And he sinks, as sank the town, Into caverns cool and deep! Walled about with drifts of snow, In the land beyond the sea. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. L Apennines, The. PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES. ISTEN, listen, Mary mine, To the whisper of the Apennine; It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar, Or like the sea on a northern shore, Heard in its raging ebb and flow By the captives pent in the cave below. But when night comes, a chaos dread On the dim starlight then is spread, And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm. Percy Bysshe Shelley. TO THE APENNINES. VOUR peaks are beautiful, ye Apennines! There, rooted to the aerial shelves that wear The glory of a brighter world, might spring Sweet flowers of heaven to scent the unbreathed air, And heaven's fleet messengers might rest the wing, To view the fair earth in its summer sleep, Silent, and cradled by the glimmering deep. Below you lie men's sepulchres, the old Etrurian tombs, the graves of yesterday; The herd's white bones lie mixed with human mould, — Ages of war have filled these plains with fear: Of spears, and yell of meeting armies here, From clouds, that, rising with the thunder's sound, Hung like an earth-born tempest o'er the ground! Ah me! what armed nations - Asian horde And Lybian host, the Scythian and the Gaul- Of tyrant winds, against your rocky side. How crashed the towers before beleaguering foes, Trode out their lives, and earned the curse of Cain! Here pealed the impious hymn, and altar flames In you the heart that sighs for freedom seeks And Thought, her winged offspring, chained by power, William Cullen Bryant. THE THE ASCENT OF THE APENNINES. THE plains recede; the olives dwindle: The ilex and chestnut are left behind: The skirts of the billowy pinewoods kindle In the evening lights and the wind. Not here we sigh for the Alpine glory Of peak primeval and death-pale snow: Not here for the cold green, and glacier hoary, Or the blue caves that yawn below. The landscape here is mature and mellow; Fruit-like, not flower-like; — long hills embrowned; Gradations of violet purple and yellow From flushed stream to ridge church-crowned: "T is a region of mystery, hushed and sainted: As still as the dreams of those artists old When the thoughts of Dante his Giotto painted : The summit is reached! Behold! Like a sky condensed lies the lake far down; Thick-set, like an almond tree newly budded, : The hillsides with homesteads and hamlets glow: With convent towers are the red rocks studded, With villages zoned below. Down drops by the island's woody shores Aubrey de Vere. A Arno, the River. THE RIVER ARNO. ND I: "Through midst of Tuscany there wanders A streamlet that is born in Falterona, And not a hundred miles of course suffice it; From thereupon do I this body bring. To tell you who I am were speech in vain, Because my name as yet makes no great noise." "If well thy meaning I can penetrate With intellect of mine," then answered me He who first spake, "thou speakest of the Arno." And said the other to him: "Why concealed This one the appellation of that river, Even as a man doth of things horrible?" And thus the shade that questioned was of this Himself acquitted: "I know not; but truly 'Tis fit the name of such a valley perish; For from its fountain-head (where is so pregnant The Alpine mountain whence is cleft Peloro That in few places it that mark surpasses) To where it yields itself in restoration Of what the heaven doth of the sea dry up, Whence have the rivers that which goes with them, Virtue is like an enemy avoided By all, as is a serpent, through misfortune Of place, or through bad habit that impels them; On which account have so transformed their nature |