On the grey building stones and on the dark Vermilion brick, and seems to waken there The living soul of vanished centuries;
And wakens in the rigid winter air A melancholy yearning for the glow
Of spring-times past, of warm and festal eves,
When here in the piazza used to dance The beauteous women, and in triumph home Returned the Consuls with their captive kings.
This in her flight the Muse is laughing back Upon the verse in which vain longing throbs For all the antique beauty that is gone.
GIOSUÉ CARDUCCI.
Tr. M. W. Arms.
Dost thou remember, friend of vanished days, How, in the golden land of love and song, We met in April in the crowded ways Of that fair city where the soul is strong, Ay! strong as fate, for good or evil praise? And how the lord whom all the world obeys, The lord of light to whom the stars belong, Illumed the track that led thee through the
Dost thou remember, in the wooded dale,
Beyond the town of Dante the Divine, How all the air was flooded as with wine? And how the lark, to drown the nightingale, Pealed out sweet notes? I live to tell the tale. But thou? Oblivion signs thee with a sign! ERIC MACKAY.
My Friend and I, we climbed together Sweet-scented hill-sides covered over
With clusters of the lilac heather;
Around us was the fair Spring weather, She was my friend, I was her lover,
Above us was that perfect heaven
One only sees in Tuscany.
Below us was the valley, riven
With budding vineyards green and even, Far-stretching like a Summer sea.
She heard sweet music from the thrushes, I, from her voice, that softer grew When swift the birds sprang from the bushes, And in those sudden, tender hushes We only talked as friends might do.
O scented hills we climbed together! O blue, far sky that bent above her! She never will forget that heather, That Tuscan day, that soft Spring weather, Yet me she has forgot-her lover.
THE brightness of the world, O thou once free, And always fair, rare land of courtesy!
O Florence! with the Tuscan fields and hills, And famous Arno, fed with all their rills; Thou brightest star of star-bright Italy! Rich, ornate, populous, all treasures thine, The golden corn, the olive, and the vine. Fair cities, gallant mansions, castles old, And forests, where beside his leafy hold The sullen boar hath heard the distant horn, And whets his tusks against the gnarled thorn; Palladian palace with its storied halls; Fountains, where Love lies listening to their falls; Gardens, where flings the bridge its airy span, And Nature makes her happy home with man; Where many a gorgeous flower is duly fed With its own rill, on its own spangled bed, And wreathes the marble urn, or leans its head, A mimic mourner, that with veil withdrawn Weeps liquid gems, the presents of the dawn; Thine all delights, and every muse is thine; And more than all, the embrace and intertwine
Of all with all in gay and twinkling dance! Mid gods of Greece and warriors of romance, See! Boccace sits, unfolding on his knees The new-found roll of old Mæonides;
But from his mantle's fold, and near the heart, Peers Ovid's holy book of Love's sweet smart! SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
FOR AN EPITAPH AT FIESOLE
Lo! WHERE the four mimosas blend their shade In calm repose at last is Landor laid;
For ere he slept he saw them planted here
By her his soul had ever held most dear,
And he had liv'd enough when he had dried her tear.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDor.
THERE'S a palace in Florence, the world knows
And a statue watches it from the square,
And this story of both do the townsmen tell.
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