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 33

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.

LXVIII.

Pass not unblest the Genius of the place!

If through the air o zephyr more serene

Win to the brow, 'tis 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
life a moment lave it clean

Of weary

With Nature's baptism,-'tis 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 sèt,
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

3.

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, 34 LXXII.

Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,

From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,

An Iris, sits amidst the infernal surge, 35
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

The thundering LAUWINE-might be worshipp'd more; 36

But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear
Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar
Glaciers of bleak Mont-Blanc both far and near

And in Chimari heard, the thunder-hills of fear,
LXXIV.

Th' Acroceraunian mountains of old name
And on Parnassus seen the cagles fly

Like spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame,

For still they soared unutterably high:
I've look'd on Ida with a Trojan's eye;
Athos, Olympus, Etna, Atlas, made

These hills seem things of lesser dignity,
All, save the lone Soracte's height, displayed
Not now in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid.
LXXV.

For our remembrance, and from out the plain
Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,
And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain
May he, who will, his recollections rake
And quote in classic raptures, and awake
The hills with Latian echoes; I abhorr'd

Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake,

The drill'd dull lesson, forced down word by word 37 In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record

LXXVI.

Aught that recals the daily drug which turn'd

My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught

My mind to meditate what then it learn'd,
Yet such the fix'd inveteracy wrought

By the impatience of my early thought,
That, with the freshness wearing out before

My mind could relish what it might have sought,

If free to choose, I cannot now restore

Its health; but what it then detested, still abhor.

LXXVII

Then farewell, Horace, whom I hated so,
Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,
To comprehend, but never love thy verse ን
Although no deeper Moralist rehearse

Our little life, nor Bard prescribe his art,
Nor livelier Satirist the conscience pierce,
Awakening without wounding the touch'd heart,
Yet fare thee well-upon Soracte's ridge we part.
LXXVIII.

Oh Rome! my country! city of the soul !
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,

Lone mother of dead empires! and controul

In their shut breasts their petty misery.

What are our woes and sufferance? Come and sce hear the owl, and pled your way

The

cypress,

O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye!

Whose agonies are evils of a day

A world is at our feet, as fragile as our clay.