CUMA (CUMÆ) CUMÆ WEEPING he spoke, then gave his fleet the reins, Until at length Eubœan Cuma's shores They reach. Seaward the prows are turned; the ships Fast anchored, and the curved sterns fringe the beach. On the Hesperian shore the warriors leap The heights o'er which the great Apollo rules, Here first restored to earth, he gave to thee, VIRGIL. Tr. C. P. Cranch. THE SIBYL'S CAVE AT CUMA CUMEAN Sibyl! from thy sultry cave Thy dark eyes level with the sulphurous ground Through the gloom flashing, roll in wrath around. What see they? Coasts perpetual earthquakes pave With ruin; piles half buried in the wave; Wrecks of old times and new in lava drowned;And festive crowds, sin-steeped and myrtlecrowned, Like idiots dancing on a parent's grave. ISCHIA INARIMÉ Vittoria Colonna, after the death of her husband, the Marchese di Pescara, retired to her castle at Ischia (Inarimé), and there wrote the ode upon his death which gained her the title of Divine. ONCE more, once more, Inarimé, I see thy purple hills-once more I hear the billows of the bay Wash the white pebbles on thy shore. High o'er the sea-surge and the sands, Upon its terrace-walk I see A phantom gliding to and fro; It is Colonna, it is she Who lived and loved so long ago. Pescara's beautiful young wife, The type of perfect womanhood, Whose life was love, the life of life, That time and change and death withstood. For death, that breaks the marriage band And closer locked and barred her breast. She knew the life-long martyrdom, The weariness, the endless pain The shadows of the chestnut-trees, The respiration of the sea, The soft caresses of the air, Till the o'erburdened heart, so long Then as the sun, though hidden from sight, Transmutes to gold the leaden mist, Her life was interfused with light, From realms that, though unseen, exist. |