And the soiled maskers trailed heavily homeward

their fanciful trappings.

Silent the stars shone down on the narrow streets, and the watchman

Dozed in his corner and dreamed of the coming delights of the morrow.

Can I forget the wild masque-ball at the brilliant Teatro?

Dominoes, white, black, and red, all thronging and jostling each other:

Men dark-bearded and women in costumes as fair as Sultanas,

Every one free as the wind, by fashion's conventions untrammelled,

All borne away for the moment, and chasing the butterfly Pleasure,

Till the stars faded and set in the cold grey light of the morning.

Then, last of all, like a candle that flares at its death in the socket,

Burst on the night the bewildering blaze of the wild Moccoletti,

Flashed in the windows from palace to palace the swift 'llumination,

Flashed in the street, on foot and in carriage each man and each woman

Bearing aloft from all reach their torches, with breath or with flapper

Striving to keep their own and to put out the lights of their neighbours,

While Senza Moccolo, Moccolo! all through the Corso resounded.

Can I forget thee, Rome, at this season of innocent pleasure?

Now when I see how the tyrants have caught thee and ruffled thy plumage,—

Clipped the gay pinions which once every year thou spreadest in frolic;

Forced thee to laugh, when the bitterest scorn should have answered their meddling;

Forced thee to take thy harp from the willows and sing at their bidding,

When thou shouldst call down the lightning of heaven to blast thy oppressors!

Patience! the day hastens onward. Thunderclouds on the horizon

Rumble and will not rest.

volcano

Beneath the thrones a

Moans, not in vain; and the hour must come when the forces electric,

Justice and Freedom and Truth, no longer can slumber inactive.

Then shall thy children exult in a jubilee holier,

grander,

And thy brief carnival pleasures seem but the sport of a schoolboy

To the true freedom that then shall crown thee with blessing and honour!

CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH.

THE SCALINATA

I

IN Rome there is a glorious flight of stone,
Great steps, as leading to a giant's throne,
Or to a temple of Titanic gods;

This marvellous height, up which the pilgrim plods
Breathless half-way, seems like a stairway tracked
By myriad feet of some wild cataract;
Like those where Nilus, with his flag of spray,
Leads his wild Abyssinian floods away.

Below this giant stairway, in the square,
There springs a cooling murmur in the air;
The liquid music of a tinkling rill;

A stolen Naiad from the Sabine hill,
Still singing, in captivity, the lay
Learned on her native mountains far away.

In middle of this fount a marble barge
Sits overflowing with its crystal charge;
Its light mast liquid silver in the sun;
Its viewless rowers singing every one

Until, so feigns the fancy,-warmly dark,
Great Egypt sails in the fantastic bark;
Melting in languors of her own heart's heat,
A tame, bright leopard cushioning her feet!
But here, with swelling heart and lordly mien,
The stately swan of Avon swims between.

Crowning the flight, a porphyry column stands
Dark as the sphinx above the desert sands;
Solemn as prophecy it points the sky,
Propounding its dim riddle to the eye;
And it has seen, with look as calm as Fate's,
On Nile and Tiber, the imperial states
Rise nobly, and fall basely; and there still
Waits for new wonders, silent on yon hill.

II

In Rome there is a glorious flight of stone,
Terrace o'er terrace rising, like that shown
To dreaming Jacob, climbing, till on high
The last broad platform nobly gains the sky.
On this great stairway what are these I see?
Ascending and descending! They should be
Angels with spotless mantles and white wings.
But, look again: those sad, misshapen things,
They scarce seem human! Where they crawl and
lay

Their tattered misery in the stranger's way,
Filling the air with simulated sighs,

Weeping for bread with unsuffused eyes.

Would they did weep, indeed! for, stung to tears
Then were there hope where now no hope appears.
But such the melting influence of the place,
That one there was,-most abject of his race;
A whining trunk,-deprived of every gift
Save his misfortune; but with this did lift
Himself to such a height of wealth and power,
That many a Roman noble at this hour
Envies his hoard, and many a sinking name
The beggar's usurious gold still keeps from shame.

Here the brown Sabines, in their gay attires,
Whose eyes still kindle with ancestral fires,
Bring down their mountain graces to the mart,
And wait for bread on the demands of Art.
There Belisarius, with his patriarch hair,
Sits blind and hungry. A Lucretia there
Winds her light distaff. Young Endymion here
Sleeps, as in Latmos. Yonder, drawing near,
The original of many a picture moves,

And many a statue which the world approves.
There sits the mother, with her soft, brown eyes
Bent o'er the face which on her bosom lies;
Enough of mingled wonder, pride, and trust,
To call the hand of Raphael from the dust.
THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.