THE RIVER PO

THE PO

THE Po, that, rushing with uncommon force,
O'ersets whole woods in its tumultuous course,
And, rising from Hesperia's watery veins,
The exhausted land of all its moisture drains-
The Po, as sings the fable, first conveyed
Its wandering current through a poplar shade:
For when your Phaeton mistook his way,
Lost and confounded in the blaze of day,
This river, with surviving streams supplied,
When all the rest of the whole earth was dried,
And nature's self lay ready to expire,

Quenched the dire flame that set the world on fire.

LUCAN.

Tr. Joseph Addison.

STANZAS TO THE PO.

RIVER, that rollest by the ancient walls,
Where dwells the lady of my love, when she
Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls
A faint and fleeting memory of me;

What if thy deep and ample stream should be
A mirror of my heart, where she may read
The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,
Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed!

What do I say,—a mirror of my heart?

Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong? Such as my feelings were and are, thou art;

And such as thou art, were my passions long.

Time may have somewhat tamed them,-not for

ever;

Thou overflow'st thy banks and not for aye Thy bosom overboils, congenial river!

Thy floods subside, and mine have sunk away.

But left long wrecks behind, and now again,
Borne in our old unchanged career, we move;
Thou tendest wildly onwards to the main,
And I to loving one I should not love.

The current I behold will sweep beneath

Her native walls, and murmur at her feet; Her eyes will look on thee, when she shall breathe The twilight air unharmed by summer's heat.

She will look on thee,-I have looked on thee,

Full of that thought; and from that moment,

ne'er

Thy waters could I dream of, name, or see,

Without the inseparable sigh of her!

Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream,—
Yes! they will meet the wave I gaze on now;
Mine cannot witness, even in a dream,

That happy wave repass me in its flow!

The wave that bears my tears returns no more Will she return by whom that wave shall sweep? Both tread thy banks, both wander on thy shore, I by the source, she by the dark-blue deep.

But that which keepeth us apart is not

Distance, nor depth of wave, nor space of earth, But the distraction of a various lot,

As various as the climates of our birth.

A stranger loves the lady of the land,

Born far beyond the mountains, but his blood Is all meridian, as if never fanned

By the black wind that chills the polar flood.

My blood is all meridian; were it not,

I had not left my clime, nor should I be,
In spite of tortures ne'er to be forgot,
A slave again of love,—at least of thee.

'Tis vain to struggle,—let me perish young,-
Live as I lived, and love as I have loved;
To dust if I return, from dust I sprung,

And then, at least, my heart can ne'er be moved.

LORD BYRON.

THE RIVIERA

RIVIERA DI PONENTE

On this lovely Western shore, where no tempests rage and roar,

Over olive-bearing mountains, by the deep and vio

let sea,

There, through each long happy day, winding slowly on our way,

Travellers from across the ocean, toward Italia journeyed we,―

Each long day, that, richer, fairer,
Showed the charming Riviera.

There black war-ships doze at anchor, in the Bay of Villa-Franca;

Eagle-like, gray Esa, clinging to its rocky perch looks down;

And upon the mountain dim, ruined, shattered, stern, and grim,

Turbia sees us through the ages with its austere
Roman frown,—

While we climb, where cooler, rarer
Breezes sweep the Riviera.

Down the hillside steep and stony, through the old streets of Mentone,

Quiet, half-forgotten city of a drowsy prince and

time,

Through the mild Italian midnight, rolls upon the wave the moonlight,

Murmuring in our dreams the cadence of a strange
Ligurian rhyme,—

Rhymes in which each heart is sharer,
Journeying on the Riviera.

When the morning air comes purer, creeping up in our vettura,

Eastward gleams a rosy tumult with the rising of

the day.

Toward the north, with gradual changes, steal along the mountain-ranges

Tender tints of warmer feeling, kissing all their peaks of gray;

And far south the waters wear a

Smile along the Riviera.

Helmed with snow, the Alpine giants at invaders look defiance,

Gazing over nearer summits, with a fixed, mysterious stare,

Down along the shaded ocean, on whose edge in tremulous motion