MONTEPULCIANO

MONTEPULCIANO WINE

HEARKEN, all earth!

We, Bacchus, in the might of our great mirth, To all who reverence us, and are right thinkers ;Hear, all ye drinkers!

Give ear, and give faith, to our edict divine,— Multepulciano's the King of all Wine!

At these glad sounds,

The Nymphs, in giddy rounds,

Shaking their ivy diadems and grapes,

Echoed the triumph in a thousand shapes.

The Satyrs would have joined them; but alas!

They couldn't; for they lay about the grass,

As drunk as apes.

FRANCESCO REDI.

Tr. Leigh Hunt.

LAKE THRASYMENE

LINES

WRITTEN AT THE VILLAGE OF PASSIGNANO, ON THE
LAKE OF THRASYMENE

THE mountains stand about the quiet lake,
That not a breath its azure calm may break;
No leaf of these sere olive-trees is stirred,
In the near silence far-off sounds are heard;
The tiny bat is flitting overhead;

The hawthorn doth its richest odours shed
Into the dewy air; and over all,

Veil after veil, the evening shadows fall,

Withdrawing one by one each glimmering height,
The far, and then the nearer, from our sight,-
No sign surviving in this tranquil scene,
That strife and savage tumult here have been.

Of

But if the pilgrim to the latest plain

carnage, where the blood like summer rain Fell but the other day,—if in his mind

He marvels much and oftentimes to find
With what success has Nature each sad trace

Of man's red footmarks labored to efface,-
What wonder, if this spot we tread appears
Guiltless of strife, when now two thousand years
Of daily reparation have gone by,

Since it resumed its own tranquillity?
This calm has nothing strange, yet not the less
This holy evening's solemn quietness,
The perfect beauty of this windless lake,
This stillness which no harsher murmurs break
Than the frogs croaking from the distant sedge,
These vineyards dressed unto the water's edge,
This hind that homeward driving the slow steer
Tells how man's daily work goes forward here,
Have each a power upon me while I drink
The influence of the placid time, and think
How gladly that sweet Mother once again
Resumes her sceptre and benignant reign,
But for a few short instants scared away
By the mad game, the cruel, impious fray
Of her distempered children,-how comes back,
And leads them in the customary track
Of blessing once again; to order brings
Anew the dislocated frame of things,
And covers up, and out of sight conceals

What they have wrought of ill, or gently heals.
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH.

THRASYMENE

Is this the spot where Rome's eternal foe
Into his snares the mighty legions drew,
Whence from the carnage, spiritless and few,
A remnant scarcely reached her gates of woe?
Is this the stream, thus gliding soft and slow,
That, from the gushing wounds of thousands,

grew

So fierce a flood, that waves of crimson hue
Rushed on the bosom of the lake below?
The mountains that gave back the battle-cry
Are silent now;-perchance yon hillocks green
Mark where the bones of those old warriors lie!
Heaven never gladdened a more peaceful scene;
Never left softer breeze a fairer sky

To sport upon thy waters, Thrasymene.

CHARLES STRONG.

FAREWELL TO TUSCANY

WE

pass;

but they remain.

What though our feet upon this mountain stair Be upward, backward bent

Beneath the cold unpitying firmament,

With stress and strain;

Yet all that was so passing fair,

We leave behind us in the warm transparent air.

We carry memories too:

Sad phantoms of the days we reckoned dear; Strong tyrannous desires,

With hands that cling and eyes whose tears are fires:

The wine is new

Still on our lips of autumn here,

Which we too soon shall change for Alpine winter drear.

Florence lies far behind;

Her grave grey palace-fronts, her lily towers; The curves of Arno bright

With star-set lamps that tremble in the night;

Her wild west wind,

That shook those lightning-smitten showers And flakes of sunbeams on the pale October flowers.

How far the dancing waves

Of Spezia, where the silvered olives sleep,
And flower-sprent myrtle sprays

Sweeten the sunny air by silent bays!

The calm sea laves

Those crags-but not for us-and deep

Dreams on the sapphire cliffs and stairs of

marble steep.