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TORCELLO.

YHORT sail from Venice sad Torcello lies,

SHO

Deserted island, low and still and green.
Before fair Venice was a bride and queen
Torcello's court was held in fairer guise
Than Doges knew. To-day death-vapors rise
From fields where once her palaces were seen,
And in her silent towers that crumbling lean
Unterrified the brooding swallow flies.
O once-loved friend, who dost in vain implore
My presence, thou art like Torcello's land.
Thy wasted life to me seems life no more.
With all its beauty death goes hand in hand,
I shrink from thee, as on its blighted strand
Torcello's ghosts might turn and fly the shore.

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,

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Of Drepanum ill-famèd promontory ·

And there, instead of hospitable rites,

The long grass sweeping tells his fate's sad story
To rude tribes gathered from the neighboring heights.
Uncertain. Tr. J. H. Merivale.

Val d'Arno.

AN EVENING PICTURE.

WHERE three huge dogs are ramping yonder,
Before that villa with its tower,
No braver boys, no father fonder,
Ever prolonged the moonlight hour.

Often to watch their sports unseen,
Along the broad stone bench he lies,
The oleander-stems between,

And citron boughs to shade his eyes.

The clouds now whiten far away,
And villas glimmer thick below,
And windows catch the quivering ray,
Obscure one minute's space ago.

Orchards and vine-knolls maple-propped
Rise radiant round; the meads are dim,
As if the milky-way had dropped
And filled Valdarno to the brim.

Unseen beneath us, on the right,
The abbey with unfinished front
Of checkered marble, black and white,
And on the left the Doccia's font.

Eastward, two ruined castles rise
Beyond Maiano's mossy mill,

Winter and Time their enemies,
Without their warder, stately still.

The heaps around them there will grow
Higher, as years sweep by, and higher
Till every battlement laid low

Is seized and trampled by the brier.

That line so lucid is the weir
Of Rorezzano; but behold

The graceful tower of Giotto there,
And Duomo's cross of freshened gold.

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
From his four fountains on the Apennine,
That mountain-ridge a sea-mark to the ships
Sailing on either sea. Downward he runs,
Scattering fresh verdure through the desolate wild,
Down by the City of Hermits, and the woods
That only echo to the choral hymn;

Then through these gardens to the Tuscan Sea,

Reflecting castles, convents, villages,
And those great rivals in an elder day,

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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
The convent's pilgrims; and the pool in front
Wherein the hill-stream trout are cast, to wait
The beatific vision, and the grunt

Used at refectory, keeps its weedy state,
To baffle saintly abbots, who would count
The fish across their breviary, nor 'bate

The measure of their steps. O waterfalls
And forests! sound and silence! mountains bare,
That leap up, peak by peak, and catch the palls
Of purple and silver mist, to rend and share
With one another, at electric calls

Of life in the sunbeams, - till we cannot dare
Fix your shapes, learn your number! we must think
Your beauty and your glory helped to fill
The cup of Milton's soul so to the brink,
That he no more was thirsty when God's will
Had shattered to his sense the last chain-link
By which he drew from Nature's visible

The fresh well-water. Satisfied by this,
He sang of Adam's Paradise and smiled,
Remembering Vallombrosa. Therefore is
The place divine to English man and child; -
We all love Italy.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

BRUSHWOOD.

Na weary slope of Apennine,

ON

At sober dusk of day's decline,

Out of the solemn solitude

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