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The children of the sea? what age, what name, Bore they who chose this plain their home to

be?

Arena meted for the race of fame:

For gods to applaud the deeds of liberty, Knowledge, and glorious art, that flows but from the free.

JOHN EDMUND READE.

PÆSTUM

THERE, down Salerno's bay,
In deserts far away,
Over whose solitudes

The dread malaria broods,
No labour tills the land,-
Only the fierce brigand,
Or shepherd, wan and lean,
O'er the wide plains is seen.
Yet there, a lovely dream,
There Grecian temples gleam,
Whose form and mellowed tone

Rival the Parthenon.

The Sybarite no more
Comes hither to adore,
With perfumed offering,
The ocean god and king.

The deity is fled

Long since, but, in his stead,
The smiling sea is seen,

The Doric shafts between;
And round the time-worn base
Climb vines of tender grace,
And Pæstum's roses still

The air with fragrance fill.

CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRanch.

POSILIPO

THE VOYAGE AROUND POSILIPO

I

I CAME from Naples at break of day
And cast my cares in the shimmering bay.
The heaving row-boat gently rocked me,
And on the left Vesuvius mocked me,
Transforming his ill-starred, sinister steam
To faery haze in the first sunbeam.
I turned from the giant to see the city
Awake and make herself look pretty,
Adorning her head with a crown of castles,
And being bathed by the waves, her vassals.
I followed the hem of her garment damp
Toward the outermost verge of her regal camp.
Toledo-noises died away;

I only heard my oars at play.

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And where a hill was all in bloom

I raised my hat to Virgil's tomb.

II

I slipped along the seashore. Bright
Posilipo upon my right.

Leftward a lovely island lay

Before the ships that left the bay.
When I saw Capri I grew serious,

For thither the vile wolf Tiberius
Once fled from Rome in fierce disgust,
To wallow in his horrid lust.
I promptly turned my eyes away
To where a bed of flowers lay,
Tufting a headland gorgeously,
And fringed by an unruffled sea.
Huge boulders lent their harsh effect,
Steep hills leaped from the water, decked
With bright straw here, and there with vines;
With palm-trees here and there with pines.
Now scattered houses came to view,

The new made old and the old made new.

Then, ruins rising from the sea,
Vocal of dead pomposity,

Where Romans once built on the strand,

Unsatisfied with the solid land.

FRIEDERICH RUECKERT.

Tr. Robert Haven Schauffler.

VIRGIL'S TOMB

"Cecini pascua, rura, duces” ON an olive-crested steep

Hanging o'er the dusty road, Lieth in his last abode, Wrapped in everlasting sleep,

He who in the days of yore

Sang of pastures, sang of farms,
Sang of heroes and their arms,
Sang of passion, sang of war.

When the lark at dawning tells,
Herald-like, the coming day,
And along the dusty way
Comes the sound of tinkling bells,

Rising to the tomb aloft,

While some modern Corydon Drives his bleating cattle on From the stable to the croft:

Then the soul of Virgil seems
To awaken from its dreams,

To sing again the melodies
Of which he often tells,-
The music of the birds,
The lowing of the herds,
The tinkling of the bells.

ROBERT CAMERON ROGERS.

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