I

THE TWO COLUMNS.

SAW two Columns, by a southern shore; One, standing in its Dorian majesty, Simple, and stern, and natural it might be ; So blended with the hills the shape it wore. But some Cyclopean hand, ere time was hoar, Had reared it up to Neptune; and his sea Still bellows out beneath, memorially; Marking the moments' flight with tumbling roar. O'erthrown the other, of inferior race; Spiral and fretted, as a beechen bole, That thin green stems of ivy overlace; Between their dates did twenty ages roll; And still the first, with his Homeric grace, Stood scathless; lifting up the gazer's soul.

THE WIDOW OF EPHESUS.

H weak, unstable, wandering memory;"

Came forth a sudden voice from an old tomb,

By the way-side, like Pompeii's: " for the doom
Of Ephesus, so, justly clings to me;

Making my love a byword; I am she

Thenceforward called The Widow, since the gloom
Of funeral caverns was my bridal room;
But how that deed unholy came to be,

Ask many a feeble utterance of strong will,
Many a faint priest of fame's divinity;"
So said the mourning voice, and then was still:
But from the thronging drear infinity
Of shades, that answered to the summons, I
Sped, as the heron speeds, under a hill.

THE FOUNTAIN AT THE ALDOBRANDINI

VILLA, FRASCATI.

OT by Aldobrandini's watery show,

Still plashing at his portal never dumb,

Spoiled of thy natural beauty, shalt thou come,
Leaving for this thy fount on Algido,

Wild winged daughter of the Sabine snow ;
Now creeping under quiet Tusculum;

Now gushing from those caverns old and numb;
Dull were his heart who gazed upon thee so.
Emblem art thou of Time, memorial stream,
Which in ten thousand fancies, being here,
We waste, or use, or fashion, as we deem ;
.;
But if its backward voice comes ever near,
As thine upon the hill, how doth it seem
Solemn, and stern, sepulchral and severe !

A WAY-SIDE LANDSCAPE IN ITALY.

EASTER EGGS.

'HERE stands a fortress by a Roman way,

TH

With battered base, and dark imperious towers;
And massy gates that scorned the irregular powers,
Colonna, or Savelli, in their day;

But ilexes with foreheads round and grey,
Grow now upon the moat; and slanting showers
Chase sunshine through the open gate; with flowers
The windows high above are bright and gay.
For 'tis the vernal time, when in the woods
Springs the ranunculus; and the holy tide
Of Easter comes, by rituals led along;
And in the streets go flocking multitudes,
With painted eggs, of many a colour pied;
But not so motley as the moving throng.

SILENCE.

WHEN at the sound of noon-proclaiming bell,

WHE

Quick as the note, throws by his spade the clown,

And from his forehead clears the careful frown,

With which his work before, he measured well;
Comes Silence with admonitory spell:

Oh changeful Silence, on the sedgy crown

Of a blue mere as lights a wild bird down,
Watching the air's vibration thou dost dwell.
Vague spirit, whom nor hymn nor voice evokes ;
But gazing Nature from her depths; and so
E'en the cessation of dull earthly strokes
Doth sanctify; behold the feathery snow
Falls on a wood of monumental oaks,

Stern and unmoved; and not a wind doth blow.

THE MILLENNIUM.

ARKNESS and tumult till the thousandth year;

DAR

As in the dreary nights, when men lie dumb,
Listening the whirlwind; then pale lights to some
Shine, as the gusty morning climbs the sphere.
The thunders of Time's chariot wheel draw near:
It hath gone by-the dread Millennium '-
Shout, for the world hath ages yet to come;
Rise man, that like a bulrush crouched for fear.
He rises.-O'er the mighty Lombard plain,
By far Transalpine cities, domes and spires,

1 The period of the Millennium had passed by; and men again recovering from their fright, and shaking off their torpor, felt ashamed of their long neglect of holy edifices, and everywhere again began to repair and rebuild churches and monasteries in greater numbers and on a greater scale than before.-Hope's "Architecture," chap. xxi.

And baptisteries, sweet charm of mortal sorrow,
Spring up; like flowers dew-glittering, when the choirs
Of birds from winter loosed break forth again,
In a new note, from the old that yet doth borrow.

"WHY

CIULLO OF ALCAMO.

WHY call those ages dark? from the old speech By what gradations pass'd the world away, Ye know not: for your thoughts are dull to reach (Being late awake) the springing of the day." I knew the voice was Ciullo's: ' he whose lay First in Alcamo grace of words did teach, And accent and sweet meaning give to each; And I, for more still listening, answered " Nay, If the long avenue of sphynx-like years Tends to a point of dim perspective now; Bright in the midst a starry line appears, Fame's children; and if Dante's sovereign brow Loftier and nearer shine, or through his tears Petrarca, seen, though far remote, art thou."

The few lines attributed to the Sicilian Ciullo, which are said to be the earliest genuine Italian extant, are supposed to have been written between 1187 and 1193.-See Hallam's "Literature of Europe,"” vol. i.