Page images
PDF
EPUB

Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream,-
Yes! they will meet the wave I gaze on now;
Mine cannot witness, even in a dream,

That happy wave repass me in its flow!

The wave that bears my tears returns no more Will she return by whom that wave shall sweep? Both tread thy banks, both wander on thy shore, I by the source, she by the dark-blue deep.

But that which keepeth us apart is not

Distance, nor depth of wave, nor space of earth, But the distraction of a various lot,

As various as the climates of our birth.

A stranger loves the lady of the land,

Born far beyond the mountains, but his blood Is all meridian, as if never fanned

By the black wind that chills the polar flood.

My blood is all meridian; were it not,

I had not left my clime, nor should I be, In spite of tortures ne'er to be forgot,

A slave again of love, at least of thee.

"Tis vain to struggle,—let me perish young,— Live as I lived, and love as I have loved;

To dust if I return, from dust I sprung,

And then, at least, my heart can ne'er be moved.

LORD BYRON.

THE RIVIERA

RIVIERA DI PONENTE

On this lovely Western shore, where no tempests rage and roar,

Over olive-bearing mountains, by the deep and vio

let sea,

There, through each long happy day, winding slowly on our way,

Travellers from across the ocean, toward Italia journeyed we,

Each long day, that, richer, fairer,
Showed the charming Riviera.

There black war-ships doze at anchor, in the Bay of Villa-Franca;

Eagle-like, gray Esa, clinging to its rocky perch looks down;

And upon the mountain dim, ruined, shattered, stern, and grim,

Turbia sees us through the ages with its austere
Roman frown,—

While we climb, where cooler, rarer
Breezes sweep the Riviera.

Down the hillside steep and stony, through the old streets of Mentone,

Quiet, half-forgotten city of a drowsy prince and

time,

Through the mild Italian midnight, rolls upon the wave the moonlight,

Murmuring in our dreams the cadence of a strange
Ligurian rhyme,—

Rhymes in which each heart is sharer,
Journeying on the Riviera.

When the morning air comes purer, creeping up in our vettura,

Eastward gleams a rosy tumult with the rising of

the day.

Toward the north, with gradual changes, steal along the mountain-ranges

Tender tints of warmer feeling, kissing all their peaks of gray;

And far south the waters wear a

Smile along the Riviera.

Helmed with snow, the Alpine giants at invaders look defiance,

Gazing over nearer summits, with a fixed, mysterious stare,

Down along the shaded ocean, on whose edge in tremulous motion

Floats an island, half transparent, woven out of

sea and air;—

For such visions shaped of air, are
Frequent on our Riviera.

He whose mighty earthquake-tread all Europa shook with dread,

Chief whose infancy was cradled in that old Tyrrhenic isle,

Joins the shades of trampling legions, bringing from remotest regions

Gallic fire and Roman valour, Cimbric daring, Moorish guile,

Guests from every age to share a

Portion of this Riviera.

Then the Afric brain, whose story fills the centuries with its glory,

Moulding Gaul and Carthaginian into one all-conquering band,

With his tusked monsters grumbling, mid the alien snow-drifts stumbling,

Then, an avalanche of ruin, thundering from that frozen land

Into vales their sons declare are

Sunny as our Riviera.

Thus forever, in our musing, comes man's spirit interfusing

Thought of poet and of hero with the landscape and the sky;

And this shore, no longer lonely, lives the life of romance only:

Gauls and Moors and Northern Sea-Kings, all are gliding, ghostlike, by.

So with Nature man is sharer

Even on the Riviera.

JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.

MOONLIGHT ON THE RIVIERA

Buoyant, exulting

I thread in the morning

Orchards of olive

Up to the heights;

Wander at noonday,

Quietly pacing

Gardens of palm trees;

Then in the evening

Loll in my balcony,

Over the boundless

Undulant ocean

Dreaming and dreaming.

Swift in the southland

Steals to the earth

Tranquil-browed evening.

And as a mother-hand softly,

« PreviousContinue »