Both boys dead? but that's out of nature.

all

We

Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.

"Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall; And, when Italy's made, for what end is it done If we have not a son?

Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta's taken, what then?
When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her

sport

Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men?

When the guns of Cavalli with final retort
Have cut the game short?

When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee, When your flag takes all heaven for its white,

Above the star prick'd by the last peak of snow:
My Italy's THERE, with my brave civic Pair,
To disfranchise despair!

Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength And bite back the cry of their pain in self

scorn;

But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at

length

Into wail such as this-and we sit on forlorn When the man-child is born.

Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east, And one of them shot in the west by the sea, Both! both my boys! If in keeping the feast You want a great song for your Italy free, Let none look at me.

(This was Laura Savio, of Turin, a poet and patriot, whose sons were killed at Ancona and Gaeta.)

ELIZABETH Barrett BrownING.

THE RIVER PO

THE PO

THE Po, that, rushing with uncommon force,
O'ersets whole woods in its tumultuous course,
And, rising from Hesperia's watery veins,
The exhausted land of all its moisture drains-
The Po, as sings the fable, first conveyed
Its wandering current through a poplar shade:
For when your Phaeton mistook his way,
Lost and confounded in the blaze of day,
This river, with surviving streams supplied,
When all the rest of the whole earth was dried,
And nature's self lay ready to expire,

Quenched the dire flame that set the world on fire.

LUCAN.

Tr. Joseph Addison.

STANZAS TO THE PO.

RIVER, that rollest by the ancient walls,
Where dwells the lady of my love, when she
Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls
A faint and fleeting memory of me;

1

What if thy deep and ample stream should be
A mirror of my heart, where she may read
The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,
Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed!

What do I say, a mirror of my heart?

Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong? Such as my feelings were and are, thou art;

And such as thou art, were my passions long.

Time may have somewhat tamed them,—not for

ever;

Thou overflow'st thy banks and not for aye Thy bosom overboils, congenial river!

Thy floods subside, and mine have sunk away.

But left long wrecks behind, and now again,
Borne in our old unchanged career, we move;
Thou tendest wildly onwards to the main,
And I—to loving one I should not love.

The current I behold will sweep beneath

Her native walls, and murmur at her feet;
Her eyes will look on thee, when she shall breathe
The twilight air unharmed by summer's heat.

She will look on thee,-I have looked on thee,
Full of that thought; and from that moment,

ne'er

Thy waters could I dream of, name, or see,

Without the inseparable sigh of her!

Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream,—
Yes! they will meet the wave I gaze on now;
Mine cannot witness, even in a dream,

That happy wave repass me in its flow!

The wave that bears my tears returns no more Will she return by whom that wave shall sweep? Both tread thy banks, both wander on thy shore, I by the source, she by the dark-blue deep.

But that which keepeth us apart is not

Distance, nor depth of wave, nor space of earth, But the distraction of a various lot,

As various as the climates of our birth.

A stranger loves the lady of the land,

Born far beyond the mountains, but his blood Is all meridian, as if never fanned

By the black wind that chills the polar flood.

My blood is all meridian; were it not,

I had not left my clime, nor should I be, In spite of tortures ne'er to be forgot,

A slave again of love,—at least of thee.

"Tis vain to struggle, let me perish young,— Live as I lived, and love as I have loved;

To dust if I return, from dust I sprung,

And then, at least, my heart can ne'er be moved.

LORD BYRON.