CAPUA

CAPUA

Capua was supposed to take its name from being the caput, or head city, of the southern Etruscan confederacy.

FIRST of old of Oscan towns!

Prize of triumphs, pearl of crowns;

Half a thousand years have fled,
Since arose thy royal head,
Splendour of the Lucumoes.

Tuscan fortress, doomed to feel
Sharpest edge of Samnite steel,
Flashing down the Liris tide;
Re-arisen, in richer pride,
Cynosure of Italy!

Let the Gaurian echoes say

How, with Rome, we ruled the fray;

Till the fatal field was won

By the chief who slew his son,

'Neath the vines of Vesulus.

Siren city, where the plain
Glitters twice with golden grain,
Twice the bowers of roses blow,
Twice the grapes and olives flow,
Thou wilt chain the conqueror;

Home of war-subduing eyes,
Shining under softest skies,
Gleaming to the silver sea,
Liber, Venus, strive for thee,
Empress of Ausonia!

Glorious in thy martial bloom,
Glorious still in storm and gloom,
We thy chiefs who dare to die
Raise again thy battle-cry,-
Charge with Capuan chivalry!

JOHN NICHOL.

NAPLES

ODE TO NAPLES

I

I STOOD within the city disinterred,

And heard the autumnal leaves like light foot

falls

Of spirits passing through the streets, and heard
The Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals
Thrill through those roofless halls:
The oracular thunder penetrating shook

The listening soul in my suspended blood;

I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke,—— I felt, but heard not. Through white columns glowed

The isle-sustaining Ocean flood,

A plane of light between two heavens of azure;
Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre
Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure
Were to spare Death, had never made erasure;
But every living lineament was clear

As in the sculptor's thought; and there
The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy and pine,
Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow,
Seemed only to move and grow

Because the crystal silence of the air

Weighed on their life; even as the power divine, Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine. II

Then gentle winds arose,

With many a mingled close

Of wild Æolian sound and mountain odour keen; And where the Baian ocean

Welters with air-like motion,

Within, above, around its bowers of starry green, Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves, Even as the ever-stormless atmosphere

Floats o'er the Elysian realm,

It bore me; like an angel, o'er the waves
Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air
No storm can overwhelm.

I sailed where ever flows
Under the calm Serene

A spirit of deep emotion,
From the unknown graves

Of the dead kings of melody.
Shadowy Aornus darkened o'er the helm
The horizontal ether; heaven stript bare
Its depths over Elysium, where the prow
Made the invisible water white as snow;
From that Typhaen mount, Inarimé,

There streamed a sunlit vapour, like the standard Of some ethereal host;

Whilst from all the coast,

Louder and louder, gathering round, there wan

dered

Over the oracular woods and divine sea

Prophesyings which grew articulate.

They seize me,-I must speak them;-be they fate!

III

Naples, thou Heart of men, which ever pantest
Naked, beneath the lidless eye of heaven!
Elysian City, which to calm enchantest

The mutinous air and sea! they round thee, even
As sleep round Love, are driven,-
Metropolis of a ruined Paradise

Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained! Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice,

Which armed Victory offers up unstained
To Love, the flower-enchained!

Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be,
Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free,
If hope, and truth, and justice can avail.
Hail, hail, all hail!

IV

Great Spirit, deepest Love!
Which rulest and dost move

All things which live and are, within the Italian

shore;