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? BEFORE THE OLD CASTLE OF VERONA GREEN Adige, 'twas thus in rapid course And powerful, that thou didst murmur 'neath The onrush of Theodoric, fell back, And midst the bloody wrack about them passed Thus from the mountains rigid with their snows, I, too, fair river, sing, and this my song Who still when of these hills the turret crown Is shattered into fragments, and the snake 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, 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, There to escape all human intercourse. She with her servants stayed, her arts to practice And lived, and left her empty body there. They built their city over those dead bones, From Pinamonte had received deceit. Therefore I caution thee, if e'er thou hearest No falsehood may the verity defraud. DANTE ALIGHIERI. Tr. H. W. Longfellow. IN THE MEADOWS AT MANTUA BUT to have lain upon the grass But to have lain and loved the sun, To have been found in unison, Ah! in these flaring 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. |