All is over! Wake up and come out now,

And down let us go,

And see the fine things got in order

At Church for the show

Of the Sacrament, set forth this evening;
To-morrow's the Feast

Of the Rosary's Virgin, by no means

Of Virgins the least,

As you'll hear in the off-hand discourse
Which (all nature, no art)

The Dominican brother, these three weeks,
Was getting by heart.

Not a post nor a pillar but 's dizened

With red and blue papers;

All the roof waves with ribbons, each altar
Ablaze with long tapers;

But the great masterpiece is the scaffold
Rigged glorious to hold

All the fiddlers and fifers and drummers,

And trumpeters bold,

Not afraid of Bellini nor Auber,

Who, when the priest's hoarse,

Will strike us up something that's brisk
For the feast's second course.
And then will the flaxen-wigged Image
Be carried in pomp

Through the plain, while in gallant procession

The priests mean to stomp.

And all round the glad church lie old bottles

With gunpowder stopped,

Which will be, when the Image re-enters,
Religiously popped.

And at night, from the crest of Calvano
Great bonfires will hang,

On the plain will the trumpets join chorus,

And more poppers bang!

At all events, come

As far as the wall,

to the garden,

See me tap with a hoe on the plaster
Till out there shall fall

A scorpion with wide angry nippers!

Fortù, in my England at home,
Men meet gravely to-day

And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws
Is righteous and wise,

If 't is proper, Scirocco should vanish

In black from the skies!

Robert Browning.

0

WRITTEN IN TASSO'S HOUSE AT SORRENTO.

LEONORA, here thy Tasso dwelt,

Secure, ere yet thy beauty he had seen:
Here with bright face and unterrestrial mien
He walked, ere yet thy shadow he had felt.
From that green rock he watched the sunset melt,
On through the waves; yon cavern was his screen,
When first those hills, which gird the glowing scene,
Were thronged with heavenly warriors, and he knelt
To hail the vision! Siren baths to him

Were nothing; Pagan grot, or classic fane,
Or glistening pavement seen through billows dim.

Far, far o'er these he gazed on Judah's plain; And more than manhood wrought was in the boy,Why did the stranger meddle in his joy?

Aubrey de Vere.

SORRENTO.

[TALIAN paradise, Sorrento! thou

ITA

Hast spells enchaining; lo, yon bosomed bay Where the lone crag upheaves its cloven brow, Round which the blue waves chafe in idle play; Know'st thou whose mighty spirit casts a ray O'er its dim cavern? know'st thou who stood there Embodying in his world-inspiring lay

Its tale? whose genius fills, informs the air,
Whose phantoms round that spot forever shall repair?

Even now, reclining on this mossy stone,
I see the sail spread from Lachæa's isle:
They scale the Cyclop's cave, a shout, a groan,
In his red eye is plunged the fiery pile!
Lo, with the morning's light the goats defile
Slowly beneath the blinded monster's hand:
Free stands at length the hero of the wile;
And now the giant's clamors fill the strand,
As shouting bound from shore the Ulysséan band!

every

nook

Thou everlasting Homer!
Of this all wild yet lovely coast is thine;
The Sirens yon gray islets have forsook,
Yet is each vestige of their haunt divine:
Doth not thy awful genius o'er them shine,

Bright as yon setting sun that steeps them o'er
With hues of life? so thy embodying line

From phantasy dost hero life restore,

Until we hear their tongues and see the forms they wore.

For by thy hand truth, sceptre-like, was wielded; Lo, yon blue promontory, Circe's spell

There changed to brutes the slaves to vice who yielded;
Speaks not thy moral eloquently well?

What herb save reason could her power compel,
And bid her kneel to virtue ? o'er the foam

Why sighed the chief in Ithaca to dwell,

Her charms unfelt and loathed her starry dome? Grave duty showed afar his wife, his son, his home.

There was a dwelling on the sea-cliff's side,
No ruined vestige doth its site attest;

A secret nook where love would choose to hide
Its loved one from the world, a haven nest
Of shelter, when of all it asks possessed,
The heart would find or make its earthly heaven
Where only found, in woman's answering breast;
All other ties save that sole life-tie riven:
The world's neglect forgot, its injuries forgiven.

A sacred spot! create it on thine eye;
Hallowed by suffering and by virtue's tear,
And this is sanctified by memory
Of venerating bosoms that revere

The martyrs of the past who suffered here;
O'er whom are offered human sympathies,
Heart-flowers, whose dews spiritualize the bier:

A woman by that shore with heedful eyes

Watches a nearing sail whose white wing homeward flies.

The sister's love, the vestal, and the pure,
Recalls again affection's wasted force

In exiled Tasso: other loves endure
To perish, lighted at an earthlier source,
Satiate with passion, buried in remorse;
If the heart own one pure receptacle,
One feeling flowing holier in its course,
Love that a spirit might not blush to tell,
"T is when a sister's heart to thine doth fondly swell.

The wanderer came for quiet: to forget
The blighted hope, the inexpiable wrong,
To soften here in solitude regret

Of a love stamped immortal in his song,
That but for him had lain the dead among;
Vain essay if thou wouldst the thought conceal,
Or forms that ghost-like to the past belong,

If the heart's wounds corroding thou wouldst heal, That solitude thou seek'st to thee shall all reveal:

Making the past one present; odors bear
Vibrations thrilling along memory's chain,
Felt in the chords of being till they wear
Its pulse away: so did he feel how vain
To realize his boyhood's hope again;
Till his last refuge from self-tyranny,
He flew from nature's ever-populous reign
Back to the desert of humanity,

To bear hate, scorn, repulse, to madden, and to die.

John Edmund Reade.