LAKE GARDA

SIRMIO

SWEET Sirmio! thou, the very eye

Of all peninsulas and isles,

That in our lakes of silver lie,

Or sleep, enwreathed by Neptune's smiles,

How gladly back to thee I fly!

Still doubting, asking,—can it be That I have left Bithynia's sky, And gaze in safety upon thee?

O, what is happier than to find

Our hearts at ease, our perils past;
When, anxious long, the lightened mind
Lays down its load of care at last;

When, tired with toil o'er land and deep,
Again we tread the welcome floor
Of our own home, and sink to sleep
On the long-wished-for bed once more.

This, this it is, that pays alone

The ills of all life's former track.

Shine out, my beautiful, my own

Sweet Sirmio! greet thy master back.

And thou, fair lake, whose water quaffs
The light of heaven like Lydia's sea,
Rejoice, rejoice,―let all that laughs
Abroad, at home, laugh out for me.

CATULLUS.

Tr. Thomas Moore.

'FRATER AVE ATQUE VALE'

Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione

row!

So they row'd, and there we landed-'O venusta

Sirmio!'

There to me thro' all the groves of olive in the summer glow,

There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow,

Came that 'Ave atque Vale' of the Poet's hopeless

woe,

Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen-hundred years

ago,

'Frater Ave atque Vale'-as we wander'd to and

fro

Gazing at the Lydian-laughter of the Garda Lake

below

Sweet Catullus's all-but-island, olive-silvery SirALFRED TENNYSON.

mio!

BRESCIA

THE PATRIOT

It was roses, roses, all the way,

With myrtle mixed in my path like mad. The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway, The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, A year ago on this very day!

The air broke into a mist with bells,

The old walls rocked with the crowds and cries. Had I said, "Good folks, mere noise repels,

But give me your sun from yonder skies!" They had answered, "And afterward, what else?"

Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun,

To give it my loving friends to keep. Naught man could do have I left undone, And you see my harvest, what I reap This very day, now a year is run.

There's nobody on the house-tops now,—
Just a palsied few at the windows set,—
For the best of the sight is, all allow,

At the Shambles' Gate,-or, better yet,
By the very scaffold's foot, I trow.

I go in the rain, and, more than needs,
A rope cuts both my wrists behind,
And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,
For they fling, whoever has a mind,

Stones at me for my year's misdeeds.

Thus I entered Brescia, and thus I go!

In such triumphs people have dropped down dead.

"Thou, paid by the world,--what dost thou owe Me?" God might have question; but now in

stead

'Tis God shall requite! I am safer so.

Robert Browning.

MILAN

MILAN

MILAN with plenty and with wealth o'erflows, And numerous streets and cleanly dwellings shows: The people, blessed with Nature's happy force, Are eloquent and cheerful in discourse;

A circus and a theatre invites

The unruly mob to races and to fights.
Moneta consecrated buildings grace,

And the whole town redoubled walls embrace;
Here spacious baths and palaces are seen,
And intermingled temples rise between ;
Here circling colonnades the ground enclose,
And here the marble statues breathe in rows:
Profusely graced the happy town appears,
Nor Rome itself her beauteous neighbor fears.
AUSONIUS.

Tr. Joseph Addison.

THE LAST SUPPER

By Leonardo da Vinci, in the refectory of the Convent of Maria della Grazia, Milan.

THOUGH Searching damps and many an envious

flaw