All charm the ravished sense, and dull is he Who, cold, unmoved, such glorious scene can see.
Here did the famed Catullus rove and dream,
And godlike Pliny drink of Wisdom's stream;
Wronged by his friends, and exiled by his foes,
Amid these vales did Dante breathe his woes,
Raise demons up, call seraphs from the sky,
And frame the dazzling verse that ne'er shall die.
Here, too, hath Fiction weaved her loveliest spell,
Visions of beauty float o'er crag and dell;
But chief we seem to hear at evening hour
The sigh of Juliet in her starlit bower,
Follow her form slow gliding through the gloom,
And drop a tear above her mouldered tomb.
Sweet are these thoughts, and in such favoured
Methinks life's stormiest skies might grow serene,
Care smooth her brow, the troubled heart find rest,
And, spite of crime and passion, man be blest.
But to our theme: The pilgrim comes to trace
Verona's ruins, not bright Nature's face;
Be still, chase lightsome fancies, ere thou dare
Approach yon pile, so grand yet softly fair;
The mighty circle, breathing beauty, seems
The work of genii in immortal dreams.
So firm the mass, it looks as built to vie
With Alp's eternal ramparts towering nigh.
Its graceful strength each lofty portal keeps,
Unbroken round the first great cincture sweeps;
The marble benches, tier on tier, ascend,
The winding galleries seem to know no end.
Glistening and pure, the summer sunbeams fall,
Softening each sculptured arch and rugged wall.
We tread the arena; blood no longer flows,
But in the sand the pale-eyed violet blows,
While ivy, covering many a bench, is seen,
Staining its white with lines of liveliest green,-
Age-honouring plant! that weds not buildings gay,
With love, still faithful, clinging to decay.
VERONA! thy tall gardens stand erect
Beckoning me upward. Let me rest awhile
Where the birds whistle hidden in the boughs,
Or fly away when idlers take their place,
Mated as well, concealed as willingly;
Idlers whose nest must not swing there, but rise
Beneath a gleamy canopy of gold,
Amid the flight of Cupids, and the smiles
Of Venus ever radiant o'er their couch.
Here would I stay, here wander, slumber here,
Nor pass into that theatre below
Crowded with their faint memories, shades of joy.
But ancient song arouses me; I hear
Coelius and Anfilena; I behold
Lesbia, and Lesbia's linnet at her lip
Pecking the fruit that ripens and swells out
For him whose song the Graces loved the most,
Whatever land, east, west, they visited.
Even he must not detain me: one there is
Greater than he, of broader wing, or swoop
Sublimer. Open now that humid arch
Where Juliet sleeps the quiet sleep of death,
And Romeo sinks aside her.
Lovers! Ye have not loved in vain: the hearts
Of millions throb around ye. This lone tomb
One greater than yon walls have ever seen,
Greater than Mantua's prophet eye foresaw
In her own child or Rome's hath hallowéd;
And the last sod or stone a pilgrim knee
Shall press (Love swears it, and swears true) is
here.
Walter Savage Landor.
How STEEP the stairs within King's houses are For exile-wearied feet as mine to tread, And O how salt and bitter is the bread
Which falls from this Hound's table,-better far
That I had died in the red ways of war,
Or that the gate of Florence bare my head, Than to live thus, by all things comraded Which seek the essence of my soul to mar.
"Curse God and die: what better hope than this? He hath forgotten thee in all the bliss
Of his gold city, and eternal day”-
Nay peace: behind my prison's blinded bars
I do possess what none can take away,
My love, and all the glory of the stars.
OSCAR WILDE.
BEFORE THE OLD CASTLE OF VERONA
GREEN Adige, 'twas thus in rapid course
And powerful, that thou didst murmur 'neath
The Roman bridges sparkling from thy stream
Thine ever-running song unto the sun,
When Odoacer, giving way before
The onrush of Theodoric, fell back,
And midst the bloody wrack about them passed
Into this fair Verona blonde and straight
Barbarian women in their chariots, singing
Songs unto Odin; while the Italian folk
Gathered about their Bishop and put forth
To meet the Goths the supplicating Cross.
Thus from the mountains rigid with their snows,
In all the placid winter's silver gladness
To-day thou still, O tireless fugitive,
Dost murmuring pass upon thy way, beneath
The Scaligers' old battlemented bridge,
Betwixt time-blackened piles and squalid trees,
To far-off hills serene, and to the towers
Whence weep the mourning banners for the day,
Returning now, which saw the death of him
Whom a free Italy first chose her king.
Still, Adige, thou singest as of yore
Thine ever-running song unto the sun.
I, too, fair river, sing, and this my song
Would put the centuries into little verse;
And palpitating to each thought, my heart
Follows the stanza's upward-quivering flight.
But with the years, my verse will dull and fade;
Thou, Adige, the eternal poet art,
Who still when of these hills the turret crown
Is shattered into fragments, and the snake
Sits hissing in the sunlight where now stands
The great basilica, St. Zeno's fane-
Still in the desert solitudes wilt voice
The sleepless tedium of the infinite.
GIOSUÉ CARDUCCI.
Tr. M. W. Arms.
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