And there he sits alone, and gayly shakes
In his full hands the blossoms red and white, And smiles with winking eyes, like one who wakes From long deep slumbers at the morning light. William Cullen Bryant.
HE midnight, thick with cloud,
Hangs o'er the city's jar,
The spirit's shell is in the crowd,
The spirit is afar;
Far, where in shadowy gloom
Sleeps the dark orange grove,
My sense is drunk with its perfume,
My heart with love.
The slumberous, whispering sea,
Creeps up the sands to lay
Its sliding bosom fringed with pearls
Upon the rounded bay.
List! all the trembling leaves
Are rustling overhead,
Where purple grapes are hanging dark
On the trellised loggia spread.
Far off, a misted cloud,
Hangs fair Inarimé.
The boatman's song from the lighted boat
Rises from out the sea.
We listen, then thy voice
Pours forth a honeyed rhyme;
Ah! for the golden nights we passed
In our Italian time.
There is the laugh of girls
That walk along the shore,
The marinaio calls to them
As he suspends his oar.
Vesuvius rumbles sullenly,
With fitful lurid gleam,
The background of all Naples life,
The nightmare of its dream.
O lovely, lovely Italy,
I yield me to thy spell!
Reach the guitar, my dearest friend,
We'll sing, "Home! fare thee well!"
O world of work and noise,
What spell hast thou for me?
The siren Beauty charms me here
such a blue and breezy summer's day
The winds seem charmed that wander round this Bay.
The murmuring waves upon the sunward beach
Whisper of things beyond the present's reach.
Each wingéd bark that skims along the sea
Seems gliding in a haze of mystery.
Light of far Grecian days comes glimmering through
This pure crystalline sky of cloudless blue.
Here are the rocks where gold-haired sirens sang.
Here Tasso's harp in later ages rang.
Over the sacred waves the purple isles
Answer the heavens with their serenest smiles;
Round yonder point steep Capri with her caves;
Beyond, where the sky kisses the far waves,
Those amethystine sisters of the sea,
Prochyta, and the blue Inarimé.
Gemming the shore from Baia's ruined towers
To marble Pompeii, half embalmed in flowers,
Stretches the chain of towns along the sea;
While gleaming in the midst Parthenope
Sits crowned with palaces, an ocean queen
Gazing into her mirror of clear green.
And over all, the bodeful genius
Of this fair clime, fire-eyed Vesuvius
Frowns, the sole troubled spirit of the scene,
Yet even him the distance makes serene.
All this I see from my still summer home,
A bower where naught but peace and beauty come.
Geraniums and roses round me bloom,
From orange groves, amid whose verdant gloom
Gold fruit and silver flowers together shine,
Come tropic odors. A thick blossoming vine
Shadows the terrace, where, e'en as I write,
The wind snows down the olive blossoms white.
Above, the birds sing their unwearied song,
Beneath, the ocean whispers all day long.
Sometimes when morning lights the rippling waves
Below the steep rocks and the ocean caves,
The sunshine weaves a net of flickering gleams
Fit to entrap a siren in her dreams.
There tangled braids of ever-changing light
In golden mazes glitter up the sands;
And underneath the rocks and pebbles bright
Are jewelled with the wealth of Eastern lands.
Well might such sweet transparent waters hold
Tritons and nymphs with locks of dripping gold,
For nothing were too wonderful to be
Born from the pure depths of this summer sea.
Four moons have passed, and days and nights have flown
Cloudless, a summer of an orient tone,
Since my unequal pen essayed to tell
Brief passages of what I loved so well.
Above me now, where blossoms fell in spring,
Large purple, grapes hang thickly clustering.
The fig-tree near with ample leaves displayed
Shelters its sweet cool fruit beneath their shade.
Still hang the oranges upon their stems
Whose dark green foliage makes them glow like gems.
The cypresses by yonder convent wall
Shoot up as freshly green, as stately tall;
And there the drowsy vesper-bell ne'er tires
Calling to prayers the brown-robed, bearded friars.
Down on the beach, content with slender gain,
Still drag their nets the red-capped fishermen.
Still glide the days as fair, the nights more cool;
The sea is still as ever beautiful.
And yonder purple mountain towering proud
Still blends his light smoke with the flying cloud.
And now, ere I these pleasant scenes resign,
I would repaint each hue, retouch each line.
I would remember every odorous breeze
That sighed in the deep shade of citron-trees,
The roses clustering on their leafy stalks,
Dropping their faint leaves in the garden walks;
The sweet geraniums and the passion-flowers
Twining through countless roses; the noon hours
When underneath the oaks I watched the sea
Rippling below me calm and dreamily;
The hueless olives when the full moon came
Kindling behind them with a holy flame,
Touching their pale leaves with mysterious sheen,
And shimmering o'er old trunks of silvery green.
Above, the inextinguishable lights
That made all nights in heaven like festal nights,
That seemed too sacred for frail men to keep,
And yet too costly to be spent in sleep.
O lovely days and nights! too quickly flown, -
Leave me the memory of your sweetest tone.
O ocean! long I've lingered on thy shore,
Lulled by thy whisper, wakened by thy roar.
Ere I depart and see no more thy face,
Let me retain some sign of thy embrace;
Not pearls, nor painted shells, nor coral rare,
But dreams of beauty from the goddess fair
Who in a sea-shell rose from out thy foam,
And rules all hearts, and fills the Olympian home.
Christopher Pearse Cranch.
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