A

GENOA.

H! what avails it, Genoa, now to thee

That Doria, feared by monarchs, once was thine ? Univied ruin! in thy sad decline

From virtuous greatness, what avails that he Whose prow descended first the Hesperian sea, And gave our world her mate beyond the brine, Was nurtured, whilst an infant, at thy knee? All things must perish, all but things divine. Flowers, and the stars, and virtue, - these alone, The self-subsisting shapes, or self-renewing, Survive. All else are sentenced. Wisest were That builder who should plan with strictest care (Ere yet the wood was felled or hewn the stone) The aspect only of his pile in ruin!

Aubrey de Vere.

IN GENOA.

NIGHT AT THE PARADISO.

OW sweet the stars are, trembling in the sky,

HOW

As I look up across the shadowy trees,

Whose branches softly melt in heaven's seas,
And mix with stars as griefs with destinies.
How sweet they are that overhead do fly
And reel and burn like sweet dreams born divine
That high in heaven grow restless if too fine
For human uses. Sweet the sleepy air
That scarce can hold the moonlight in its arms,
For dreaming and for sleeping; sweet the stair

Of clouds that winds to God, upheld in palms
Of planets poised in the dark atmosphere;
Sweet all things here atwixt the seas and skies, -
Sights, sounds, and odors of this Paradise!

GENOA.

Cora Kennedy Aitkin.

(ENTLY, as roses die, the day declines;

On the charmed air there is a hush the while;
And delicate are the twilight-tints that smile
Upon the summits of the Apennines.

The moon is up; and o'er the warm wave shines
A faery bridge of light, whose beams beguile
The fancy to some far and fortunate isle,
Which love in solitude unlonely shrines.
The blue night of Italian summer glooms
Around us; over the crystalline swell
I gaze on Genoa's spires and palace-domes:
City of cities, the superb, farewell!

The beautiful, in nature's bloom, is thine;
And Art hath made it deathless and divine!

William Gibson.

Ischia, the Island.

ISCHIA.

TERE in this narrow island glen

HERE

Between the dark hill and the sea,
Remote from books, remote from men,
I sit; but, O, how near to thee!

I bend above thy broidery frame;

I smell thy flowers; thy voice I hear: Of Italy thou speak'st; that name

Woke long thy wish, at last thy tear!

Hadst thou but watched that azure deep;
Those rocks with myrtles mantled o'er;
Misenum's cape, yon mountains' sweep;
The smile of that Circean shore!

But seen that crag's embattled crest,
Whereon Colonna mourned alone,

An eagle widowed in her nest,

Heart strong and faithful to thine own!

This was not in thy fates. Thy life
Lay circled in a narrower bound:
Child, sister, tenderest mother, wife,
Love made that circle holy ground.

Love blessed thy home, its trees, its earth,
Its stones, that ofttimes trodden road
Which linked the region of thy birth
With that till death thy still abode.

From the loud river's rocky beach

To that clear lake the woodlands shade, Love stretched his arms. In sight of each The place of thy repose is made.

Aubrey de Vere.

INARIMÉ.

VITTORIA COLONNA, after the death of her husband, the Marchese di Pescara, retired to her castle at Ischia (Inarimé), and there wrote the ode upon his death which gained her the title of Divine.

NCE more, once more, Inarimé,

ONCER

see thy purple hills! —

I hear the billows of the bay

once more

Wash the white pebbles on thy shore.

High o'er the sea-surge and the sands,
Like a great galleon wrecked and cast
Ashore by storms, thy castle stands,
A mouldering landmark of the Past.

Upon its terrace-walk I see

A phantom gliding to and fro;
It is Colonna, it is she

Who lived and loved so long ago.

Pescara's beautiful young wife,

The type of perfect womanhood,
Whose life was love, the life of life,

That time and change and death withstood.

For death, that breaks the marriage band
In others, only closer pressed

The wedding-ring upon her hand

And closer locked and barred her breast.

She knew the life-long martyrdom,
The weariness, the endless pain
Of waiting for some one to come
Who nevermore would come again.

The shadows of the chestnut-trees,
The odor of the orange blooms,

The song of birds, and, more than these,
The silence of deserted rooms;

The respiration of the sea,

The soft caresses of the air,
All things in nature seemed to be
But ministers of her despair;

Till the o'erburdened heart, so long
Imprisoned in itself, found vent
And voice in one impassioned song
Of inconsolable lament.

Then as the sun, though hidden from sight,
Transmutes to gold the leaden mist,

Her life was interfused with light,
From realms that, though unseen, exist.

Inarimé! Inarimé !

Thy castle on the crags above
In dust shall crumble and decay,
But not the memory of her love.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.