Lost in the haze of melting hills and skies
Sad Pæstum's plain in shadowy distance lies.

How the Spring flings her tribute to the breeze Through every slit in these long, winding walls! Shunning the screen of flowery tapestries,

The slim gray lizard, turquoise-vested, crawls—
Blind worshipper of the unconscious sun,
His pagan shrine, his splendid eidolon.

Here Scala lifts upon her furrowed breast
Twin cities of the living and the dead,
Where toil the quick and where the buried rest,
With Roman tombs low vaulted overhead:
In these strange dwellings life must surely seem
To hold the secret of its final dream.

The nectarine, peach and almond trees in flower,
Play on the hues from deep to palest rose.
Shy druid birches guard a secret bower

Where many a home-like English blossom blows;
With daisy, primrose, and narcissus shine
The lavish stars of Wordsworth's celandine.

On rocky, wave-girt slopes, where buds the vine,
Golden and green the trellised orchards grow.
Beyond the beach's pale, receding line

Roam dusky herds of sullen buffalo.

The distant Apennines' dark ranges wear
Halos of snow and amethystine air.

Can this be Italy, or but a dream

Emerging from the broken waves of sleep?
Since even the rudest works of peasants seem
Some spell of ancient miracles to keep:

As when against old Barbarossa's power
The Romans threw the grim rock of this tower.

More exquisite than our imagining,

In silent hours how often shall ariseFrom the dim waters of that mystic spring

Where the soul keeps her anchored memories--

This world of beauty, color, and perfume;
Hoary with age, yet of unaging bloom.
Ada Foster Murray [18

VENICE

From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"

I STOOD in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,
A palace and a prison on each hand:

I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand;
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles

O'er the far times, when many a subject land
Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles,

Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,

Rising with her tiara of proud towers

At airy distance, with majestic motion,

And such she was; her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers:
In purple was she robed, and of her feast

Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.

In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And music meets not always now the ear:
Those days are gone, but Beauty still is here;
States fall, arts fade, but Nature doth not die,
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!

But unto us she hath a spell beyond
Her name is story, and her long array
Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond
Above the Dogeless city's vanished sway:

Ours is a trophy which will not decay With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor, And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away,The keystones of the arch!—though all were o'er, For us repeopled were the solitary shore.

George Gordon Byron [1788-1824]

VENICE

VENICE, thou Siren of sea-cities, wrought
By mirage, built on water, stair o'er stair,
Of sunbeams and cloud-shadows, phantom-fair,
With naught of earth to mar thy sea-born thought!
Thou floating film upon the wonder-fraught
Ocean of dreams! Thou hast no dream so rare
As are thy sons and daughters, they who wear
Foam-flakes of charm from thine enchantment caught!
O dark brown eyes! O tangles of dark hair!

O heaven-blue eyes, blonde tresses where the breeze
Plays over sun-burned cheeks in sea-blown air!
Firm limbs of moulded bronze! frank debonair
Smiles of deep-bosomed women! Loves that seize
Man's soul, and waft her on storm-melodies!

John Addington Symonds [1840-1893]

ON THE EXTINCTION OF THE VENETIAN
REPUBLIC

ONCE did She hold the gorgeous East in fee,
And was the safeguard of the West; the worth
Of Venice did not fall below her birth,
Venice, the eldest child of liberty.
She was a maiden city, bright and free;
No guile seduced, no force could violate;
And, when she took unto herself a mate,
She must espouse the everlasting Sea.
And what if she had seen those glories fade,
Those titles vanish, and that strength decay;

Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid

When her long life hath reached its final day:

Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade Of that which once was great, is passed away. William Wordsworth [1770-1850]

THE GUARDIAN-ANGEL

A PICTURE AT FANO

DEAR and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave
That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!
Let me sit all the day here, that when eve

Shall find performed thy special ministry,
And time come for departure, thou, suspending
Thy flight, may'st see another child for tending,
Another still, to quiet and retrieve.

Then I shall feel thee step one step, no more,
From where thou standest now, to where I gaze,
-And suddenly my head is covered o'er

With those wings, white above the child who prays Now on that tomb-and I shall feel thee guarding Me, out of all the world; for me, discarding

Yon heaven thy home, that waits and opes its door.

I would not look up thither past thy head

Because the door opes, like that child, I know, For I should have thy gracious face instead,

Thou bird of God! And wilt thou bend me low Like him, and lay, like his, my hands together, And lift them up to pray, and gently tether

Me, as thy lamb there, with thy garment's spread?

If this was ever granted, I would rest

My head beneath thine, while thy healing hands Close-covered both my eyes beside thy breast,

Pressing the brain, which too much thought expands, Back to its proper size again, and smoothing Distortion down till every nerve had soothing, And all lay quiet, happy and suppressed.

How soon all worldly wrong would be repaired!
I think how I should view the earth and skies
And sea, when once again my brow was bared

After thy healing, with such different eyes.
O world, as God has made it! All is beauty:
And knowing this, is love, and love is duty.
What further may be sought for or declared?

Guercino drew this angel I saw teach

(Alfred, dear friend!)—that little child to pray, Holding the little hands up, each to each

1

Pressed gently, with his own head turned away Over the earth where so much lay before him Of work to do, though heaven was opening o'er him, And he was left at Fano by the beach.

We were at Fano, and three times we went
To sit and see him in his chapel there,
And drink his beauty to our souls' content

-My angel with me too: and since I care
For dear Guercino's fame (to which in power
And glory comes this picture for a dower,
Fraught with a pathos so magnificent)—

And since he did not work thus earnestly

At all times, and has else endured some wrong— I took one thought his picture struck from me, And spread it out, translating it to song. My love is here. Where are you, dear old friend? How rolls the Wairoa at your world's far end? This is Ancona, yonder is the sea.

Robert Browning [1812-1889]

CHORUS

From "Hellas"

THE world's great age begins anew,

The golden years return,

The earth doth like a snake renew

Her winter weeds outworn: