Who spreadest heaven around it,

Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it; Who sittest in thy star, o'er Ocean's western floor; Spirit of beauty! at whose soft command The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison From the Earth's bosom chill;

O, bid those beams be each a blinding brand Of lightning! bid those showers be dews of poison! Bid the Earth's plenty kill!

Bid thy bright Heaven above,

Whilst light and darkness bound it,
Be their tomb who planned

To make it ours and thine!

Or, with thine harmonising ardours fill
And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon
Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire!
Be man's high hope and unextinct desire
The instrument to work thy will divine!

Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards,

And frowns and fears from thee,
Would not more swiftly flee,

Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds.
Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine
Thou yieldest or withholdest, O, let be
This city of thy worship, ever free!

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

STANZAS

WRITTEN IN DEJECTION NEAR NAPLES

THE sun is warm, the sky is clear,

The waves are dancing fast and bright, Blue isles and snowy mountains wear

The purple noon's transparent might; The breath of the moist earth is light, Around its unexpanded buds;

Like many a voice of one delight,

The winds, the birds, the ocean floods, The city's voice itself is soft like solitude's.

I see the deep's untrampled floor

With green and purple sea-weeds strown; I see the waves upon the shore,

Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown; I sit upon the sands alone,

The lightning of the noontide ocean Is flashing round me, and a tone

Arises from its measured motion, How sweet! did any heart now share in

my

Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth,
The sage in meditation found,

emotion.

And walked with inward glory crowned,—
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Others I see whom these surround;

Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

Yet now despair itself is mild,

Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne, and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air

My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

Some might lament that I were cold,
As I when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan;
They might lament, for I am one

Whom men love not,-and yet regret,

Unlike this day, which, when the sun
Shall on its stainless glory set,

Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory

yet.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

PALM SUNDAY: NAPLES

BECAUSE it is the day of Palms,

Carry a palm for me,

Carry a palm in Santa Chiara,

And I will watch the sea;

There are no palms in Santa Chiara

To-day or any day for me.

I sit and watch the little sail

Lean side-ways on the sea,

The sea is blue from here to Sorrento

And the sea-wind comes to me,

And I see the white clouds lift from Sorrento

And the dark sail lean upon the sea.

I have grown tired of all these things,
And what is left for me?

I have no place in Santa Chiara,
There is no peace upon the sea;

But carry a palm in Santa Chiara,
Carry a palm for me.

ARTHUR SYMONS.

A NIGHT IN NAPLES

THIS is the one night in all the year

When the faithful of Naples who love their priest
May find their faith and their wealth increased;
For just as the stroke of midnight is here,

Those who with faithful undoubting mind
Their "Aves" mutter, their rosaries tell,
They without doubt shall a recompence find;
Yea, their faith indeed shall profit them well.

Therefore, to-night, in the hot thronged street
By San Gennaro's, the people devout,

With banner, and relic, and thurible meet,
With some sacred image to marshal them out.

For a few days hence, the great lottery
Of the sinful city declared will be,

And it may be that Aves and Paters said

Will bring some aid from the realms of the dead.

And so to the terrible place of the tomb
They issue, a pitiful crowd, through the gloom,
To where all the dead of the city decay,
Waiting the trump of the judgment day.

For every day of the circling year
Brings its own sum of corruption here;
Every day has its great pit, fed

With its dreadful heap of the shroudless dead.