"ITALIA, IO TI SALUTO!"

To come back from the sweet South, to the North
To where I was born, bred, look to die;
Come back to do my day's work in its day,
Play out my play—

Amen, amen, say I.

To see no more the country half my own,
Nor hear the half familiar speech,
Amen I say; I turn to that bleak North
Whence I came forth—

The South lies out of reach.

But when our swallows fly back to the South,
To the sweet South, to the sweet South,
The tears may come again into my eyes
On the old wise,

And the sweet name to my mouth.

CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.

THE DAISY

O LOVE, what hours were thine and mine
In lands of palm and southern pine,-
In lands of palm, of orange-blossom,

Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine.

What Roman strength Turbìa showed
In ruin, by the mountain road;

How like a gem, beneath, the city
Of little Monaco, basking, glowed.

How richly down the rocky dell
The torrent vineyard streaming fell

To meet the sun and sunny waters,
That only heaved with a summer swell.

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,
Yet present in his natal grove,

Now watching high on mountain cornice, And steering, now, from a purple cove,

Now pacing mute by ocean's rim
Till, in a narrow street and dim,

I stayed the wheels at Cogoletto,
And drank, and loyally drank to him.

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
A light amid its olives green;

Or olive-hoary cape in ocean;
Or rosy blossom in hot ravine,

Where oleanders flushed the bed
Of silent torrents, gravel-spread;
And, crossing, oft we saw the glisten
Of ice, far up on a mountain head.

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
In those long galleries were ours;

What drives about the fresh Cascinè,
Or walks in Boboli's ducal bowers.

In bright vignettes, and each complete,
Of tower or duomo, sunny-sweet,

Or palace, how the city glittered,
Through cypress avenues, at our feet.

But when we crost the Lombard plain
Remember what a plague of rain;

Of rain at Reggio, rain at Parma;
At Lodi, rain, Piacenza, rain.

And stern and sad (so rare the smiles
Of sunlight) looked the Lombard piles;
Porch-pillars on the lion resting,
And sombre, old, colonnaded aisles.

O Milan, O the chanting quires,
The giant windows' blazoned fires,

The height, the space, the gloom, the glory! A mount of marble, a hundred spires!

I climbed the roofs at break of day;
Sun-smitten Alps before me lay.

I stood among the silent statues,
And statued pinnacles, mute as they.

How faintly flushed, how phantom-fair,
Was Monte Rosa hanging there

A thousand shadowy-pencilled valleys
And snowy dells in a golden air.

Remember how we came at last
To Como; shower and storm and blast

Had blown the lake beyond his limit,
And all was flooded; and how we past

From Como, when the light was gray,
And in my head, for half the day,
The rich Virgilian rustic measure

Of Lari Maxume, all the way

Like ballad-burden music kept,
As on the Lariano crept

To that fair port below the castle
Of Queen Theodolind, where we slept;

Or hardly slept, but watched awake
A cypress in the moonlight shake,

The moonlight touching o'er a terrace One tall Agavè above the lake.

What more? we took our last adieu,
And up the snowy Splügen drew,

But ere we reached the highest summit I plucked a daisy, I gave it you.

It told of England then to me,
And now it tells of Italy.

O love, we two shall go no longer
To lands of summer across the sea;

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: