Where the festal music floated in the light of

ladies' smiles;

Soldiers in the busy courtyard, nobles in the hall

above,

O, those days of arms are over,—arms and courtesy and love!

Down in yonder square at sunrise, lo! the Tuscan troops arrayed,

Every man in Milan armour, forged in Brescia every blade:

Sigismondi is their captain,-Florence! art thou not dismayed?

There's Lanfranchi! there the bravest of the Gherardesca stem,

Hugolino, with the bishop; but enough, enough of them.

Now, as on Achilles' buckler, next a peaceful scene succeeds;

Pious crowds in the cathedral duly tell their blessed beads;

Students walk the learned cloister; Ariosto wakes the reeds;

Science dawns; and Galileo opens to the Italian

youth,

As he were a new Columbus, new discovered realms of truth.

Hark! what murmurs from the million in the bustling market rise!

All the lanes are loud with voices, all the windows dark with eyes;

Black with men the marble bridges, heaped the shores with merchandise;

Turks and Greeks and Libyan merchants in the square their councils hold,

And the Christian altars glitter gorgeous with Byzantine gold.

Look! anon the masqueraders don their holiday

attire:

Every palace is illumined,-all the town seems built of fire,

Rainbow-coloured lanterns dangle from the top of every spire.

Pisa's patron saint hath hallowed to himself the joyful day,

Never on the thronged Rialto showed the Carnival more gay.

Suddenly the bell beneath us broke the vision with its chime.

"Signors," quoth our gray attendant, "it is almost vesper time."

Vulgar life resumed its empire,-down we dropt from the sublime,

Here and there a friar passed us, as we paced the

silent streets,

And a cardinal's rumbling carriage roused the sleepers from the seats.

THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS.

PISA: THE DUOMO

Lo, this is like a song writ long ago,

Born of the easy strength of simpler days, Filled with the life of man, his joy, his praise, Marriage and childhood, love, and sin, and woe, Defeat and victory, and all men know

Of passionate remorses, and the stays That help the weary on life's rugged ways. A dreaming seraph felt this beauty grow

In sleep's pure hour, and with joy grown bold Set the fair vision in the thought of man; And Time, with antique tints of ivory wan,

And gentle industries of rain and light,

Its stones rejoiced, and o'er them crumbled gold Won from the boundaries of day and night.

SILAS WEIR MITCHELL.

BATHS OF LUCCA

WRITTEN AT THE BATHS OF LUCCA

THE fireflies, pulsing forth their rapid gleams,
Are the only light

That breaks the night;

A stream, that has the voice of many streams, Is the only sound

All around:

And we have found our way to the rude stone,
Where many a twilight we have sat alone,
Though in this summer-darkness never yet;
We have had happy, happy moments here,
We have had thoughts we never can forget,
Which will go on with us beyond the bier.

The very lineaments of thy dear face
I do not see, but yet its influence

I feel, even as my outward sense perceives
The freshening presence of the chestnut leaves,
Whose vaguest forms my eye can only trace,
By following where the darkness seems most dense.
What light, what sight, what form, can be to us
Beautiful as this gloom?

We have come down, alive and conscious,

Into a blesséd tomb:

We have left the world behind us,

Her vexations cannot find us,

There is something to gainsay
In the life of every day!

But in this delicious death
We let go our mortal breath,
Naught to feel and hear and see,
But our heart's felicity;

Naught with which to be at war,
Naught to fret our shame or pride,
Knowing only that we are,

Caring not what is beside.

LORD HOUGHTON.