The blind bright womb of color unborn, that

brings

Forth all fair forms of things,

As freedom all fair forms of nations dyed

In divers-coloured pride.

Fly fleet as wind on every wind that blows

Between her seas and snows,

From Alpine white, from Tuscan green, and where

Vesuvius reddens air.

Fly! and let all men see it, and all kings wail,

And priests wax faint and pale,

And the cold hordes that moan in misty places
And the funereal races

And the sick serfs of lands that wait and wane
See thee and hate thee in vain.

In the clear laughter of all winds and waves,
In the blown grass of graves,

In the long sound of fluctuant boughs of trees,
In the broad breath of seas,

Bid the sound of thy flying folds be heard;

And as a spoken word

Full of that fair god and that merciless

Who rends the Pythoness,

So be the sound and so the fire that saith

She feels her ancient breath

And the old blood move in her immortal veins.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE,

"DE GUSTIBUS-"

I

YOUR ghost will walk, you lover of trees, (If our loves remain)

In an English lane,

By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.
Hark, those two in the hazel coppice-

A boy and a girl, if the good fates please,
Making love, say,—

The happier they!

Draw yourself up from the light of the moon, And let them pass, as they will too soon,

With the beanflower's boon,

And the blackbird's tune,
And May, and June!

II

What I love best in all the world
Is a castle, precipice-encurl'd,

In a

gash of the wind-griev'd Apennine. Or look for me, old fellow of mine, (If I get my head from out the mouth O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands, And come again to the land of lands)— In a sea-side house to the farther South, Where the bak'd cicala dies of drouth, And one sharp tree 't is a cypress-stands,

By the many hundred years red-rusted,
Rough iron-spik'd, ripe fruit o'ercrusted,
My sentinel to guard the sands

To the water's edge. For, what expands
Before the house, but the great opaque
Blue breadth of sea without a break?
While, in the house, for ever crumbles
Some fragment of the frescoed walls,
From blisters where a scorpion sprawls.
A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles
Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons,
And says there's news to-day-the king
Was shot at, touch'd in the liver-wing,
Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling:

-She hopes they have not caught the felons. Italy, my Italy!

Queen Mary's saying serves for me

(When fortune's malice

Lost her Calais)

Open my heart and you will see
Grav'd inside of it, "Italy."

Such lovers old are I and she:
So it always was, so shall ever be.

ROBERT BROWNING.

VERONA

VERONA

CROSS Adria's gulf, and land where softly glide
A stream's crisp waves, to join blue Ocean's tide;
Still westward hold thy way, till Alps look down
On old Verona's walled and classic town.

Fair is the prospect; palace, tower, and spire,
And blossomed grove, the eye might well admire;
Heaven-piercing mountains capped with endless

snow,

Where winter reigns, and frowns on earth below; Old castles crowning many a craggy steep,

From which in silver sounding torrents leap: Southward the plain where Summer builds her bowers,

And floats on downy gales the soul of flowers;
Where orange-blossoms glad the honeyed bee,
And vines in festoons wave from tree to tree;
While, like a streak of sky from heaven let fall,
The deep blue river, glittering, winds through all;
The woods that whisper to the zephyr's kiss,
Where nymphs might taste again Arcadian bliss;
The sun-bright hills that bound the distant view,
And melt like mists in skies of tenderest blue-

All charm the ravished sense, and dull is he Who, cold, unmoved, such glorious scene can see.

Here did the famed Catullus rove and dream,
And godlike Pliny drink of Wisdom's stream;
Wronged by his friends, and exiled by his foes,
Amid these vales did Dante breathe his woes,
Raise demons up, call seraphs from the sky,
And frame the dazzling verse that ne'er shall die.
Here, too, hath Fiction weaved her loveliest spell,
Visions of beauty float o'er crag and dell;
But chief we seem to hear at evening hour
The sigh of Juliet in her starlit bower,

Follow her form slow gliding through the gloom,
And drop a tear above her mouldered tomb.

Sweet are these thoughts, and in such favoured

scene

Methinks life's stormiest skies might grow serene,
Care smooth her brow, the troubled heart find rest,
And, spite of crime and passion, man be blest.
But to our theme: The pilgrim comes to trace
Verona's ruins, not bright Nature's face;
Be still, chase lightsome fancies, ere thou dare
Approach yon pile, so grand yet softly fair;
The mighty circle, breathing beauty, seems
The work of genii in immortal dreams.
So firm the mass, it looks as built to vie
With Alp's eternal ramparts towering nigh.