Passing that way the virgin pitiless

Land in the middle of the fen descried,
Untilled and naked of inhabitants;

There to escape all human intercourse

She with her servants stayed, her arts to prac

tice

And lived, and left her empty body there.
The men, thereafter, who were scattered round,
Collected in that place, which was made strong
By the lagoon it had on every side;

They built their city over those dead bones,
And, after her who first the place selected,
Mantua named it, without other omen.
Its people once within more crowded were,
Ere the stupidity of Casalodi

From Pinamonte had received deceit.

Therefore I caution thee, if e'er thou hearest
Originate my city otherwise,

No falsehood may the verity defraud.

DANTE ALIGHIERI.

Tr. H. W. Longfellow.

IN THE MEADOWS AT MANTUA

BUT to have lain upon the grass

One perfect day, one perfect hour, Beholding all things mortal pass Into the quiet of green grass;

But to have lain and loved the sun,
Under the shadow of the trees,

To have been found in unison,
One, only, with the blessed sun!

Ah! in these flaring London nights,
Where midnight withers into morn,
How quiet a rebuke it writes
Across the sky of London nights!

Upon the grass at Mantua

These London nights were all forgot. They wake for me again: but ah,

The meadow-grass at Mantua!

ARTHUR SYMONS.

LAKE GARDA

SIRMIO

SWEET Sirmio! thou, the very eye

Of all peninsulas and isles,

That in our lakes of silver lie,

Or sleep, enwreathed by Neptune's smiles,

How gladly back to thee I fly!

Still doubting, asking,—can it be That I have left Bithynia's sky, And gaze in safety upon thee?

O, what is happier than to find

Our hearts at ease, our perils past;
When, anxious long, the lightened mind
Lays down its load of care at last;

When, tired with toil o'er land and deep,
Again we tread the welcome floor
Of our own home, and sink to sleep
On the long-wished-for bed once more.

This, this it is, that pays alone

The ills of all life's former track.

Shine out, my beautiful, my own

Sweet Sirmio! greet thy master back.

And thou, fair lake, whose water quaffs
The light of heaven like Lydia's sea,
Rejoice, rejoice,-let all that laughs
Abroad, at home, laugh out for me.

CATULLUS.

Tr. Thomas Moore.

"FRATER AVE ATQUE VALE'

Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row!

So they row'd, and there we landed-‘O venusta

Sirmio!

There to me thro' all the groves of olive in the summer glow,

There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow,

Came that 'Ave atque Vale' of the Poet's hopeless

woe,

Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen-hundred years

ago,

Frater Ave atque Vale'-as we wander'd to and

fro

Gazing at the Lydian-laughter of the Garda Lake

below

Sweet Catullus's all-but-island, olive-silvery Sir

mio!

ALFRED TENNYSON.

BRESCIA

THE PATRIOT

It was roses, roses, all the way,

With myrtle mixed in my path like mad. The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway, The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, A year ago on this very day!

The air broke into a mist with bells,

The old walls rocked with the crowds and cries. Had I said, "Good folks, mere noise repels, But give me your sun from yonder skies!" They had answered, "And afterward, what else?"

Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun,

To give it my loving friends to keep.
Naught man could do have I left undone,
And you see my harvest, what I reap
This very day, now a year is run.

There's nobody on the house-tops now,-
Just a palsied few at the windows set,—
For the best of the sight is, all allow,

At the Shambles' Gate,-or, better yet,
By the very scaffold's foot, I trow.