Long life to the grape! for when summer is flown, We must die-who shall not?-May our sins be forgiven, And Hebe shall never be idle in heaven. STANZAS WRITTEN IN PASSING THE AMBRACIAN GULF. THROUGH cloudless skies, in silvery sheen, And now upon the scene I look, The azure grave of many a Roman ; His wavering crown to follow woman. Florence! whom I will love as well (Since Orpheus sang his spouse from hell), Sweet Florence! those were pleasant times, When worlds were staked for ladies' eyes: Had bards as many realms as rhymes, Thy charms might raise new Antonies. Though Fate forbids such things to be, But would not lose thee for a world. "Heu, quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse!" AND thou art dead, as young and fair And form so soft, and charms so rare, Though Earth received them in her bed, There is an eye which could not brook I will not ask where thou liest low, There flowers or weeds at will may grow, It is enough for me to prove That what I loved, and long must love, To me there needs no stone to tell, Yet did I love thee to the last As fervently as thou, Who didst not change through all the past, The love where Death has set his seal, Nor falsehood disavow: And, what were worse, thou canst not see Or wrong, or change, or fault in me. The better days of life were ours; The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers, The silence of that dreamless sleep I envy now too much to weep; Nor need I to repine, That all those charms have pass'd away; I might have watch'd through long decay. The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd Must fall the earliest prey ; Though by no hand untimely snatch'd, And yet it were a greater grief I know not if I could have borne The night that follow'd such a morn Thy day without a cloud hath pass'd, As stars that shoot along the sky Shine brightest as they fall from high. As once I wept, if I could weep, |