For we had wandered long among those hills,
Watching the white goats on precipitous heights,
Half hid among the bushes, or their young
Tending new-yeaned: and we had paused to hear
The deep-toned music of the convent bells,
And wound through many a verdant forest-path,
Gathering the crocus and anemone,
With that fresh gladness which, when flowers are
In the first spring, they bring us, till at last
We issued out upon an eminence,
Commanding prospect large on every side,
But largest where the world's great city lay,
Whose features, undistinguishable now,
Allowed no recognition, save where the eye
Could mark the white front of the Lateran
Facing this way, or rested on the dome,
The broad stupendous dome, high over all.
And as a sea around an island's roots
Spreads, so the level champaign every way
Stretched round the city, level all, and green
With the new vegetation of the spring;
Nor by the summer ardours scorched as yet,
Which shot from southern suns, too soon dry up
The beauty and the freshness of the plains;
While to the right the ridge of Apennine,
Its higher farther summits all snow-crowned,
Rose, with white clouds above them, as might seem
Another range of more aerial hills.
These things were at a distance, but more near And at our feet signs of the tide of life, That once was here, and now had ebbed away,Pavements entire, without one stone displaced, Where yet there had not rolled a chariot-wheel For many hundred years; rich cornices, Elaborate friezes of rare workmanship, And broken shafts of columns, that along
This highway-side lay prone; vaults that were
And hollowed from the turf, and cased in stone,
Seats and gradations of a theater,
Which emptied of its population now
Shall never be refilled: and all these things,
Memorials of the busy life of man,
Or of his ample means for pomp and pride,
Scattered among the solitary hills,
And lying open to the sun and showers,
And only visited at intervals
By wandering herds, or pilgrims like ourselves
From distant lands; with now no signs of life,
Save where the goldfinch built his shallow nest
Mid the low bushes, or where timidly
The rapid lizard glanced between the stones,-
All saying that the fashion of this world
Passes away; that not philosophy
Nor eloquence can guard their dearest haunts
From the rude touch of desecrating time.
What marvel, when the very fanes of God,
The outward temples of the Holy One,
Claim no exemption from the general doom,
But lie in ruinous heaps; when nothing stands,
Nor may endure to the end, except alone
The spiritual temple built with living stones?
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH.
TO THE FOUNTAIN AT FRASCATI
NoT by Aldobrandini's watery show,
Still plashing at his portal never dumb,
Minished of my devotion, shalt thou come,
Leaving thy natural fount on Algido,
Wild winged daughter of the Sabine snow;
Now creeping under quiet Tusculum;
Now gushing from those caverns old and numb;
Dull were his heart who gazed upon thee so.
Emblem thou art of Time, memorial stream,
Which in ten thousand fancies, being here,
We waste, or use, or fashion, as we deem;
But if its backward voice comes ever near, As thine upon the hill, how doth it seem Solemn and stern, sepulchral and severe! LORD HANMER.
CIVITA LAVINIA (LANUVIUM)
"Festo quid potius die
Neptuni faciam."
-Horace, Odes, iii-28.
SPRING grew to perfect summer in one day,
And we lay there among the vines, to gaze
Where Circe's isle floats purple far away
Above the golden haze:
And on our ears there seemed to rise and fall
The burden of an old world song we knew,
That sang, "To-day is Neptune's festival,
And we, what shall we do?"
Go down, brown-armed Campagna maid of mine,
And bring again the earthen jar that lies
With three years' dust above the mellow wine;
And while the swift day dies,
You first shall sing a song of waters blue,
Paphos and Cnidos in the summer seas,
And one who guides her swan-drawn chariot through
The white-shored Cyclades;
And I will take the second turn of song,
Of floating tresses in the foam and surge Where Nereid maids about the sea-god throng; And night shall have her dirge.
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