But you can see the villa any day,
And I am wearying you. Yet all these things
Are beads upon the rosary of youth,
And just to say their names recalls those hours
So full of joy,—each bead is like a prayer.
How many an hour I've sat and dreamed of them!
And dear Siena, with its Campo tower
That seems to fall against the trooping clouds,
And the great Duomo with its pavement rich,
Till sick at heart I felt that I must die.
People are kneeling there upon it now,
But I shall never kneel there any more;
And bells rings out on happy festivals,
And all the pious people flock to mass,
But I shall never go there any more.
How all these little things come back to me
That I shall never see,-no, nevermore!
O, kiss the pavement, dear, when you go back!
Whisper a prayer for me where once I knelt,
And tell the dead stones how I love them still.
WILLIAM WETMORE STORY.
MONTEPULCIANO WINE
HEARKEN, all earth!
We, Bacchus, in the might of our great mirth, To all who reverence us, and are right thinkers ;Hear, all ye drinkers!
Give ear, and give faith, to our edict divine,Multepulciano's the King of all Wine!
At these glad sounds,
The Nymphs, in giddy rounds,
Shaking their ivy diadems and grapes,
Echoed the triumph in a thousand shapes.
The Satyrs would have joined them; but alas!
They couldn't; for they lay about the grass,
WRITTEN AT THE VILLAGE OF PASSIGNANO, ON THE
THE mountains stand about the quiet lake,
That not a breath its azure calm may break;
No leaf of these sere olive-trees is stirred,
In the near silence far-off sounds are heard;
The tiny bat is flitting overhead;
The hawthorn doth its richest odours shed
Into the dewy air; and over all,
Veil after veil, the evening shadows fall,
Withdrawing one by one each glimmering height,
The far, and then the nearer, from our sight,—
No sign surviving in this tranquil scene,
That strife and savage tumult here have been.
But if the pilgrim to the latest plain
Of carnage, where the blood like summer rain
Fell but the other day,—if in his mind
He marvels much and oftentimes to find
With what success has Nature each sad trace
Of man's red footmarks labored to efface,-
What wonder, if this spot we tread appears
Guiltless of strife, when now two thousand years
Of daily reparation have gone by,
Since it resumed its own tranquillity?
This calm has nothing strange, yet not the less
This holy evening's solemn quietness,
The perfect beauty of this windless lake,
This stillness which no harsher murmurs break
Than the frogs croaking from the distant sedge,
These vineyards dressed unto the water's edge,
This hind that homeward driving the slow steer
Tells how man's daily work goes forward here,
Have each a power upon me while I drink
The influence of the placid time, and think
How gladly that sweet Mother once again
Resumes her sceptre and benignant reign,
But for a few short instants scared away
By the mad game, the cruel, impious fray
Of her distempered children,-how comes back,
And leads them in the customary track
Of blessing once again; to order brings
Anew the dislocated frame of things,
And covers up, and out of sight conceals
What they have wrought of ill, or gently heals.
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH.
Is this the spot where Rome's eternal foe
Into his snares the mighty legions drew,
Whence from the carnage, spiritless and few,
A remnant scarcely reached her gates of woe?
Is this the stream, thus gliding soft and slow,
That, from the gushing wounds of thousands,
grew
So fierce a flood, that waves of crimson hue
Rushed on the bosom of the lake below?
The mountains that gave back the battle-cry
Are silent now;-perchance yon hillocks green
Mark where the bones of those old warriors lie!
Heaven never gladdened a more peaceful scene;
Never left softer breeze a fairer sky
To sport upon thy waters, Thrasymene.
WE pass; but they remain.
What though our feet upon this mountain stair Be upward, backward bent
Beneath the cold unpitying firmament,
With stress and strain;
Yet all that was so passing fair,
We leave behind us in the warm transparent air.
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