blind and deaf we would unchanged remain,
And trapped and fettered—dear to us the chain—
Welcome the snare—and lovely too the cloud—
And musical those deafening clamours loud.
And thus we journey on Life's rugged road,
As Earth were formed our permanent abode,
Till haply wakened roughly from our dream,
Too late we find it is not as we deem;
With blank dismay and wild remorse we wake,
To find our life was one long, long mistake.
Yet let me seek to win some gift of Good,
Some charm to temper this rebellious blood;
One passion mortified—one fault subdued,
From this strict School—this lone and stern Retreat
For retrospection and reflection meet.
From this deep haunt of silence and of shade,
Where many an heir of wretchedness is laid!

Oh! desolate Theatre of conquering Death,
Whose tiers and galleries frown our feet beneath!
Oh! shadowy City of the past away!
On whose mute halls shines no warm beam of day,
How gloomy 'mid this glad enchanted land,
So laughing, and so radiant, and so bland!
Earth's cities have their names!—thy Capitals,
Oh! princeliest Death!—with their damp crumbling walls,
Are nameless—undistinguished—and unknown—
Marked on no map—and by no splendours shown;
They all are One—the under Earth is all
Thy mighty Fortress and masked Capital!
Life interferes not with those boundaries drear,
Where thy pale standard thou dost frowning rear!
This solemn City now beneath our feet,
This nameless, viewless, undisturbed Retreat,
'Tis but the counterpart of all that spread
Beneath Earth's surface, and beneath our tread!
A City peopled with a peaceful throng,
Where is no strife, no noise, no wrath, no wrong;

A Harbour where the long-tossed barks abide,
Rocked by no breeze, and shaken by no tide;
A sad Encampment of a slumbering Host,
Where Life seems like but to a troubled Ghost!
By some strange wayward power o'erruled—possessed—
A dream's creation—and a moment's guest!
Thou art the goal to which all paths conduct,
Whose entrance no proud barriers can obstruct;
The approach and the avenues are ever free—
Victory's triumphal arch but leads to thee,
Still place of peace—where no rejoicings be!
And proud Philosophy's long labyrinth-maze
In thee concludes, though branched ten thousand ways;
And Love's sweet bowery verdurous-wreathed Arcades,
These, these too terminate in thy stern shades;
And harsh Adversity's rough paths of thorn,
They finish here—where all forget to mourn!

In darker climates, where great Nature seems
To encourage and to inspire deep solemn dreams,

The grave-grounds wear indeed, a look austere,
But not the terrors that invest them here;
Here, in this glowing Garden of the Earth,
Which seems but made for Love, and hope, and mirth,
Death's presence here lowers trebly drear and stern,
And heavier shades surround the burial-urn.
Oh! sad it is to turn from such a sky
To the last dwellings of mortality!
(Where the lost natives of these regions rest,
With sightless eye, and with unconscious breast),
Dark frowns the grave, contrasted thus with thee,
Poetic Land—bright purple Italy!

This originally formed part of a poem introduced into my “Travelling Sketches in Rhyme,” and which was published in an unfinished state.

ON THE LEANING TOWER AT PISA.

As one who standeth in a flitting dream,
Wherein fantastic shapes perplexing teem
To startle and surprise—we stand and look
On thee, strange Structure! Doth a thunder-stroke
Come noiselessly upon thee now?—not so.
We look again—and still thy glorious brow
Is lowered but not struck down—yet might we think
We stood where toppling on Destruction's brink
Old earthquake-ruined cities shook—but all
Is subjected to Stillness' softest thrall—
There is no breath to shake the silvery air,
But only to enrich with fragrance rare,
With melody and freshness, clear and pure,
And still thou stand'st—uninjured and secure!

Whilst in a pleased astonishment we gaze
On thee, fair Fabric! many feelings raise
Changeful emotions in the mind, an awe
Creeps slowly o'er us, while our thoughts withdraw
By quick, yet imperceptible degrees
(Wafted o'er Time's sea by a favouring breeze)
From the more common things of common life!
Something of magic influence with sweet strife
Seizes on all our faculties—around
A sense of mystery broodeth without bound.
We may not raise nor pierce the veil of years
Which floats round this rare structure, that appears
The work of weird and supernatural hands—
That still seems sinking—sinking where it stands!
Thou ever-bending Tower! whose head is yet
'Mongst swift-winged clouds and rays of glory set;
Thine origin and aim are lost and hid,
A thousand changes and events amid;
Who can declare for what thou wast designed?
Mayhap some vain caprice of the human mind

Gave thee to attract and yet repulse the eye,
A strange, elaborate, bright deformity!
Or was't above some grave that thou wert raised,
And therefore was thy towering front abased
That thou mightest look a marble mourner there,
For ever sorrowing, and for ever fair,
As if to bring conflicting thoughts to birth,
As though at once to point to Heaven and Earth!
To lean towards human things and ground-formed ties—
To lean to all that in Earth's bosom lies—
And leaning, still to aspire unto the skies!
For thus thou dost—thou slant yet soaring Tower,
That seem'st but chartered to endure an hour!
Thou shinest unto my fondly-lingering eye
The type of Hope and of Humility!
Balanced 'twixt two attractions, deep and strong,
Say, hast thou vibrated and trembled long?
The Eternal Mother draws thee to her breast,
Do yon fair Firmaments thy fall arrest?
How long shalt thou stay hovering 'twixt the twain,
As though suspended by some viewless chain?

How long bewilder the astonished sight,
Leaning athwart the Horizon and the Light?
Say, wert thou haply meant, severe, to preach
With eloquence—that asks no aid from speech—
Unto the dwellers in this City's walls,
(Whether in cabinned cells or palace halls)
Sternly, of change and ruin and decay,
That wait their certain and appointed day;
And like the Herald that in Philip's ear
Cried loud, his dismal warning-note of fear,
“Remember thou art mortal,”—still remind
Thus—as in tottering helplessness inclined,
That noblest fanes have bowed beneath the stroke,
As shrinks the sea-beat cliff, and bends the oak,
Howe'er with beauty and with strength endowed,—
Have yet beneath the stroke submissive bowed;
And that the proudest domes that man can rear
Must earthwards stoop, yet nearer and more near;
And tower and temple, pillar, arch, and shrine,
Or soon or late, their lofty pride resign;

And worn, and stained, and grey, must crumbling sink,
And, nodding, tremble on stern Ruin's brink,
And woo the Ivy's veil to enshroud them round,
Ere yet they fall and load the encumbered ground.
As Cæsar—dignified in Death—of old
Drew round his form the robe's o'ershadowing fold,
And covering up from sight his altered face,
Fell at the unshaken statue's blood-stained base.

Threatening thyself, thou hast stood from age to age,
And yet continuest that strange strife to wage.
How long shalt thou maintain that wayward war,
Warped from the rigorous perpendicular?
Thou makest the dwellings and the domes around,
Albeit, with harmony and beauty crowned,
Look rigid and unlovely in compare
With thee, thus delicately poised in air!
A strange fantastic charm's on thee impressed,
A wild, unearthly air doth thee invest;
A sort of dreamy, willowy grace attends
That form which thus so beautifully bends—

How dost thou chain and captivate the glance
With thy most rare eccentric elegance!

I gaze on thee with secret pride, to view
The daring of Man's hand and Genius too,
And recognize our Human Nature's might
With an exulting and a strong delight,
Through long, long ages, now wrapped round with night,
Through changeful chances, and through mixed events
And jarrings of this world's strange elements,
That vary still the common course of things—
Which History's column to our notice brings
Through these—through all—through every shadowing veil,
Our Human Nature's power I trace and hail!

Thou lean'st, as Time himself on thee had leant,
And slightly shaken thee, and gently bent—
Choosing thee for his staff—proud monument!
Amidst this beautiful and wonderous land,
So wronged and injured by his barbarous hand,

And as he had been wrought upon to spare,
Thus left thee standing as his Conqueror there!
Thus leaves thee still—unshattered—unsubdued—
A bright memorial of his milder mood!
Full many a stately dome and glorious fane
May I behold ere thee I view again,
But Memory still thine image shall retain—
And even in Memory shalt thou haply make
The chilled frame shudder, and the senses ache.
Thou startlest, yet delightest the Soul the while—
How much—thou magical and matchless pile!
Thou shock'st, yet pleasest too, the Soul and Sense,
Alarm'st their fears, yet winn'st their confidence!
Beautiful-terrible—in sooth thou art—
How checkest thou now the beatings of my heart!
Which yet leans to thee, as thou leanest to Earth,
(As loath to leave its beauty and its mirth.)
On thy smooth surface not one stain appears
To speak of tempest-scathe, or shock of years;

Almost appear'st thou, methinks, to play
At Failure—and at Weakness—and Decay!
Like some fair child, that, fearless and elate,
Assumes of reverend age the unequal gait,
Teaches the vigorous limbs, firm, straight, and strong,
To drag in lifeless, helpless guise, along,
With arch, bold mimickry—and all the while
Retains its own smooth brow—its own bright smile!
Thou fair and fairy Tower, even so dost thou
Seem but in mockery thus—to bend and bow!

ST. PETER'S.

How the Soul breathes itself away to Heaven
'Midst these all Heavenly Grandeurs—rent and riven
Seem Earth's weak ties—each thought becomes a soul!
A Soul of fire!—the Mind's winged glances roll
Through the far Future—while the silence grows
To an unbounded Harmony—whose close
Is but where Life's deep tides, o'erflowing, spread
Almost too near the Eternal Fountain head!
And bound in reverential awe remain,
Though there continueth too the harmonious strain!
But oh! so deepened—so enriched—that none
Of earthly mould might bear the o'erpowering tone
The music of the Heaven of Heavens—that ring
While Angels strike the harp, while Seraphs sing—

While thundering spheres their full-pealed anthem join,
And, oh! while wakes a something more divine!—
A breath of Harmony's great Source and Spring,
Which poured its Soul through each existent thing;
(That breath which bade Creation's fulness be,
Whose echo was—Eternal Melody.)
The music of the Wisdom of the Power,
Which streams through Heaven's bright, fixed, unshadowed hour,
However the Enthusiast of the Earth advance
From height to height—in ever-mounting trance,
No moment and no mood can e'er ally,
With the mixed Music of Humanity!
Though to our bounded sense and clouded dream
Most perfect—most victorious and supreme—
Most overpow'ring and profound, it seem
In some fine temper of the soul—to swell
As though the Host of Heaven then struck the shell,
Woke the fine chords, and thrilled the conscious frame—
And from the Skies the unbroken echoes came!

Still—still—midst all the triumphs it may own,
There lurks the human breath—the mortal tone;
Even our Religion savours of the Earth,
And bears too much the stamp of our dim birth,
Our highest flights are checked, and weak, and low,
Shallow our streams of thought in fullest flow;
Our noblest bursts of truth, and zeal, and love,
Dashed with some worldly care, too oft must prove
Our finest strains of feeling yet are jarred
By some false chord, through which the whole is marred.

The solemn calm that fills these Precincts seems
To melt the mind into a world of Dreams!
While—speechless—breathless—onwards I advance,
Now some light sound hath caught my ear—by chance;
Hark! how the faint low echoes dull and dumb,
As though from Silence's own hushed depths they had come,
Steal on the sense—vague, indistinct, and low;
Steal on—how soft—and die away—how slow!
And make the very stillness seem more still,
So faintly floating at their own weak will,

'Mongst these enlaced and sculpture-wreathed arcades,
Proud as some unpruned forest's giant shades,
Methinks they seem as though to escape they tried,
And sigh their last on Nature's bosom wide;
In vain—fenced in and closed on every side.
At strange, strange distance now appeareth all
That we the Actual and the Real call!
Betwixt us and the glowing, breathing world,
Eternity is in a moment hurled!
Another element do we respire,
And all seems nobler, purer, rarer, higher,
'Twixt us, and all we deemed and called our own,
An awful curtain lowered, doth sundering frown;
The soul now opens to itself, and shows
New worlds—that it might ne'er before disclose;
Hemmed round with petty cares, and hopes, and aims,
With Earth's vain wishes—Earth's engrossing claims;
But now—and here 'tis strengthened to resist,
And learns in all its boundless might to exist!
'Tis a Translation!—and when once within
These mighty Walls that shut out strife and sin;

Pressing the hallowed marbles of this floor,
We feel new landed on some blessed shore,
Some glorious Isle of beauty and of peace,
Where all rough clamours, and all conflicts cease;
Some heavenly Isle of harmony and joy,
Where Life can lure not—nor pale Death destroy;
Where all the restless waves that round it roll,
But make more calm that country of the Soul!
'Tis an Ascension!—on the wings of love,
The wings of faith, that swift as meteors move;
How are we borne insensibly above!
'Tis a divine Lustration! how the heart
Feels purified in every conscious part
Its favourite frailties—cherished sins resigned,
That seemed before with every pulse entwined!
Oh! that this bright abstersion could but save
From stains to come, from future sullyings lave!
But no! too soon that blessed charm is o'er,
And we again are—all we were before!
Oh! 'tis a Confirmation! look around,
The stamp of Man's high origin is found

In this his noblest Work—supreme, sublime,
That looks as meant to tame the tyrant—Time!
This proudest labour of his artful hands,
That like the Sun, 'midst its own Glory stands!
Say, our charmed eyes can we far straining raise,
On this outshining, matchless roof to gaze;
Nor feel it must be Heaven that spreads above
The all glorious Dome beneath whose cope we move;
And move in all our littleness confessed,
By the dread scene's stupendous pomp oppressed.
Like puny, pigmy things—like things of nought,
Scarce seen—unless with watchful strictness sought—
Like what we are—the voyagers of a span—
(What else may be that busy pilgrim, man?)
Like fragile creatures of a fleeting hour,
That boast no strength, no truth, no light, no power;
Save what lies hid beneath the exterior frame,
And that from Heaven's rich grace alone we claim!
Twere well, proud shrine, could we our minds imbue
For aye, with all thou hint'st of sage and true,—

'Twere well to keep the soul to that high strain,
Which thou inspirest—Oh! Beatific Fane.

What heaps of priceless treasure here are piled—
What glory and what pomp, here proudly aisled!
Lo! what a more than mystery seems to brood
O'er this august and Heaven-like solitude!
An awful Presence—and a fearful Power—
Before whose might we shuddering quail and cower!
Where is the mind, that rash, or dull, or bold,
Would not confess a boundless awe untold,
'Midst these outshining marvels?—hither come,
Ye Sceptics!—and let this triumphant Dome
Do what Creation failed to do before:
Teach ye to know, to tremble, and to adore!
Something of spiritual-material there
Appears our own exalted doom to share!
Yea! something more than marble and than stone,
That speaks in our own tongue with loftiest tone!
Come hither—Unbelievers—Scoffers—Ye!
Who nought divine through Nature's range can see—

Come hither—to this conquering Sanctuary!
And let this Shrine of Shrines—sublime and dread,
Its own Religion o'er your spirits shed!
Pronounce the “Ephphatha,” that shall set you free,
To tell of Truth, and hear her high decree!
Its sacred light upon your darkness pour,
And give you Being you ne'er knew before;
Nobly advance you in Creation's scale,
And bid you almost pierce within the pale!
Teach you the eternal Laws supreme to know,
And glorious affluence without end bestow!
(Such wealth, such riches, as shall lift you high
Above this bleak world's barren poverty!)
Give you a boundless Life—a deathless Soul—
A trust—an aim—an anchor, and a goal—
A freedom, and a future, and a share
In all the ordained created things that are—
In all that knowledge grasps—that sense admires—
That thought approves—that even winged hope desires!
Give you a reign—beyond the conqueror's sway,
An inner Empire of perennial day—

A Universe of Harmony and Love,
Where, to one blessed end, still all things move!—
A Rock to uphold ye—and a Sun to light—
A sense of Truth—a consiousness of Right—
A glad Eternity of peace and bliss—
And more—if more can be—yea! more than this!
Give you—Ah! costliest boons that ere were given—
A pitying Saviour—and an opening Heaven!
A brightening passage to a blessed abode—
Oh! give you All—in giving you a God!

THE COLISEUM.

Morning—with sunshine, round thee streams and glows,
Ruin of Ruins! and each ray that strows
Its quivering splendours o'er thee gains from thee
I know not what of solemn Sanctity.
Time's awful Shadow streams Superior here—
Superior?—No! around us far and near,
(While to pale memory we our Souls devote)
More awful, more majestic Shadows float,
And cloud and cover His!—Ye boundless spread,
Ye shadows of the great and glorious dead!
Spirits of Pride—of Victory—and of Might;
Whose new abode is in yon World of Light!
Your traces here are found—where e'er we turn,—
Till Earth, till Air doth with your Memory burn.
Ye Men of Rome, who awed and ruled a world;
Whose fame still streams—a banner wide unfurled.

Your very pastimes and your pleasures seemed
Colossal—and even luxury's self redeemed,
For still in these,—yourselves, yourselves ye beamed!
How ransacked forests, hunted countries sent
Their tributes to your feet, and largely lent
Their growths, their stores, your Revels to provide,
To furnish forth your sport, and swell your pride;
Here Nature, seated on the throne of Art,
Serenely breathes herself into the heart!
And whispers consolation!—while bright leaves,
With verdurous hues, all variously she weaves
O'er the long-fractured walls—light webs that shroud
Decay and Ruin in a friendly cloud!
How doth she bend her graciously above
The strange colossal Scene with looks of love.
Hath she mistaken this indeed for some
Of her own Works—this marvel of Old Rome?
Her Amphitheatral Alps or Appennines,—
Whose cloud-capped chain with snow pale-crested shines,—
Where they, a circus of dread mountains bend,
And, in a giant ring, far-sweeping tend?

(Her mighty eye o'er dazzled by the show
Of man's stupendous miracles below!
Till their proud girth she wildly magnifies,
Familiar with her own vast Earth and Skies,
And makes their towering greatness yet more great,
And adds to all their splendour and their state,
And more of magical perfection lends,
And with herself, in dreamy vision blends!)
Or, like a generous rival, would she show
Companionship and sympathy in woe
With shrunken Art, erst reigning by her side,
A sister-queen, in glory and in pride!
Howe'er it be—look round you here—behold,
She shrouds these walls with many a trailing fold,—
With many a fair festoon of quivering green,
And gilds and lights and consecrates the scene!
While by the alliance both gain deeper sway,
Than either, in their most divine display,
Could proudly compass, separate and apart;
For, oh! they speak united to the Heart!

Imperial wreck! how dost thou frowning stand,
With wrecks and fragments heaped on every hand!
And look, the chief and monarch of them all!
With thy thronged arches, and thy world of wall!
And the ivy folds, stirred by each gale's fresh breath,
Heaved, like a bright green ocean—while beneath
They hide too—as the ocean hides his prey,
But wrecks—and desolation—and decay!

Thy giant image in the mind stamped deep,
That mind shall evermore unaltered keep.
So dwell the eternal Mountains and the Sea—
Once seen—for ever on the memory!
While I stand, watching thee, and lingering stay,
(Scarce knowing how to tear myself away)
Thou seem'st to swell with ampler sweep of state,
To outstretch, to enlarge, to augment, and to dilate,—
To outspread thine area wide for countless throngs,
For gathered nations of all climes and tongues!
Thy front more near the o'er-hanging skies to lift—
Where sunbeams blaze, and golden clouds move swift—

'Tis but that thou absorbest the thought and gaze—
Still chained to thee in rapture of amaze!
Yea! they are transfixed, and concentrated there,
Nor may aught else their strict devotion share.
Thou takest the winged thoughts of the upspringing mind,
Like lightnings round thy dark scathed front to bind!
Its soaring energies to thee are given,
Well mayest thou rear thy proud head nearer heaven!
Thou fillest the Soul's deep airy wide embrace,
More boundless in itself than boundless Space!
Well may'st thou wax and spread and sweep and grow,
To something measureless, unmatched below!

Thou lookest to me—dread pile—(for ever new,
In thy worn age unto the enchanted view,)
Thyself a city—and a proud one too!
Thou seemest thyself the august superb remains
Of palaces and ramparts, towers and fanes,
Aye! seemest, 'midst splintered pillar, shrine, and dome,
The arch-wreck of all—the very Rome of Rome!

VESUVIUS.

Vesuvius! mighty mystery! thou dost hide
With thine uprising wreaths of smoke the pride
Of crimson morning, earth's enchanted guest,
What time she dons her many-jewelled vest—
And fiercely dost thou haughtily dispute,
While to the skies thy blood-red spires upshoot—
Deep shadowy Night's majestic Empire old,
Still star by star,—while trembling they unfold,—
Star after star—when they come forth serene
To shed their holy Beauty o'er the scene!
As thou wouldst rob them of their gentle sway,
And dash the bright crowns from their brows away,
The immortal splendours by their Maker given,
And blot their glories from their native Heaven.

But thou art foiled—for still they gleam and smile,
And win a tenderer witchery, too, the while,
From the deep contrast of thy dreadful show,
With their soft brightness—imaged on the flow
So clear and smooth of those pellucid waves—
(Like molten pearls from their own hidden caves—)
And still they start and stream, and float and rise
O'er all the kindling surface of the skies!
Myriads of rich and restless splendours spread
Above that stern stupendous Pageant dread,
As if to charm away the startled gaze
From that terrific and funereal blaze—
But now it is the beauty of the Day
That laughs above the mountains and the bay,
And all thy spiry flames wax faint, and fail,
And struggle with the sunlight, dim and pale—
Those flames that in the ghastly days of old
Forth-spouted hideously, and hissing rolled
O'er bright tracts they made deserts!—high and higher
Flinging their fatal wreaths of ruin dire—

O'er Cities they made Sepulchres! and crushed
Beneath their ebbless waves, that gathering gushed,
Till lo! it seemed great Nature's funeral pyre,
One fierce Earth-withering Festival of Fire!

Outstretched in boundless beauty at thy feet
Its burnished surface, one rich lustrous sheet,
Like a rejected garment, glittering lies
The blue deep Mediterranean—which the skies
With more than Tyrian purple brightly stain,
And yet thou spurnest it with a proud disdain!
Old, shadowy, awful, and mysterious Hill!
Stern instrument of fearful Wrath and Ill,
Within whose breast all the Elements of Strife
Conspiring, warm thee with a fatal Life,
And with the weapons of a deadly Power
Too darkly furnish thee, 'gainst Fate's marked Hour,
And with the insignia of an awful State
Surround thee, thou Earth-shaking Potentate!
Lo! when thou will'st to assume thy crowning pomp,
At the loud signal of thy deafening tromp,

The blasting of thy Fury's breath, away
The nations shrink, or drop in dust and clay.
Naples, the beautiful! that smiles beneath
Thy feet, as though 'twould in the face of Death
Laugh up with confidence serene and sweet,
And thy fierce threatenings with caressings meet,
Disarming thee by gentlest loveliness,
And winning thee—even thee—to spare and bless.
Naples the bright—the beautiful—may yet
Pay thee for years allowed—a fearful debt!
And that fair town, low planted at thy base,
As in some sheltered and auspicious place,
May quail before the outpourings of thy rage,
Like the doomed cities of an earlier age,
Although it smiles so calmly, cheerly now
Beneath the o'erhanging shadows of thy brow—
While gild yon glorious Sun's unclouded rays
Its white and glistening walls, that seem to praise
With shining gladness thy forbearance mild,
Old Hill! whose terrors are thus boldly piled

In frowning awfulness and shadowing gloom,
As thou wert armed with Wrath and big with Doom,—
Sombre and horrid, up to the unhurt skies,
Whose sultry purple with the sapphire vies!
And yet, in sooth, it seems to me at times
One of imperious Man's dark haughty crimes
Thus to dare Danger, and to challenge Fate,
And brave great Nature—as in full-throned State
Of kingly triumph—claimed—assumed—avowed—
In luxury of Defiance—stern and proud—
In fulness of Presumption's headlong zeal,
As careless of their proper woe or weal!
In bold derision, and in mockery light,
Of desperate threatenings, as in conscious might,
In strength assured of 'stablished confidence,
As though possessed of powers of sure defence;
And independent of deep Nature's sway,
Or with her Terrors proudly urged to play;
And evermore prepared with Fate to strive,
Whate'er the trying chance that may arrive;

Yet—yet the dark and dreadful hour hath been
Unfeared, and unforetold, and unforeseen;
When on the sudden came the stroke—the blight,
And the fierce minutes in their fearful flight—
The horror-laden minutes, even grew pale
At their own deadly tidings, when the mail
Of Battle seemed terrifically bound
Upon thy Giant-shoulders—and the Sound,
The hideous Sound of thy wild roaring cries
Shook all the earth, and startled all the skies;
Thou gloomy, dark, impenetrable Hill,
Mysterious Agent of the Eternal Will,—
While thy fierce Saturnalia filled with dread
The shuddering myriads, who despairing fled,
Winged by Fear's wonder-working strength in vain—
They perished 'twixt the Mountain and the Main;
While thou heap'dst ashes o'er the Dead—as bent,
To insult them with too like a monument!
It was thine hour! and thou improvedst it well,
Then didst thou shouting, of thy greatness tell!

Then roared thy whirlwind cry—Aha!—and Lo!
Nature seemed answering back still—Woe! Woe! Woe!
Hark! 'twas the echo—then 'twas still as death,
Till leaped to Life—new thunders of thy wrath.
Aha! thou shoutedst, and the temples rocked,
And the Sea trembled, like a vain thing mocked!
Aha!—and Lo! the Heavens so dimmed—obscured,
Were blazed with light that might not be endured!
Aha!—Aha!—and staggering nations fell,
And the Earth hissed and howled—a fiercer Hell!
The very stars seemed from their stations hurled,
Dust was Mankind—and Chaos was the World!

THE SYBIL'S GROT.

We rested close beside the Sybil's Grot,
Spring laughed out fair around! the blue bright sky,
The glorious sky of fervent Italy,
Bent in unbounded beauty o'er the spot,
Shone cloudlessly, without one vapoury blot!
Old Times came back on us—but to the eye
They shared the freshness of the bough on high,
The brightness of the bright Air!—frowning not,
As in their ancientry so oft they do;
Steeped, steeped in all the beauty that shone round,—
Beauty of Spring, and vernal bloom! to eschew
All melancholy fancies felt we bound
Beneath that gladdening sky of sultriest blue,
And gracious trees which clothed that turfy mound.

TO NAPLES.

Naples—Naples!—richest ditty—
Pæan-song—divinest City;
Swan-like Harmony sublime,
Rising o'er the tide of time;
Murmurings of melodious shell,
With a long, eolian swell;
Lark-like hymn, and echoing strain—
Praising thine enchanted reign;—
Might not serve to show forth all
Thy countless splendours magical;
Lo! where spreads thy blue bright bay,
Like a mirror to the day;
Lo! where soars thy mountain dread,
Dominion beaming from his head;

(Though with dire destruction blind,
Oft overwhelmingly conjoined);
Lo! where smile thy fertile fields,
Where the vine its treasure yields;
Its purple hoard of treasure rare,
A golden river running there;
Secret—hidden—costly—pure—
Which exhaustless shall endure!
Lo! where gleam thy palaced walls—
Terraced bowers, and pillared halls;
And laugh thy gardens and thy groves—
Haunts of the graces and the loves—
There and every where a spell
Seems, bright Queen! round thee to dwell:
A mastering spell, a kindling charm,
To awake, to touch, to enchant, and warm!
Naples! Naples!—richest ditty—
Pæan song—thou fairest City—
Chaunt inspired, of proudest choir—
Strain sublime of loftiest lyre—

Ne'er might serve to show forth all
Thy matchless splendours—magical.
No! no! let thine own Syren sing,
With voice more sweet than silvery string;
And so the beauty we behold,
May be well and brightly told;
But thine own Syren sole can be,
The Muse that shall be worthy thee!

WRITTEN AT NAPLES.

'Tis sweet to listen to this voiceful sea,
While gentle airs call forth his melody;
And bask in this delicious sunshine bright
A Paradise of colour and of light!
And watch the stealing motion of the wave,
That sparkling creeps the shining shore to lave.
Let me enjoy this soothing scene awhile,
And learn to smile in mighty Nature's smile.
Let me lay down my burthening wearying cares,
And breathe the freshness of these buoyant airs;
And for a time—although that time be brief—
Forget I am the thrall of care and grief!
'Tis a bewildering—a bewitching scene—
Oh! let me fly from thoughts of what hath been.
Along the shining bosom of the bay
What bright luxuriant coruscations play;

With smiles and dazzling sparkles thick it teems,
A mass of shifting splendours and winged gleams—
An ever changing beauty there demands
A long protracted gaze—deep splendid bands,
Rich breadths of violet-hues—fade softly here
Into a tenderer azure, faint, yet clear;
And there a burning gold streams, deepening on,
As from the great Sun's very heart 'twas won;
And rosy shadows, such as blushing play,
Round Alpine summits at the break of day:
There lace and pave the water's surface fair—
Deep without gloom, and brilliant without glare,
A thousand, thousand rainbows seem spread there;
And melted though the charmed waves serene,
Each heightening more the magic of the scene.
'Tis a confusion of imperial hues—
Yet one Supreme, doth free and far diffuse
Its regal depth—one glorious above all,
That seems to hold the rest in its proud thrall.
The old Monarchic Purple of the Seas,
Like the eternal emerald to the trees—

Like the everlasting ruby of the rose—
The flush of gold, the pride of harvest shows—
That rich triumphal hue of Sea and Sky,
Maintaineth still its fine ascendancy—
And wheresoe'er it stains the water's breast,
Wins the fond dreaming eye from all the rest—
That beauteous hue,—the Heaven and Ocean's own,
Which for so long that eye as theirs hath known!
Oh! 'tis a prospect to exalt and bless,
And fill the heart with dream-like happiness!
More zestful, when 'tis little known, and rare;
More precious—when a guest unlooked for there.
And oh! how pure when thus it is bestowed
By Nature's self—when thus it hath o'erflowed
From her great glorious Soul into our own,
While love is heightening every feeling's tone—
How sacred when it thus seems deeply given;
A more immediate gift—from yon bright Heaven!

FAREWELL TO THE MEDITERRANEAN.

Oh! Mediterranean Sea of blue,
Oh! Mediterranean Sea;
How softly the odorous zephyrs woo
Thy waters in their glee.

Oh! Mediterranean Sea of blue,
Oh! Mediterranean Sea—
All homage and praises are thy due,
And ever shall they be!

Bright Mediterranean Sea of blue!—
Clear Mediterranean wave!—
I leave sweet memories, warm and true,
Shrined in thy chrystal grave!

Oh! Mediteranean Sea of blue,
Fair Mediterranean Sea,
It is sad for me now to say adieu,
And a long adieu unto thee!

BELLS AT NAPLES.

Sweet Sound of bells; it steals upon mine ear
Softly, enchantingly—and well may seem
The Talisman of many a thought and dream,
The Alarum of deep Sympathies! that clear
And strong return on me, while back I steer
My shadowy way along the changeful stream
Of life, to that dear point, where many a beam
Of hope shone bright—I feel no longer here!
Oh! I am where the church bells in the vale,
Mine own sweet vale, the well-known and the dear
Peal joyously or solemnly—while pale
My cheek grows with delight—then lo! the tear
Of old Affection starting, doth avail
But to dispel the Illusion,—and its cheer!

OH! AUSONIA'S LAND.

[_]

[The subject of this being Italy I introduce it here, though it was written long before I ever saw that enchanting land.]

Oh! Ausonia's Land—Ausonia's Land,
Where the brightest of blossoms for ever are blowing,
Ausonia's clime—Ausonia's strand,
Where the Fountains of Music for ever are flowing.

Where Passion waves his triumphant wand,
While Poesy wakes his rich Lyre's deep sound;
While beauty clasps in her cestus band,
All the dream-enchanted world, spread round!

Would you braid the white orange blossom wreath?
Those flowers lost at last in their own golden graves!
Oh! go, where the Summer breathes precious breath,
Where the blue sky spreads like a Sea without waves.

100

Oh! Ausonia's sun—Ausonia's sky,
Where that sun lives indeed like a God in his glory,
Ausonia's bright Clime of old memories high,
Where sweep all the gorgeous shadows of story!

Where the mighty arts dwell enshrined and crowned,
And speak to the Soul with a voice of power,
The Soul, whose bright country there, there seems found,
Where it claims its feast, its wreath, and its dower.

Have ye e'er heard a warble of passion arise,
Whose sound thrilled deep to the heart's pierced core—
Go bask in the light of blue Italy's skies,
Ye will hear that warble of sweetness once more!

Oh! Ausonia's scenes—Ausonia's skies,
Where endless enchantments are thronging and thickening,
Where Nature smiles, clad in her fairest of dyes,
And her airs and her dews are most freshening and quickening.

101

Doth your heart swell high 'mid the dread remains
Of immortal man's deep skill and pride?
Do ye love the gloom of the ivy-wreathed fanes?
Oh! hasten ye—haste to old Tiber's side!

Can ye prize all mighty and solemn things,
And gaze with a poet's eye around,
Oh fly on expectancy's outstretched wings,
To Italia's Heaven-stamped holy ground!

Oh! Ausonia! brightest and loveliest of Lands!
Where beauty and glory are throned, and for ever—
Where Time's all subtle and precious sands,
Shine out golden as those of old Pactolus' river!

Do you love the morning's most orient smile,
And the balmy eve when the day is done?
Oh leave then our cold and cloudy isle,
For the ever-flowering Land of the Sun!

102

There is One thing lovelier than all! there is One
That makes Nature more holy, more great, more fair,
Makes yet purer the air, and brighter the Sun,
'Tis the Soul of Freedom!—why lives it not there?

Oh! Ausonia fairest, most favoured Land,
With thy groves, and thy gardens, thy hills, and thy fountains,
Take the thunderbolt now in thy queenly hand,
Be free as thy torrents, and strong as thy mountains!