Islands of light that seem to hang in air,
Midway in heaven. No wonder they so love
The song and dance, and walk with such a look
Of thoughtless gaiety-the merry beggars,
Who breed like insects on these sunny shores,
And live as idly. There are glorious faces
Among them-there are Roman spirits here,
And Grecian eyes that tell a thousand fancies,
Like those that shaped their deities, and wrought
Perfection. True, they have no stirring hopes
To lift them; yet at times they will give vent
To the o'erburdened soul, and then they speak
In oracles, or like the harp of Memnon,
They utter poetry, as the bright skies
And stirring winds awake it. Who can wonder,
That every voice is bursting out in music,
And every peasant tunes his mandoline
To the delicious airs, that creep so softly
Into the slumbering ear. O! 't is a land,
Where life is doubled, and a brighter world
Rolls over this, and there the spirit lives
In a gay paradise, and here we breathe
An atmosphere of roses.
Is nothing to the heart. They never felt
These summer flies, who buzz so gaily round us,
They never felt, one moment, what we feel
With such a silent tenderness, and keep
So closely round our hearts. We do not wake
The echoes with our loud and thoughtless carols,
Nor sit whole days beneath a bowering vine,
Singing its amber juice, and telling too
Of starry eyes, and soft and languishing looks,
And talking of our agonies with smiles,
Making a sport of sorrow. No, our year,
With its long time of gloom, and hurried days
Of warmth, that call for more of toil than pleasure
Our pensive year forbids the wandering spirit
To make itself a song-bird. We must keep
Our sorrows and our hopes close cherished by us,
Till the heart softens, and by often musing
Takes a deep, serious tone, and has a feeling
For all that suffer. So we often bear
A grief, that is the burden of a life,
And will not leave us. Something that would seem
Too trifling to be laughed at here, will weigh
And weigh upon us, till we cannot lift it,
And then we pine and die. Her heart is broken,
And the worm feeds upon her early roses,
And now her lily fades, and all its brightness
Turns to a green and sallow melancholy,
And then we strew her grave;—but here the passion
Breaks out in wildness, then is sung away
With a complaining air, and so is ended.
I have no sympathy with such light spirits,
But I can see my sober countrymen
Gather around their winter's hearth, and read
Of no unreal suffering, and then weep
Big tears that ease the heart, and need no words
To make their meaning known. One silent hour
Of deep and thoughtful feeling stands me more,
Than a whole age of such a heartless mirth,
As a bright summer wakens.
-Night rests in beauty on Mont Alto.
Beneath its shade the beauteous Arno sleeps
In Vallombrosa's bosom, and dark trees
Bend with a calm and quiet shadow down
Upon the beauty of that silent river.
Still in the west, a melancholy smile
Mantles the lips of day, and twilight pale
Moves like a spectre in the dusky sky;
While eve's sweet star on the fast-fading year
Smiles calmly:-Music steals at intervals
Across the water, with a tremulous swell,
From out the upland dingle of tall firs,
And a faint foot-fall sounds, where dim and dark
Hangs the gray willow from the river's brink,
O'er-shadowing its current. Slowly there
The lover's gondola drops down the stream,
Silent, save when its dipping oar is heard,
Or in its eddy sighs the rippling wave.
Mouldering and moss-grown, through the lapse of years,
In motionless beauty stands the giant oak,
Whilst those, that saw its green and flourishing youth,
Are gone and are forgotten. Soft the fount,
Whose secret springs the star-light pale discloses,
Gushes in hollow music, and beyond
The broader river sweeps its silent way,
Mingling a silver current with that sea,
Whose waters have no tides, coming nor going.
On noiseless wing along that fair blue sea
The halcyon flits,-and where the wearied storm
Left a loud moaning, all is peace again.
A calm is on the deep! The winds that came O'er the dark sea-surge with a tremulous breathing, And mourned on the dark cliff where weeds grew rank, And to the Autumnal death-dirge the deep sea Heaved its long billows,-with a cheerless song, Have passed away to the cold earth again, Like a way-faring mourner. Silently
Up from the calm sea's dim and distant verge,
Full and unveiled the moon's broad disk emerges.
On Tivoli, and where the fairy hues
Of autumn glow upon Abruzzi's woods,
The silver light is spreading. Far above,
Encompassed with their thin, cold atmosphere,
The Apennines uplift their snowy brows,
Glowing with colder beauty, where unheard
The eagle screams in the fathomless ether,
And stays his wearied wing. Here let us pause !-
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The spirit of these solitudes-the soul
That dwells within these steep and difficult places-
Speaks a mysterious language to mine own,
And brings unutterable musings. Earth
Sleeps in the shades of nightfall, and the sea
Spreads like a thin blue haze beneath my feet,
Whilst the gray columns and the mouldering tombs
Of the Imperial City, hidden deep
Beneath the mantle of their shadows, rest.
My spirit looks on earth!—A heavenly voice
Comes silently-“Dreamer, is earth thy dwelling ?—
Lo! nursed within that fair and fruitful bosom
Which has sustained thy being, and within
The colder breast of Ocean, lie the germs
Of thine own dissolution!-E'en the air,
That fans the clear blue sky and gives thee strength,—
Up from the sullen lake of mouldering reeds,
And the wide waste of forest, where the osier
Thrives in the damp and motionless atmosphere,—
Shall bring the dire and wasting pestilence
And blight thy cheek. Dream thou of higher things;—
This world is not thy home!"-And yet my eye
Rests upon earth again! How beautiful,
Where wild Velino heaves its sullen waves
Down the high cliff of gray and shapeless granite,--
Hung on the curling mist, the moonlight bow
Arches the perilous river.-A soft light
Silvers the Albanian mountains, and the haze
That rests upon their summits, mellows down
The austerer features of their beauty. Faint
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