AMALFI. He who sets sail from NAPLES, when the wind There would I linger-then go forth again, And hover round that region unexplored, Where to SALVATOR (when, as some relate, Tasso. Sorrento, his birth-place, is on the south side of the gulf of Naples. By chance or choice he led a bandit's life, As in that elder time ere Man was made. There would I linger-then go forth again; The fishing-town, AMALFI. Haply there The time has been, When on the quays along the SYRIAN coast, *Amalfi fell after three hundred years of prosperity; but the poverty of one thousand fishermen is yet dignified by the remains of an arsenal, a cathedral, and the palaces of royal merchants.'-GIBBON. And SAMARCAND, to thy great wall, CATHAY. Then were the nations by her wisdom swayed; And every crime on every sea was judged According to her judgments. In her port Prows, strange, uncouth, from NILE and NIGER met, People of various feature, various speech; And in their countries many a house of prayer, And many a shelter, where no shelter was, And many a well, like JACOB's in the wild, The pilgrims of the west; and, when 'twas asked, Who are the noble founders?' every tongue At once replied, The merchants of AMALFI.' So long renowned as champions of the Cross, For three hundred years There, unapproached but from the deep, they dwelt ; Assailed for ever, yet from age to age Acknowledging no master. From the deep And INDIAN spices. Through the civilized world And, when at length they fell, they left mankind They are now forgot, And with them all they did, all they endured, And, with a shout like thunder, cried, 'Come forth, The women wailing, and the heavy oar Falling unheard. Not thus did they return,† * There is at this day in Syracuse a street called La Strada degli Amalfitani. In the year 839. See MURATORI: Art. Chronici Amalphitani Fragmenta. S The tyrant slain; though then the grass of years Grew in their streets. There now to him who sails Under the shore, a few white villages Scattered above, below, some in the clouds, Some on the margin of the dark blue sea A lonely watch-tower on the precipice, Their ancient land-mark, comes. Long may it last; Though now he little thinks how large his debt, * By degrees, says Giannone, they made themselves famous through the world. The Tarini Amalfitani were a coin familiar to all nations; and their maritime code regulated every where the commerce of the sea. Many churches in the East were by them built and endowed; by them was founded in Palestine that most renowned military Order of St. John of Jerusalem; and who does not know that the mariner's compass was invented by a citizen of Amalfi ? Glorious was their course, And long the track of light they left behind them. |