By Alessandro Guildi.

Tiber! my early dream,
My boyhood's vision of thy classic stream,
Had taught my mind to think
That over sands of gold
Thy limpid waters rolled,
And ever-verdant laurels grew upon thy brink.

But far in other guise
The rude reality hath met mine eyes.
Here, seated on thy bank,
All desolate and drear
Thy margin doth appear,
With creeping weeds, and shrubs, and vegetation rank.

Fondly I fancied thine
The wave pellucid, and the Naiad's shrine,
In crystal grot below;
But thy tempestuous course
Runs turbulent and hoarse.
And, swelling with wild wrath, thy wintry waters flow.

Upon thy bosom dark
Peril awaits the light confiding bark,
In eddying vortex swamp'd;
Foul, treacherous, and deep,
Thy winding waters sweep,
Enveloping their prey in dismal ruin prompt.

Fast in thy bed is sunk
The mountain pine-tree's broken trunk,
Aimed at the galley's keel;
And well thy wave can waft
Upon that broken shaft
The barge, whose sunken wreck thy bosom will conceal.

The dog-star's sultry power,
The summer heat, the noontide's fervid hour,
That fires the mantling blood,
Yon cautious swain can't urge
To tempt thy dangerous surge,
Or cool his limbs within thy dark insidious flood.

I've marked thee in thy pride,
When struggle fierce thy disemboguing tide
With Ocean's monarch held;
But, quickly overcome
By Neptune's masterdom,
Back thou hast fled as oft, ingloriously, repelled.

Often, athwart the fields
A giant's strength thy flood redundant wields,
Bursting above its brims —
Strength that no dyke can check:
Dire is the harvest-wreck!
Buoyant, with lofty horns, th' affrighted bullock swims!

But still thy proudest boast,
Tiber! and what brings honour to thee most,
Is, that thy waters roll
Fast by th' eternal home
Of Glory's daughter, R OME ;
And that thy billows bath the sacred C APITOL .

Famed is thy stream for her,
Clelia, thy current's virgin conqueror,
And him who stemmed the march
Of Tuscany's proud host,
When, firm at honour's post,
He waved his blood-stained blade above the broken arch!

Of Romulus the sons,
To torrid Africans, to frozen Huns,
Have taught thy name, O flood!
And to that utmost verge,
Where radiantly emerge
Apollo's car of flame and golden-footed stud.

For so much glory lent,
Ever destructive of some monument,
Thou makest foul return;
Insulting with thy wave
Each Roman hero's grave,
And Scipio's dust that fills yon consecrated urn!