LXI

Hark! from dark Nemi's plantain-woods, where, twining,
The tendrilled vine the branches clasps along,
Where glows through olives the bright cactus shining,
Echo the sounds of laughter and of song!
Lo, trooping forth, wild flowers their hair among,
Albano's dark-browed daughters, from their eyes
Joy flashing lightning, a Bacchante throng;
Forms such as danced beneath Idalian skies,
Or trod the flowery fields of golden Arcadies.

LXII

It is Gensano's flower-fête; the streets shine
Strewn o'er with Irises of living blue,
Galaxied thick with star-rayed jessamine,
And the rose blushing its rich lustre through.
We tread on tapestry whose varied hue
Mocks the faint rainbow, an Hesperian shore
Its glory darkening on the aching view;
Yet hath Art wrought on that mosaic floor
Religion's pictured forms that call us to adore.

LXIII

There glows Madonna with her Son, o'erhung
Their brows with lilies; chauntings fill the air,
Winged infants lead the choir with censers swung,
Shedding flower-odours from their raven hair.
With white veils floating from their shoulders bare,
Frascati's daughters elevate above
The sacred host, religion watching there;
Her spirit still with olden fable wove,
Wedding great Nature thus, bride-like, with human love.

LXIV

Farewell! — where better could the word be spoken
Than from these wrecks of Jove's deserted shrine?
I gaze from Alba's mount, 'mid columns broken,
Over a living landscape made divine
By old heroic valour, and the line
Of the bard filled with prophecy of old.
Still through those vales his Tibur's waters shine!
There where his bands the Trojan hero rolled,
Ere fixed his household gods, which still thou mayst behold,

LXV

Even as he, bard in vision, or the dreams
Of that creation in which all or less
Or more exist, the inward light that gleams
In poets' breasts, all else companionless;
Farewell, thou R OME ! where better could we bless
Thy name, than where thy Alban-Mother grey
Watches thy tomb in yon far wilderness?
Matron and son alike have passed away,
But left their fame entwined in Maro's deathless lay.

LXVI

It is the morn, the ever-blessed morn!
Life's fountain-source of sunny light flows forth
Gushingly from her urn, as then first born;
Vitality awakes the dreaming earth.
There, silent Naples slumbers! child of mirth,
She sees nor hears the beauty o'er her shed;
She sleeps as sleeps an infant at its birth:
The elements, her handmaids, softly tread,
Attending breathlessly beside her wave-lulled bed;

LXVII

And like a blue-eyed spirit, the sky above
O'erwatches, her awakened life to greet;
The air sighs over her its breath of love,
The deep-voiced sea makes music at her feet,
The hills the echo of her life repeat;
Tints o'er her brow are hues by Iris given,
Drawn from the sun that steals on her retreat,
While gentler still his fire-orbed wheel is driven,
Watching her rest beneath the holy vault of heaven!

LXVIII

And there the cup of Circe thou dost fill,
Offering the pilgrim who to thee returns,
Sated with musing from the seven-crowned hill,
Where thy stern Roman sister's spirit yearns
For those whose ashes fill no more her urns.
Away with grief! — thine eyes on him have shone;
Who in joy's welcome for a shadow mourns?
Seize while thou mayst the hours still rolling on;
Thy life is gliding — thus, a moment more, 'tis gone.

LXIX

Thou paradise of exiles! oh, thou land
Whose azure air oblivion breathes on those
Who would forget the past! thy hills expand
Around, and girdling watch o'er thy repose.
The living odour wafted from the rose
Gives balm to wounded spirits, and a healing
Softness and peace, until the heart o'erflows
With joy; from the deep sky is shed a feeling
Of languor on the sense like softest music stealing.

LXX

'Tis night, but not in Naples; from the sky
The moon unheeded glows along the streets
While Carnival his thyrsus tosses high!
Each heart with hope and joy expectant beats;
Music the love-song and the dance repeats;
On the heaped tables flowers and fruits are spread;
From the thronged balcomes glad beauty greets
The world beneath, where lanterns daylight shed,
O'er life rolled stream-like there along its starlit bed.