MOST of the following rhymes were written by me so long ago that they may serve for parochial antiquities,-nay, may stand in place of the verses of our excellent local bard Dafyd ap Edmund, which being in Welsh were not printed. I call him excellent, for though to most people his productions in his native tongue are scarcely intelligible, yet his name remains, and that is as much as for the greater part of English-speaking men can be told of Dante.
TRANGER, I was a piper, and have blown
Fierce music in the faces of the foe;
Now underneath the marshes I lie low,
Here, where his thickest harvest Death hath
The cane brakes in the waning of the moon
Murmur about me, quivering to and fro;
Louder the rattling through the ranks did go
Of the long spears that on the earth were strewn,
Not of a head averted and down looks
Was I, as to the feasts that morning chases,
Those who invite beneath the Egyptian star;
Their art the serpent from his coil unlaces,
But like the wind over the mountain brooks
Mine poured the exulting melodies of war.
REAT people, whom across the Atlantic seas,
Our thoughts, expanding with the space,
And know thy starry front, serene and bold,
Even as Orion, when the winters freeze;
Thy distance fades by changing moon's degrees;
Peace hovers o'er the middle depths, to hold
On either side her scales of antique gold,
Spanning the depths; but not alone for these;
But that ye come from an ancestral line,
That hence departed, keeping freedom's ways;
And speak the language that the band divine,
And storied memories of great deeds did raise,
When the old world was wondrous; let the sign
Of love shine out betwixt us, in our days.
OT vainly didst thou sing, thy lifetime long,
Petrarca, of a fair and gentle dame;
NOT of cast iron di
And with the winds fan love's enduring flame;
Wandering the hills and the quick streams among;
For Time hath listened to thy passionate song;
Whose years like pilgrims to Valchiusa came;
Sighing thou wentest all thy days; but Fame
Filled her clear trump with thine imagined wrong.
Then from the banks of that Provençal river,
Soared loftier accents, 'neath the Alps' blue gleam;
And at thy voice rose one, who would deliver
His Rome and thine; oh noble poet-dream:
The Belisarian weeds did stir and shiver
On her old walls, at that electric theme.
WINTER IN THE RIVIERA OF GENOA,
OW the fair face of Nature is obscure;
Ay, if 'tis ever, in this southern clime;
Upon the mountain sits the cloud sublime
And incense to the Virgin dear and pure,
Ere the tumultuous seas he will endure,
And spread his sails, and to the topmast climb,
The shipman offers. 'Tis the wintry time
When rich men crowd in cities; and the poor
Kindle their fires of wreck along the coast;
Or in slow barges from Lavenza creep;
Bearing her marble for proud Genoa's boast:
And still, at intervals, along the deep,
Dim trails of smoke arise, and then are lost,
Where steamers their rough way undaunted keep.
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