Page images
PDF
EPUB

Its graceful strength each lofty portal keeps,
Unbroken round the first great cincture sweeps;
The marble benches, tier on tier, ascend,
The winding galleries seem to know no end.
Glistening and pure, the summer sunbeams fall,
Softening each sculptured arch and rugged wall.
We tread the arena; blood no longer flows,
But in the sand the pale-eyed violet blows,
While ivy, covering many a bench, is seen,
Staining its white with lines of liveliest green,-
Age-honouring plant! that weds not buildings gay,
With love, still faithful, clinging to decay.
NICHOLAS MITCHELL.

TO VERONA

VERONA! thy tall gardens stand erect
Beckoning me upward. Let me rest awhile
Where the birds whistle hidden in the boughs,
Or fly away when idlers take their place,
Mated as well, concealed as willingly;

Idlers whose nest must not swing there, but rise
Beneath a gleamy canopy of gold,

Amid the flight of Cupids, and the smiles

Of Venus ever radiant o'er their couch.

Here would I stay, here wander, slumber here,
Nor pass into that theatre below

Crowded with their faint memories, shades of joy.

But ancient song arouses me; I hear
Coelius and Anfilena; I behold

Lesbia, and Lesbia's linnet at her lip

Pecking the fruit that ripens and swells out
For him whose song the Graces loved the most,
Whatever land, east, west, they visited.

Even he must not detain me: one there is
Greater than he, of broader wing, or swoop
Sublimer. Open now that humid arch
Where Juliet sleeps the quiet sleep of death,
And Romeo sinks aside her.

Fare ye well,

Lovers! Ye have not loved in vain: the hearts
Of millions throb around ye. This lone tomb
One greater than yon walls have ever seen,
Greater than Mantua's prophet eye foresaw
In her own child or Rome's hath hallowéd;
And the last sod or stone a pilgrim knee
Shall press (Love swears it, and swears true) is
here.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

AT VERONA

How STEEP the stairs within King's houses are For exile-wearied feet as mine to tread,

And O how salt and bitter is the bread

Which falls from this Hound's table,-better far

That I had died in the red ways of war,

Or that the gate of Florence bare my head, Than to live thus, by all things comraded Which seek the essence of my soul to mar.

"Curse God and die: what better hope than this?
He hath forgotten thee in all the bliss
Of his gold city, and eternal day”—
Nay peace: behind my prison's blinded bars
I do possess what none can take away,
My love, and all the glory of the stars.
OSCAR WILDE.

BEFORE THE OLD CASTLE OF VERONA

GREEN Adige, 'twas thus in rapid course
And powerful, that thou didst murmur 'neath
The Roman bridges sparkling from thy stream
Thine ever-running song unto the sun,
When Odoacer, giving way before

The onrush of Theodoric, fell back,

And midst the bloody wrack about them passed
Into this fair Verona blonde and straight
Barbarian women in their chariots, singing
Songs unto Odin; while the Italian folk
Gathered about their Bishop and put forth
To meet the Goths the supplicating Cross.

Thus from the mountains rigid with their snows,
In all the placid winter's silver gladness
To-day thou still, O tireless fugitive,
Dost murmuring pass upon thy way, beneath
The Scaligers' old battlemented bridge,
Betwixt time-blackened piles and squalid trees,
To far-off hills serene, and to the towers
Whence weep the mourning banners for the day,
Returning now, which saw the death of him
Whom a free Italy first chose her king.
Still, Adige, thou singest as of yore
Thine ever-running song unto the sun.

I, too, fair river, sing, and this my song
'Would put the centuries into little verse;
And palpitating to each thought, my heart
Follows the stanza's upward-quivering flight.
But with the years, my verse will dull and fade;
Thou, Adige, the eternal poet art,

Who still when of these hills the turret crown
Is shattered into fragments, and the snake
Sits hissing in the sunlight where now stands
The great basilica, St. Zeno's fane-
Still in the desert solitudes wilt voice
The sleepless tedium of the infinite.

GIOSUÉ CARDUCCI.

Tr. M. W. Arms.

MANTUA

MANTUA

ABOVE in beauteous Italy lies a lake

At the Alp's foot that shuts in Germany
Over Tyrol, and has the name Benaco.

By a thousand springs, I think, and more, is bathed,

'Twixt Garda and Val Camonica, Pennino,

With water that grows stagnant in that lake. Midway a place is where the Trentine Pastor, And he of Brescia, and the Veronese

Might give his blessing, if he passed that way. Sitteth Peschiera, fortress fair and strong,

To front the Brescians and the Bergamasks, Where round about the bank descendeth lowest. There of necessity must fall whatever

In bosom of Benaco cannot stay,

And

grows a river down through verdant pas-
tures.

Soon as the water doth begin to run,
No more Benaco is it called, but Mincio,
Far as Governo, where it falls in Po.

Not far it runs before it finds a plain
In which it spreads itself, and makes it marshy,
And oft 't is wont in summer to be sickly.

« PreviousContinue »