And gaze from thy fair fountain-seat
Up the sheer street;

And the house midway hanging see
That saw Saint Catherine bodily,
Felt on its floors her sweet feet move,
And the live light of fiery love
Burn from her beautiful, strange face,
As in the sanguine sacred place
Where in pure hands she took the head
Severed, and with pure lips still red
Kissed the lips dead.

For the outer land is sad, and wears
A raiment of a flaming fire;

And the fierce, fruitless mountain stairs

Climb, yet seem wroth and loth to aspire,
Climb, and break, and are broken down,
And through their clefts and crests the town
Looks west and sees the dead sun lie

In sanguine death that stains the sky
With angry dye.

And from the war-worn wastes without
In twilight, in the time of doubt,
One sound comes of one whisper, where,
Moved with low motions of slow air,
The great trees nigh the castle swing
In the sad colored evening;

"Ricorditi di me, che son

La Pia," that small sweet word alone
Is not yet gone.

"Ricorditi di me," the sound
Sole out of deep dumb days remote
Across the fiery and fatal ground

Comes tender as a hurt bird's note
To where, a ghost with empty hands,
A woe-worn ghost, her palace stands
In the mid city, where the strong
Bells turn the sunset air to song,
And the towers throng.

With other face, with speech the same,
A mightier maiden's likeness came
Late among mourning men that slept,
A sacred ghost that went and wept,
White as the passion-wounded Lamb,
Saying, "Ah, remember me, that am
Italia." (From deep sea to sea

Earth heard, earth knew her, that this was she.) "Ricorditi."

Algernon Charles Swinburne.

Soracte, the Mountain.

SORACTE.

(EE, Thaliarch, how deep in snow

SEE,

Soracte stands, the laboring woods

Bend with their load, and wintry floods, Benumbed with frost, forget to flow.

Heap log on log the spell to thaw:
Shall winter's frown our banquet mar?
Or from thy raciest Sabine jar
Brimful the generous magnum draw.

Commit the rest to Jove's high hand:
At the first bidding of his will

The wave and brawling wind are still,
Erect the ash and cypress stand.

Why, curious, turn the morrow's page?
Set down as gain whatever chance
The day affords; enjoy the dance,
Make love; full soon will peevish age

Put such toys by. Now let us go

Where open square and public walk
Buzz all around with whispered talk
And sighs at nightfall breathing low:

Thence track the scarce reluctant maid
By laughter to her form, and snatch
From arm or hand the ring to match,
Whereon sweet forfeit must be paid.

Horace. Tr. R. M. Hovenden.

SORACTE.

NCE more upon the woody Apennine,

ON

The infant Alps, which had I not before Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar

The thundering lauwine-might be worshipped more; But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear

Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near, And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear,

The Acroceraunian mountains of old name; And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly Like spirits of the spot, as 't were for fame, For still they soared unutterably high: I've looked on Ida with a Trojan's eye; Athos, Olympus, Etna, Atlas, made These hills seem things of lesser dignity, All, save the lone Soracte's height, displayed Not now in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid.

For our remembrance, and from out the plain
Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,
And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain
May he, who will, his recollections rake
And quote in classic raptures, and awake
The hills with Latian echoes; I abhorred

Too much to conquer for the poet's sake

The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record

Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned
My sickening memory; and though time hath taught
My mind to meditate what then it learned,
Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought
By the impatience of my early thought,

That, with the freshness wearing out before

My mind could relish what it might have sought, If free to choose, I cannot now restore

Its health; but what it then detested, still abhor.

Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so,
Not for thy faults, but mine: it is a curse
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,
To comprehend, but never love thy verse:
Although no deeper moralist rehearse
Our little life, nor bard prescribe his art,
Nor livelier satirist the conscience pierce,
Awakening without wounding the touched heart,
Yet fare thee well,

upon Soracte's ridge we part.

Lord Byron.

SHE

Sorrento.

ISLANDS OF THE SIRENS.

HE spake; the Morning on her golden throne Looked forth; the glorious goddess went her way Into the isle, I to my ship, and bade

The men embark and cast the hawsers loose.

And straight they went on board, and duly manned
The benches, smiting as they sat with oars
The hoary waters. Circè, amber-haired,
The mighty goddess of the musical voice,
Sent a fair wind behind our dark-prowed ship