"ITALIA, IO TI SALUTO!" To come back from the sweet South, to the North Amen, amen, say I. To see no more the country half my own, The South lies out of reach. But when our swallows fly back to the South, And the sweet name to my mouth. CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI. THE DAISY O LOVE, what hours were thine and mine Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine. What Roman strength Turbìa showed How like a gem, beneath, the city How richly down the rocky dell To meet the sun and sunny waters, What slender campanili grew By bays, the peacock's neck in hue; Where, here and there, on sandy beaches A milky-belled amaryllis blew. How young Columbus seemed to rove, Now watching high on mountain cornice, And steering, now, from a purple cove, Now pacing mute by ocean's rim I stayed the wheels at Cogoletto, Nor knew we well what pleased us most, Not the clipt palm of which they boast; But distant colour, happy hamlet, A mouldered citadel on the coast, Or tower, or high hill-convent, seen Or olive-hoary cape in ocean; Where oleanders flushed the bed We loved that hall, though white and cold, Those nichéd shapes of noble mould, A princely people's awful princes, The grave, severe Genovese of old. At Florence, too, what golden hours What drives about the fresh Cascinè, In bright vignettes, and each complete, Or palace, how the city glittered, But when we crost the Lombard plain Of rain at Reggio, rain at Parma; And stern and sad (so rare the smiles O Milan, O the chanting quires, The height, the space, the gloom, the glory! A mount of marble, a hundred spires! I climbed the roofs at break of day; I stood among the silent statues, How faintly flushed, how phantom-fair, A thousand shadowy-pencilled valleys Remember how we came at last Had blown the lake beyond his limit, From Como, when the light was gray, Of Lari Maxume, all the way Like ballad-burden music kept, To that fair port below the castle Or hardly slept, but watched awake The moonlight touching o'er a terrace One tall Agavè above the lake. What more? we took our last adieu, But ere we reached the highest summit I plucked a daisy, I gave it you. It told of England then to me, O love, we two shall go no longer So dear a life your arms enfold Whose crying is a cry for gold: Yet here to-night in this dark city, When ill and weary, alone and cold, I found, tho' crush'd to hard and dry, This nursling of another sky Still in the little book you lent me, And where you tenderly laid it by: |