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
In mare irato, in subita procella,
Invoco te, nostra benigna stella.
THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS.
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.
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.
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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