To where the last Cæsarean fortress stood, The shrill cicalas, people of the pine, Making their summer lives one ceaseless song, Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine, And vesper bell's that rose the boughs along; The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line, His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng Which learn'd from this example not to fly From a true lover, — shadow'd my mind's eye. Oh, Hesperus! thou bringest all good things- Soft hour! which wakes the wish and melts the heart Seeming to weep the dying day's decay; Is this a fancy which our reason scorns? When Nero perish'd by the justest doom Of nations freed, and the world overjoy'd, ARQUA. (CHILDE HAROLD, Canto iv. Stanzas 30-32.) THERE is a tomb in Arqua; rear'd in air, Pillar'd in their sarcophagus, repose The bones of Laura's lover; here repair Many familiar with his well-sung woes, The pilgrims of his genius. He arose To raise a language, and his land reclaim From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes: Watering the tree which bears his lady's name With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame. They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died; To offer to the passing stranger's gaze His mansion and his sepulchre; both plain And venerably simple, such as raise A feeling more accordant with his strain Than if a pyramid form'd his monumental fane. And the soft quiet hamlet where he dwelt And sought a refuge from their hopes decay'd CLITUMNUS. (CHILDE HAROLD, Canto iv. Stanzas 66, 67.) BUT thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave And most serene of aspect, and most clear; Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters - And on thy happy shore a Temple still, Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps While, chance, some scatter'd water-lily sails Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales. TERNI. (CHILDE HAROLD, Canto iv. Stanzas 69-72.) THE roar of waters! - from the headlong height The fall of waters! rapid as the light The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss; And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again 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 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 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, Horribly beautiful! but on the verge, From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge, Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn: ROME. (CHILDE HAROLD, Canto iv. Stanzas 78, 79.) OH Rome! my country! city of the soul! What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay. The Niobe of nations! there she stands, |