Developing the mountains, leaves and flowers, And shining in the brawling brook, where-by, Clear as its current, glide the sauntering hours With a calm languor, which, though to the eye Idlesse it scem, hath its morality.

Af from society we learn to live,

'Tis solitude should teach us how to die;

It hath no flatterers; vanity can give

Peace to Torquato's injured shade! 'twas his
In life and death to be the mark where Wrong
Aim'd with her poison'd arrows, but to miss.
Oh, victor unsurpass'd in modern song!
Each year brings forth its millions; but how long
The tide of generations shall roll on,
And not the whole combined and countiess throng
Compose a mind like thine though all in one

LIV.

In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie 27

Ashes which make it holier, dust which is
Even in itself an immortality.

Though there were nothing save the past, and this,
The particle of those sublimities

Which have relapsed to chaos :-here repose
Angelo's, Alfieri's bones, and his,28

The starry Galileo, with his woes;

LX.

What is her pyramid of precious stones? 34
Of phorphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues
Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones
Of merchant-dukes? the momentary dews
Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse
Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead,
Whose names are the mausoleums of the muse,
Are gently prest with far more reverent tread

And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust,
Yet for this want more noted, as of yore
The Cæsar's pageant, shorn of Brutus' bust,
Did but of Rome's best Son remind her more:
Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore,
Fortress of falling empire! honor'd sleeps
The immortal exile;-Arqua, too, her store
Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps,

head.

LXI.

There be more things to greet the heart and eyes In Arno's dome of Art's most princely shrine, Where Sculpture with her rainbow sister vies; There be more marvels yet-but not for mind; For I have been accustom'd to entwine My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields, Than Art in galleries: though a work divine Calls for my spirit's homage, yet it yields Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields LXII.

Is of another temper, and I roam By Thrasimene's lake, in the defiles Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home, For there the Carthaginian's warlike wiles Come back before me, as his skill beguiles The host between the mountains and the shore. Where Courage falls in her despairing files, And torrents, swoln to rivers with their gore, Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scatter'd o'er

LXIII.

Like to a forest fell'd by mountain winds; And such the storm of battle on this day, And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds To all save carnage, that, beneath the fray, An earthquake reel'd unheedingly away! 35 None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet, And yawning forth a grave for those who lay Upon their bucklers for a winding sheet; Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet!

LXIV.

The Earth to them was as a rolling bark
Which bore them to Eternity; they saw
The Ocean round, but had no time to mark
The motions of their vessel; Nature's law,
In them suspended, reck'd not of the awe [birds
Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the
Plunge in the clouds for refuge and withdraw
From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing
herds

Stumbling o'er heaving plains, and man's dread hath
no words.
LXV.

Far other scene is Thrasimene now;
Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain
Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough;
Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain
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