Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain
Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta'en
A little rill of scanty stream and bed

A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain;
And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead

Made the earth wet and turn'd the unwilling waters red.

LXVI

But thou, Clitumnus, in thy sweetest wave
Of the most living crystal that was e'er

The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave
Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear
Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer

Grazes, the purest god of gentle waters,

And most serene of aspect, and most clear!

Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters
A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters!

LXVII

And on thy happy shore a Temple still,
Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,
Upon a mild declivity of hill,

Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps
Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps
The finny darter with the glittering scales,
Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;
While, chance, some scatter'd water-lily sails

Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales.

"And on thy happy shore a Temple still,
Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,
Upon a mild declivity of hill,

Its memory of thee."

LXVIII

Pass not unblest the Genius of the place!
If through the air a zephyr more serene
Win to the brow, 't is his; and if ye trace
Along his margin a more eloquent green,
If on the heart the freshness of the scene
Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust
Of weary life a moment lave it clean

With Nature's baptism, - 't is to him ye must Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust.

LXIX

The roar of waters! - from the headlong height Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;

The fall of waters! rapid as the light

The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss; The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,

LXX

And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again Returns in an unceasing shower, which round, With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,

Is an eternal April to the ground,

Making it all one emerald :- how profound
The gulf! and how the giant element

From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,

Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent

LXXI

To the broad column which rolls on, and shows
More like the fountain of an infant sea

Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes
Of a new world, than only thus to be

Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,

With many windings, through the vale: Look back!

Lo, where it comes like an eternity,

As if to sweep down all things in its track,

Charming the eye with dread—a matchless cataract,

LXXII

Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,

From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,

An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,
Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn
Its steady dyes while all around is torn
By the distracted waters, bears serene

Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn;
Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene,
Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.

LXXIII

Once more upon the woody Apennine,
The infant Alps, which—had I not before
Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine
Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar