That I had died in the red ways of war,

Or that the gate of Florence bare my head, Than to live thus, by all things comraded Which seek the essence of my soul to mar.

"Curse God and die: what better hope than this?
He hath forgotten thee in all the bliss
Of his gold city, and eternal day”—
Nay peace: behind my prison's blinded bars
I do possess what none can take away,
My love, and all the glory of the stars.
OSCAR WILDE.

BEFORE THE OLD CASTLE OF VERONA

GREEN Adige, 'twas thus in rapid course

And powerful, that thou didst murmur 'neath
The Roman bridges sparkling from thy stream
Thine ever-running song unto the sun,
When Odoacer, giving way before

The onrush of Theodoric, fell back,

And midst the bloody wrack about them passed
Into this fair Verona blonde and straight
Barbarian women in their chariots, singing
Songs unto Odin; while the Italian folk
Gathered about their Bishop and put forth
To meet the Goths the supplicating Cross.

Thus from the mountains rigid with their snows,
In all the placid winter's silver gladness
To-day thou still, O tireless fugitive,
Dost murmuring pass upon thy way, beneath
The Scaligers' old battlemented bridge,
Betwixt time-blackened piles and squalid trees,
To far-off hills serene, and to the towers
Whence weep the mourning banners for the day,
Returning now, which saw the death of him
Whom a free Italy first chose her king.
Still, Adige, thou singest as of yore
Thine ever-running song unto the sun.

I, too, fair river, sing, and this my song
Would put the centuries into little verse;
And palpitating to each thought, my heart
Follows the stanza's upward-quivering flight.
But with the years, my verse will dull and fade;
Thou, Adige, the eternal poet art,

Who still

when of these hills the turret crown

Is shattered into fragments, and the snake
Sits hissing in the sunlight where now stands
The great basilica, St. Zeno's fane-
Still in the desert solitudes wilt voice
The sleepless tedium of the infinite.

GIOSUÉ CARDUCCI.

Tr. M. W. Arms.

MANTUA

MANTUA

ABOVE in beauteous Italy lies a lake

At the Alp's foot that shuts in Germany

Over Tyrol, and has the name Benaco.

By a thousand springs, I think, and more, is bathed,

"Twixt Garda and Val Camonica, Pennino,

With water that grows stagnant in that lake. Midway a place is where the Trentine Pastor, And he of Brescia, and the Veronese

Might give his blessing, if he passed that way. Sitteth Peschiera, fortress fair and strong,

To front the Brescians and the Bergamasks, Where round about the bank descendeth lowest. There of necessity must fall whatever

In bosom of Benaco cannot stay,

And grows a river down through verdant pastures.

Soon as the water doth begin to run,

No more Benaco is it called, but Mincio,
Far as Governo, where it falls in Po.

Not far it runs before it finds a plain

In which it spreads itself, and makes it marshy, And oft 't is wont in summer to be sickly.

Passing that way the virgin pitiless

Land in the middle of the fen descried,
Untilled and naked of inhabitants;

There to escape all human intercourse.

She with her servants stayed, her arts to practice

And lived, and left her empty body there.
The men, thereafter, who were scattered round,
Collected in that place, which was made strong
By the lagoon it had on every side;

They built their city over those dead bones,
And, after her who first the place selected,
Mantua named it, without other omen.
Its people once within more crowded were,
Ere the stupidity of Casalodi

From Pinamonte had received deceit.

Therefore I caution thee, if e'er thou hearest
Originate my city otherwise,

No falsehood may the verity defraud.

DANTE ALIGHIERI.

Tr. H. W. Longfellow.

IN THE MEADOWS AT MANTUA

BUT to have lain upon the grass
One perfect day, one perfect hour,
Beholding all things mortal pass
Into the quiet of green grass;

But to have lain and loved the sun,
Under the shadow of the trees,

To have been found in unison,
One, only, with the blessed sun!

Ah! in these flaring London nights,
Where midnight withers into morn,
How quiet a rebuke it writes
Across the sky of London nights!

Upon the grass at Mantua

These London nights were all forgot. They wake for me again: but ah,

The meadow-grass at Mantua!

ARTHUR SYMONS.