And stern and sad (so rare the smiles O Milan, O the chanting quires, The height, the space, the gloom, the glory! A mount of marble, a hundred spires! I climbed the roofs at break of day; I stood among the silent statues, How faintly flushed, how phantom-fair, A thousand shadowy-pencilled valleys Remember how we came at last Had blown the lake beyond his limit, From Como, when the light was gray, The rich Virgilian rustic measure Of Lari Maxume, all the way Like ballad-burden music kept, To that fair port below the castle Or hardly slept, but watched awake The moonlight touching o'er a terrace One tall Agavè above the lake. What more? we took our last adieu, But ere we reached the highest summit I plucked a daisy, I gave it you. It told of England then to me, O love, we two shall go no longer So dear a life your arms enfold Yet here to-night in this dark city, I found, tho' crush'd to hard and dry, This nursling of another sky Still in the little book you lent me, And where you tenderly laid it by: And I forgot the clouded Forth, The gloom that saddens heaven and earth, Perchance to lull the throbs of pain, ALFRED TENNYSON. ITALY OUR Italy's The darling of the earth, the treasury, piled Aside, like ravelled silk, from life's worn stuff,- rung On workday counter, still sound silver-proof,— Hope's pillow to the ground. How oft, indeed, We all have sent our souls out from the north, On bare white feet which would not print nor bleed, To climb the Alpine passes and look forth, Where the low murmuring Lombard rivers lead Their bee-like way to gardens almost worth The vision of the stars, we find it hard, ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. TO ITALY Stanzas from the "Italian Rhapsody." ABSENCE from thee is such as men endure Between the glad betrothal and the bride; Or like the years that Youth, intense and sure, From his ambition to his goal must bide. And if no more I may Oh, then were Memory meant for those to whom is Hope denied. Show me a lover who hath drunk by night While moonlit cloister calls With plashy fountain-falls, Or darkened Arno moves to music with its mirrored light. Who can withstand thee? What distress or care But yields to Naples, or that long day-dream We know as Venice, where alone more fair Noon is than night; where every lapping stream Woos with a soft caress Our new-world weariness, And every ripple smiles with joy at sight of scene so rare. The mystery of thy charm-ah, who hath guessed? "T were ne'er divined by day or shown in sleep; Yet sometimes Music, floating from her steep, Holds to our lips a chalice brimmed and blest: Then know we that thou art Of the Ideal part Of Man's one thirst that is not quenched, drink he howe'er so deep. Thou human-hearted land, whose revels hold |