TORCELLO. YHORT sail from Venice sad Torcello lies, SHO Deserted island, low and still and green. Helen Hunt. NOT Trapani (Drepanum). ON A CORPSE WASHED ASHORE. rugged Trachis hides these whitening bones, Nor that black isle whose name its color shows, But the wild beach, o'er which, with ceaseless moans, The vexed Icarian wave, eternal, flows, Of Drepanum ill-famèd promontory · And there, instead of hospitable rites, The long grass sweeping tells his fate's sad story Val d'Arno. AN EVENING PICTURE. WHERE three huge dogs are ramping yonder, Often to watch their sports unseen, And citron boughs to shade his eyes. The clouds now whiten far away, Orchards and vine-knolls maple-propped Unseen beneath us, on the right, Eastward, two ruined castles rise Winter and Time their enemies, The heaps around them there will grow Is seized and trampled by the brier. That line so lucid is the weir The graceful tower of Giotto there, We cannot tell, so far away, Whether the city's tongue be mute, We only hear some lover play (If sighs be play) the sighing flute. Walter Savage Landor. VAL D' ARNO. WELL pleased, could we pursue WELL The Arno from his birthplace in the clouds, So near the yellow Tiber's, - springing up Then through these gardens to the Tuscan Sea, Reflecting castles, convents, villages, Florence and Pisa, His troubled waters. who have given him fame, Fame everlasting, but who stained so oft Samuel Rogers. Vallombrosa. VALLOMBROSA. THICK as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks THICK In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades, High overarched, embower. VALLOMBROSA. John Milton. AND Vallombrosa, we two went to see Last June, beloved companion, — where sublime The mountains live in holy families, And the slow pine-woods ever climb and climb Half up their breasts; just stagger as they seize Some gray crag, - drop back with it many a time, And straggle blindly down the precipice! The Vallombrosan brooks were strewn as thick That June-day, knee-deep, with dead beechen leaves, As Milton saw them ere his heart grew sick, And his eyes blind. I think the monks and beeves Are all the same too: scarce they have changed the wick On good St. Gualbert's altar, which receives Used at refectory, keeps its weedy state, The measure of their steps. O waterfalls Of life in the sunbeams, - till we cannot dare The fresh well-water. Satisfied by this, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. BRUSHWOOD. Na weary slope of Apennine, ON At sober dusk of day's decline, Out of the solemn solitude |