IN THE PIAZZA OF SAN PETRONIO
DARK in the winter's crystal air arise
Bologna's turrets, and above them laughs
The mountain-slope all whitened by the snows.
It is that mellowest hour when the sun
His dying salutation on the towers
And, Saint Petronius, on thy temple sheds,
Towers whose battlements the broad-spread wings
Of many passing centuries have grazed,
And the grave temple's solitary peak.
The adamantine sky is gleaming cold
In its refulgence, and the air is drawn
O'er the piazza like a silver veil,
That lightly brushes with caressing touch
The threatening piles, whose grim walls gather
Raised by our fathers' mail-encircled arms.
Still lingering on the mountain heights, the sun Looks o'er the scene; and languidly his smile Falls with suffusing tint of violet
On the grey building stones and on the dark
Vermilion brick, and seems to waken there
The living soul of vanished centuries;
And wakens in the rigid winter air
A melancholy yearning for the glow
Of spring-times past, of warm and festal eves,
When here in the piazza used to dance
The beauteous women, and in triumph home
Returned the Consuls with their captive kings.
This in her flight the Muse is laughing back
Upon the verse in which vain longing throbs
For all the antique beauty that is gone.
GIOSUÉ CARDUCCI.
Tr. M. W. Arms.
Dost thou remember, friend of vanished days,
How, in the golden land of love and song,
We met in April in the crowded ways
Of that fair city where the soul is strong,
Ay! strong as fate, for good or evil praise?
And how the lord whom all the world obeys,
The lord of light to whom the stars belong,
Illumed the track that led thee through the
Dost thou remember, in the wooded dale,
Beyond the town of Dante the Divine,
How all the air was flooded as with wine?
And how the lark, to drown the nightingale,
Pealed out sweet notes? I live to tell the tale.
But thou? Oblivion signs thee with a sign!
ERIC MACKAY.
My Friend and I, we climbed together
Sweet-scented hill-sides covered over
With clusters of the lilac heather;
Around us was the fair Spring weather,
She was my friend, I was her lover.
Above us was that perfect heaven
One only sees in Tuscany.
Below us was the valley, riven
With budding vineyards green and even,
Far-stretching like a Summer sea.
She heard sweet music from the thrushes,
I, from her voice, that softer grew
When swift the birds sprang from the bushes,
And in those sudden, tender hushes
We only talked as friends might do.
O scented hills we climbed together!
O blue, far sky that bent above her!
She never will forget that heather,
That Tuscan day, that soft Spring weather,
Yet me she has forgot-her lover.
THE brightness of the world, O thou once free,
And always fair, rare land of courtesy!
O Florence! with the Tuscan fields and hills,
And famous Arno, fed with all their rills;
Thou brightest star of star-bright Italy!
Rich, ornate, populous, all treasures thine,
The golden corn, the olive, and the vine.
Fair cities, gallant mansions, castles old,
And forests, where beside his leafy hold
The sullen boar hath heard the distant horn,
And whets his tusks against the gnarled thorn;
Palladian palace with its storied halls;
Fountains, where Love lies listening to their falls;
Gardens, where flings the bridge its airy span,
And Nature makes her happy home with man;
Where many a gorgeous flower is duly fed
With its own rill, on its own spangled bed,
And wreathes the marble urn, or leans its head,
A mimic mourner, that with veil withdrawn
Weeps liquid gems, the presents of the dawn;
Thine all delights, and every muse is thine;
And more than all, the embrace and intertwine
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