I ask myself, Is this a dream?

Will it all vanish into air?
Is there a land of such supreme
And perfect beauty anywhere?

Sweet vision! Do not fade away;
Linger until my heart shall take
Into itself the summer day,

And all the beauty of the lake.

Linger until upon my brain

Is stamped an image of the scene, Then fade into the air again,

And be as if thou hadst not been.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGfellow.

LAKE VARESE

LAGO VARESE

I STOOD beside Varese's Lake,

Mid that redundant growth

Of vines and maize and bower and brake
Which Nature, kind to sloth,

And scarce solicited by human toil,
Pours from the riches of the teeming soil.

A mossy softness distance lent
To each divergent hill,

One crept away looking back as it went,

The rest lay round and still;

The westering sun not dazzling now, though bright Shed o'er the mellow land a molten light.

And, sauntering up a circling cove,

I found upon the strand

A shallop, and a girl who strove

To drag it to dry land:

I stood to see the girl look round; her face

Had all her country's clear and definite grace.

She rested with the air of rest

So seldom seen, of those
Whose toil remitted gives a zest,

Not languor, to repose.

Her form was poised yet buoyant, firm though free And liberal of her bright black eyes was she.

Her hue reflected back the skies

Which reddened in the west;
And joy was laughing in her eyes
And bounding in her breast,

Its rights and grants exulting to proclaim
Where pride had no inheritance, nor shame.

Methought this scene before mine eyes,
Still glowing with yon sun,

Which seemed to melt the myriad dyes
Of heaven and earth to one,

A diverse unity,-methought this scene,
These undulant hills, the woods that intervene,

The multiplicity of growth,

The cornfield and the brake,
The trellised vines that cover both,

The purple-bosomed lake,

Some fifty summers hence may all be found

Rich in the charms wherewith they now abound.

And should I take my staff again,
And should I journey here,

My steps may be less steady then,

My eyesight not so clear,

And from the mind the sense of beauty may,
Even as these bodily gifts, have passed away;

But grant my age but eyes to see

A still susceptive mind,

All that leaves us, and all that we

Leave wilfully behind,

And nothing here would want the charms it wore Save only she who stands upon the shore.

HENRY TAYLOR.

LAKE MAGGIORE

STANZAS

ADDRESSED TO W. R. TURNER, R.A., ON HIS VIEW OF THE LAGO MAGGIORE FROM THE

TOWN OF ARONA

TURNER, thy pencil brings to mind a day
When from Laveno and the Beuscer Hill
I over Lake Verbanus held my way

In pleasant fellowship, with wind at will;
Smooth were the waters wide, the sky serene,
And our hearts gladdened with the joyful scene;—

Joyful, for all things ministered delight,

The lake and land, the mountains and the vales; The Alps their snowy summits reared in light,

Tempering with gelid breath the summer gales; And verdant shores and woods refreshed the eye, That else had ached beneath that brilliant sky.

To that elaborate island were we bound,
Of yore the scene of Borromean pride,-
Folly's prodigious work; where all around,
Under its coronet, and self-belied,

Look where you will, you cannot choose but see
The obtrusive motto's proud "Humility!"