GENOA

APPROACH TO GENOA

Ar length the day departed, and the moon
Rose like another sun, illuminating

Waters and woods and cloud-capt promontories,
Glades for a hermit's cell, a lady's bower,
Scenes of Elysium, such as Night alone
Reveals below, nor often,-scenes that fled
As at the waving of a wizard's wand,
And left behind them, as their parting gift,
A thousand nameless odors. All was still;
And now the nightingale her song poured forth
In such a torrent of heartfelt delight,

So fast it flowed, her tongue so voluble,

As if she thought her hearers would be gone
Ere half was told. "T was where in the northwest,
Still unassailed and unassailable,

Thy pharos, Genoa, first displayed itself,
Burning in stillness on its craggy seat;

That guiding star so oft the only one,

When those now glowing in the azure vault
Are dark and silent. "T was where o'er the sea
(For we were now within a cable's length)
Delicious gardens hung; green galleries,

And marble terraces in many a flight,
And fairy arches flung from cliff to cliff,
'Wildering, enchanting; and, above them all,

A

palace, such as somewhere in the East,

In Zenastan or Araby the blest,

Among its golden groves and fruits of gold,
And fountains scattering rainbows in the sky,
Rose, when Aladdin rubbed the wondrous lamp;
Such, if not fairer; and, when we shot by,
A scene of revelry, in long array,

As with the radiance of the setting sun,
The windows blazing. But we now approached
A city far-renowned; and wonder ceased.

SAMUEL ROGERS.

GENOA

NIGHT AT THE PARADISO

АH! what avails it, Genoa, now to thee

That Doria, feared by monarchs, once was thine? Univied ruin! in thy sad decline

From virtuous greatness, what avails that he Whose prow descended first the Hesperian sea, And gave our world her mate beyond the brine, Was nurtured, whilst an infant, at thy knee?— All things must perish,-all but things divine. Flowers, and the stars, and virtue,—these alone, The self-subsisting shapes, or self-renewing,

Survive.

All else are sentenced. Wisest were

That builder who should plan with strictest care (Ere yet the wood was felled or hewn the stone) The aspect only of his pile in ruin!

AUBREY DE VERE.

ON THE MONUMENT ERECTED TO
MAZZINI AT GENOA

ITALIA, mother of the souls of men,

Mother divine,

Of all that serv'd thee best with sword or pen,
All sons of thine,

Thou knowest that here the likeness of the best
Before thee stands;

The head most high, the heart found faithfullest,
The purest hands.

Above the fume and foam of time that flits,
The soul, we know,

Now sits on high where Alighieri sits

With Angelo.

Nor his own heavenly tongue hath heavenly speech Enough to say

What this man was, whose praise no thought may

reach,

No words can weigh.

Since man's first mother brought to mortal birth

Such

Her first-born son,

grace befell not ever man on earth

As crowns this One.

Of God nor man was ever this thing said:
That he could give

Life back to her who gave him, that his dead
Mother might live.

But this man found his mother dead and slain,
With fast-seal'd eyes,

And bade the dead rise up and live again,
And she did rise:

And all the world was bright with her through

him:

But dark with strife,

Like heaven's own sun that storming clouds bedim, Was all his life.

Life and the clouds are vanish'd; hate and fear
Have had their span

Of time to hurt and are not: He is here
The sunlike man.

City superb, that hadst Columbus first

For sovereign son,

Be prouder that thy breast hath later nurst
This mightier One.

Glory be his forever, while this land

Lives and is free,

As with controlling breath and sovereign hand
He bade her be.

Earth shows to heaven the names by thousands told

That crown her fame:

But highest of all that heaven and earth behold
Mazzini's name.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.

GENOA

GENTLY, as roses die, the day declines;

On the charmed air there is a hush the while;
And delicate are the twilight-tints that smile
Upon the summits of the Apennines.

The moon is up; and o'er the warm wave shines
A faery bridge of light, whose beams beguile
The fancy to some far and fortunate isle,
Which love in solitude unlonely shrines.
The blue night of Italian summer glooms
Around us; over the crystalline swell
I gaze on Genoa's spires and palace-domes:
City of cities, the superb, farewell!

The beautiful, in nature's bloom, is thine;
And Art hath made it deathless and divine!
WILLIAM HAMILTON GIBSON.