The background of all Naples life,
The nightmare of its dream.
O lovely, lovely Italy,
I yield me to thy spell!
Reach the guitar, my dearest friend,
We'll sing, "Home! fare thee well!"
O world of work and noise,
What spell hast thou for me?
The siren Beauty charms me here
LOOKING BACK
(At Sorrento, March, 1864.)
WHY murmur, why look back, my soul?
Six long years like an ocean roll
Between thy youth and thee.
Thou hast the present; keep that fast:
Trust not the future; drown the past:
What thou art, learn to be.
Deep orange groves by Naples' shore,
Warm slopes with laughing olives hoar,
The myrtle by the bay:
Bright flowers that in the thickets blow,
Soft airs that melt the mountain snow,
Showers weeping silver spray:
All these thou hast; and dost thou sigh
For Clifton's oft beclouded sky,
Her woods and barren down;
The tawny strait, the narrow stream,
The cliff where thou wast wont to dream
The tumult of the town;
The old Cathedral, quaint and grey,
Where stately service, day by day,
From choir and organ pealed;
The little face, loved long ago,
The thrilling treble, faint and low,
The pain its music healed?
The memory of that sacred spring
Still stirs my soul to sorrowing;
She cannot choose but sigh.
I dwelt as in a magic isle
With fairy fancies to beguile
My life's monotony.
Love was the wand I swayed at will:
Not Ischia's slope nor Capri's hill
Have joys so fair and free,
As in that brief enchanted spring
From every humble household thing
I fashioned for my glee.
Too soon it fled; and year by year
Came slowly trooping care and fear
Spent powers and clouded faith:
A sorrow to my spirit clung-
A pang, not mine, whose poison stung
The soul it could not scathe.
Nor health nor hope remained; I fled
From land to land; my weary head
In strangers' homes I laid:
And now, by fair Sorrento's bay,
I sit and sigh this sweet spring day,
Beneath the olive shade.
The birds may murmur as they will,
The kids may leap upon the hill,
The wavelets on their sand:
But I must bear an even heart,
Proof against pain or passion's smart;
Unstirred, unshaken, stand.
Once more I will begin to live;
The future much may have to give;
Her face I cannot see;
But feel as though the past had been
Played out unto its utmost scene,
The stage swept clear and free.
Bid memory with each rolling year
Fold fainter wings, and disappear;
Then wrap thy soul in strength:
There's rest beneath the weltering wave;
There's rest in heaven though storms may rave;
Thou too shalt rest at length.
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
THERE is an isle, kissed by a smiling sea,
Where all sweet confluents meet: a thing of heaven,
A spent aërolite, that well may be
The missing sister of the starry Seven.
Celestial beauty nestles at its knee,
And in its lap is naught of earthly leaven.
"T is girt and crowned with loveliness; its year,
Eternal summer; winter comes not near.
'T is small, as things of beauty ofttimes are,
And in a morning round it you may row,
Nor need a tedious haste your bark debar
From gliding inwards where the ripples flow
Into strange grots whose roofs are azure spar,
Whose pavements liquid silver. Mild winds blow
Around your prow, and at your keel the foam,
Leaping and laughing, freshly wafts you home.
They call the island Capri,—with a name
Dulling an airy dream, just as the soul
Is clogged with body palpable, and Fame
Hath long while winged the word from pole to
Its human story is a tale of shame,
Of all unnatural lusts a gory scroll,
Record of what, when pomp and power agree,
Man once hath been, and man again may be.
Terrace and slope from shore to summit show
Of all rich climes the glad-surrendered spoil.
Here the bright olive's phantom branches glow,
There the plump fig sucks sweetness from the soil.
Mid odorous flowers that through the Zodiac blow,
Returning tenfold to man's leisured toil,
Hesperia's fruit hangs golden. High in air,
The vine runs riot, spurning human care.
And flowers of every hue and breath abound,
Charming the sense; the burning cactus glows,
Like daisies elsewhere dappling all the ground,
And in each cleft the berried myrtle blows.
The playful lizard glides and darts around,
The elfin fireflies flicker o'er the rows
Of ripened grain. Alien to pain and wrong,
Men fill the days with dance, the nights with song.
ALFRED AUSTIN.
BENEATH the vine-clad slopes of Capri's Isle,
Which run down to the margin of that sea
Whose waters kiss the sweet Parthenope,
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