Upon her head he heapt Mount Saturnal
Upon her bellie th' antique Palatine,
Upon her stomacke laid Mount Quirinal,
On her left hand the noysome Esquiline,

And Cælian on the right: but both her feete
Mount Viminal and Aventine doo meete.

JOACHIM DU BELLAY.

Tr. Edmund Spenser.

MONTE CAVALLO.

YE, too, marvellous twain, that erect on the Monte Cavallo

Stand by your rearing steeds in the grace of your motionless movement,

Stand with your upstretched arms and tranquil regardant faces,

Stand as instinct with life in the might of immutable manhood,

O ye mighty and strange, ye ancient divine ones of Hellas,

Are ye Christian too? to convert and redeem and

renew you,

Will the brief form have sufficed, that a pope has

set up on the apex

Of the Egyptian stone that o'ertops you, the Christian symbol?

And ye, silent, supreme in serene and victorious marble,

Ye that encircle the walls of the stately Vatican chambers,

Juno and Ceres, Minerva, Apollo, the Muses and Bacchus,

Ye unto whom far and near come posting the Christian pilgrims,

Ye that are ranged in the halls of the mystic Christian pontiff,

Are ye also baptised? are ye of the Kingdom of Heaven?

Utter, O some one, the word that shall reconcile Ancient and Modern!

Am I to turn me for this unto thee, great Chapel of Sixtus?

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.

THE CÆLIAN HILL

Of all the seven which Rome doth boast,
(Fair hills and nobly crowned!)

I love the Cælian Hill the most,
And think it holy ground.

"T was here the deacon Laurence died,
And here was Gregory's cell;

The heart by honors sorely tried
Remembered it right well;—

And as his pious envoys bore
The British cross on high,

He, like a sailor turned from shore,
Looked backward with a sigh,

And though he held within his hand
The Church from east to west,
He thought of all the Christian land
This Cælian Hill the best.

I cannot tell, I know not why,

But Rome from thence doth wear

Peculiar brightness in the sky
And beauty in the air.

A dreamy light is in the trees,
The winding walks are still,
And quietly the perfumed breeze
Creeps o'er the Cælian Hill.

As tranquil convents faintly chime
The passing hours of prayer,
They give the only hints that time
Has marked its progress there.

The martyr's home, the saint's retreat, Have filled the place with rest,

The centuries with silent feet

Have touched its leafy crest;

And Gregory, rising from his sleep,
Himself would scarcely know
That past of his was buried deep
A thousand years ago!

BESSIE RAYNER PARKES.

THE RUINES OF ROME

I

THOU stranger, which for Rome in Rome here seekest,

And nought of Rome in Rome perceivst at all, These same olde walls, olde arches, which thou

seest,

Olde palaces, is that which Rome men call.
Beholde what wreake, what ruine, and what wast,
And how that she, which with her mightie powre
Tam'd all the world, hath tam'd herselfe at last;
The pray of Time, which all things doth devowre!
Rome now of Rome is th' onely funerall,
And onely Rome of Rome hath victorie;
Ne ought save Tyber hastning to his fall
Remaines of all: O worlds inconstancie!

away,

That which is firme doth flit and fall
And that is flitting doth abide and stay.

II

These heapes of stones, these old wals, which ye

see,

Were first enclosures but of salvage soyle;
And these brave pallaces, which maystred bee
Of Time, were shepheards cottages somewhile.
Then tooke the shepheards kingly ornaments,
And the stout hynde arm'd his right hand with
steele:

Eftsoones their rule of yearely Presidents

Grew great, and sixe months greater a great deele;

Which, made perpetuall, rose to so great height, That thence th' Imperiall Eagle rooting tooke, Till th' heaven it selfe, opposing gainst her might, Her power to Peters successor betooke;

Who, shepheardlike, (as Fates the same foreseeing,)

Doth shew that all things turne to their first

being.

III

O that I had the Thracian Poets harpe,
For to awake out of th' infernall shade
Those antique Cæsars, sleeping long in darke,
The which this auncient Citie whilome made!
Or that I had Amphions instrument,
To quicken, with his vitall notes accord,
The stonie ioynts of these old walls now rent,
By which th' Ausonian light might be restor❜d!