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Hear us that ocean's pavement skim,

And join our anthem to the raging sea:
In mare irato, in subita procella,
Invoco te, nostra benigna stella.

And when the tempest's wrath is o'er,
And tried Libeccio sinks to rest,
And starlight falls upon the shore
Where love is watching, uncaressed,

Though hushed the tumult and the roar,
Again the prayer we'll chant which thou hast

blest;

In mare irato, in subita procella,

Invoco te, nostra benigna stella.

THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS.

COGOLETO

BOYHOOD OF COLUMBUS

I KNOW not when this hope enthralled me first,
But from my boyhood up I loved to hear
The tall pine-forests of the Apennine
Murmur their hoary legends of the sea,
Which hearing, I in vision clear beheld
The sudden dark of tropic night shut down
O'er the huge whisper of great watery wastes,
The while a pair of herons trailingly

Flapped inland, where some league-wide river hurled

The yellow spoil of unconjectured realms

Far through a gulf's green silence, never scarred
By any but the North-wind's hurrying keels,
And not the pines alone; all sights and sounds
To my world-seeking heart and fealty
And catered for it as the Cretan bees
Brought honey to the baby Jupiter,
Who in his soft hand crushed a violet,
Godlike foremusing the rough thunder's gripe;
Then did I entertain the poet's song,

My great Idea's guest, and, passing o'er
That iron bridge the Tuscan built to hell,

The western main shook growling, and still gnawed
I heard Ulysses tell of mountain-chains
Whose adamantine links, his manacles,

I brooded on the wise Athenian's tale

Of happy Atlantis, and heard Bjorne's keel
Crunch the gray pebbles of the Vinland shore:
For I believed the poets; it is they

Who utter wisdom from the central deep,
And, listening to the inner flow of things,
Speak to the age out of eternity.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

GENOA

APPROACH TO GENOA

Ar length the day departed, and the moon
Rose like another sun, illuminating

Waters and woods and cloud-capt promontories,
Glades for a hermit's cell, a lady's bower,
Scenes of Elysium, such as Night alone
Reveals below, nor often,-scenes that fled
As at the waving of a wizard's wand,
And left behind them, as their parting gift,
A thousand nameless odors. All was still;
And now the nightingale her song poured forth
In such a torrent of heartfelt delight,

So fast it flowed, her tongue so voluble,

As if she thought her hearers would be gone

Ere half was told. "T was where in the northwest,
Still unassailed and unassailable,

Thy pharos, Genoa, first displayed itself,
Burning in stillness on its craggy seat;

That guiding star so oft the only one,

When those now glowing in the azure vault
Are dark and silent. "T was where o'er the sea

(For we were now within a cable's length)
Delicious gardens hung; green galleries,

And marble terraces in many a flight,

And fairy arches flung from cliff to cliff,
'Wildering, enchanting; and, above them all,
A palace, such as somewhere in the East,
In Zenastan or Araby the blest,

Among its golden groves and fruits of gold,
And fountains scattering rainbows in the sky,
Rose, when Aladdin rubbed the wondrous lamp;
Such, if not fairer; and, when we shot by,
A scene of revelry, in long array,

As with the radiance of the setting sun,
The windows blazing. But we now approached
A city far-renowned; and wonder ceased.

SAMUEL ROGERS.

GENOA

NIGHT AT THE PARADISO

AH! what avails it, Genoa, now to thee

That Doria, feared by monarchs, once was thine? Univied ruin! in thy sad decline

From virtuous greatness, what avails that he Whose prow descended first the Hesperian sea, And gave our world her mate beyond the brine, Was nurtured, whilst an infant, at thy knee?— All things must perish,—all but things divine. Flowers, and the stars, and virtue,-these alone, The self-subsisting shapes, or self-renewing,

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