By the many hundred years red-rusted,
Rough iron-spik'd, ripe fruit o'ercrusted,
My sentinel to guard the sands
To the water's edge. For, what expands
Before the house, but the great opaque
Blue breadth of sea without a break?
While, in the house, for ever crumbles
Soine fragment of the frescoed walls,
From blisters where a scorpion sprawls.
A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles
Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons,
And says there's news to-day-the king
Was shot at, touch'd in the liver-wing,
Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling:
-She hopes they have not caught the felons.
Italy, my Italy!
Queen Mary's saying serves for me—
(When fortune's malice
Lost her Calais)
Open my heart and you will see
Grav'd inside of it, "Italy."
Such lovers old are I and she:
So it always was, so shall ever be.
CROSS Adria's gulf, and land where softly glide
A stream's crisp waves, to join blue Ocean's tide;
Still westward hold thy way, till Alps look down
On old Verona's walled and classic town.
Fair is the prospect; palace, tower, and spire,
And blossomed grove, the eye might well admire;
Heaven-piercing mountains capped with endless
Where winter reigns, and frowns on earth below;
Old castles crowning many a craggy steep,
From which in silver sounding torrents leap:
Southward the plain where Summer builds her
bowers,
And floats on downy gales the soul of flowers;
Where orange-blossoms glad the honeyed bee,
And vines in festoons wave from tree to tree;
While, like a streak of sky from heaven let fall,
The deep blue river, glittering, winds through all;
The woods that whisper to the zephyr's kiss,
Where nymphs might taste again Arcadian bliss;
The sun-bright hills that bound the distant view,
And melt like mists in skies of tenderest blue-
All charm the ravished sense, and dull is he Who, cold, unmoved, such glorious scene can see.
Here did the famed Catullus rove and dream,
And godlike Pliny drink of Wisdom's stream;
Wronged by his friends, and exiled by his foes,
Amid these vales did Dante breathe his woes,
Raise demons up, call seraphs from the sky,
And frame the dazzling verse that ne'er shall die.
Here, too, hath Fiction weaved her loveliest spell,
Visions of beauty float o'er crag and dell;
But chief we seem to hear at evening hour
The sigh of Juliet in her starlit bower,
Follow her form slow gliding through the gloom,
And drop a tear above her mouldered tomb.
Sweet are these thoughts, and in such favoured
Methinks life's stormiest skies might grow serene,
Care smooth her brow, the troubled heart find rest,
And, spite of crime and passion, man be blest.
But to our theme: The pilgrim comes to trace
Verona's ruins, not bright Nature's face;
Be still, chase lightsome fancies, ere thou dare
Approach yon pile, so grand yet softly fair;
The mighty circle, breathing beauty, seems
The work of genii in immortal dreams.
So firm the mass, it looks as built to vie
With Alp's eternal ramparts towering nigh.
Its graceful strength each lofty portal keeps,
Unbroken round the first great cincture sweeps;
The marble benches, tier on tier, ascend,
The winding galleries seem to know no end.
Glistening and pure, the summer sunbeams fall,
Softening each sculptured arch and rugged wall.
We tread the arena; blood no longer flows,
But in the sand the pale-eyed violet blows,
While ivy, covering many a bench, is seen,
Staining its white with lines of liveliest green,-
Age-honouring plant! that weds not buildings gay,
With love, still faithful, clinging to decay.
NICHOLAS MITCHELL.
VERONA! thy tall gardens stand erect
Beckoning me upward. Let me rest awhile
Where the birds whistle hidden in the boughs,
Or fly away when idlers take their place,
Mated as well, concealed as willingly;
Idlers whose nest must not swing there, but rise
Beneath a gleamy canopy of gold,
Amid the flight of Cupids, and the smiles
Of Venus ever radiant o'er their couch.
Here would I stay, here wander, slumber here,
Nor pass into that theatre below
Crowded with their faint memories, shades of joy.
But ancient song arouses me; I hear
Coelius and Anfilena; I behold
Lesbia, and Lesbia's linnet at her lip
Pecking the fruit that ripens and swells out
For him whose song the Graces loved the most,
Whatever land, east, west, they visited.
Even he must not detain me: one there is
Greater than he, of broader wing, or,swoop
Sublimer. Open now that humid arch
Where Juliet sleeps the quiet sleep of death,
And Romeo sinks aside her.
Lovers! Ye have not loved in vain: the hearts
Of millions throb around ye. This lone tomb
One greater than yon walls have ever seen,
Greater than Mantua's prophet eye foresaw
In her own child or Rome's hath hallowéd;
And the last sod or stone a pilgrim knee
Shall press (Love swears it, and swears true) is
here.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
How STEEP the stairs within King's houses are For exile-wearied feet as mine to tread,
And O how salt and bitter is the bread
Which falls from this Hound's table,-better far
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