Or in the glittering, sparkling wiuter ice-world;
Or in the flickering white and crimson flames
That leap in the northern sky; or in the sparks
Of love or hate that flash in human eyes.
Lo, now, from day to day and hour to hour
Broad verdant shadows grow upon the land,
Cooling the burning landscape ; while the clouds,
Disputing with the sun his heaven-dominion,
Checker the hillsides with fautastic shadows.
The glorious unity of light is gone,
The triumph of those bright and boundless skies ;
Where, through all visible space, the eye met nothing
Save infinite brightness, – glory infinite.
No more at evening does the sun dissolve
Into a leaving sea of molten gold,
While over it a heaven of molten gold
Panted, with light and heat intensely glowing,
While to the middle height of the pure ether,
One deepening sapphire from the amber spreads.
Now trains of melancholy, gorgeous clouds,
Like mourners at an emperor's funeral,
Gather round the down-going of the sun;
Dark splendid curtains, with great golden fringes,
Shut up the day; masses of crimson glory,
Pale lakes of blue, studded with fiery islands,
Bright golden bars, cold peaks of slaty rock,
Mountains of fused amethyst and copper,
Fierce flaming eyes, with black o’erhanging brows,
Light floating curls of brown and golden hair,
And rosy flushes, like warm dreams of love,
Make rich and wonderful the dying day,
That, like a wounded dolphin, on the shore
Of night's black waves, dies in a thousand glories.
These are the very clouds that now put out
The serene beauty of the summer heavens.
The autumn sun hath virtue yet, to make
Right royal hangings for his sky-tent of them;
But, as the days wear on, and he grows faint
And pale and colorless, these are the clouds
That, like cold shrouds, shall muffle up the year,
Shut out the lovely blue, and draw round all --
Plain, bill, and sky -- one still, chill wintry gray.
Frances Anne Kemble.
SOLEMN thing it is, and full of awe,
Wandering long time among the lonely hills, To issue on a sudden mid the wrecks Of some fallen city, as might seem a coast From which the tide of life has ebbed away, Leaving bare sea-marks only. Snch there lie Among the Alban mountains, — Tusculum, Or Palestrina with Cyclopean walls Enormous: and this solemn awe we felt Aud knew this morning, when we stood among What of the first-named city yet survives. For we had wandered long among those hills, Watching the white goats on precipitous heights, Half bid among the bushes, or their young Tending new-yeaned: and we had paused to hear The deep-toned music of the convent bells,
And wound through many a verdant forest-path,
Gathering the crocus and anemone,
With that fresh gladness which, when flowers are new
In the first spring, they bring us, till at last
We issued out upon an eminence,
Commanding prospect large on every side,
But largest where the world's great city lay,
Whose features, undistinguishable now,
Allowed no recognition, save where the eye
Could mark the white front of the Lateran
Facing this way, or rested on the dome,
The broad stupendous dome, high over all.
And as a sea around an island's roots
Spreads, so the level champaign every way
Stretched round the city, level all, and green
With the new vegetation of the spring;
Nor by the summer ardors scorched as yet,
Which shot from sonthern suns, too soon dry up
The beauty and the freshness of the plains ;
While to the right the ridge of Apennine,
Its higher farther summits all snow-crowned,
Rose, with white clouds above them, as might seem
Another range of more aerial hills.
These things were at a distance, but more near
And at our feet signs of the tide of life,
That once was here, and now had ebbed away,
Pavements entire, without one stone displaced,
Where yet there had not rolled a chariot-wheel
For many hundred years ; rich cornices,
Elaborate friezes of rare workmanship,
And broken shafts of columns, that along
This highway-side lay prone; vaults that were rooms,
And hollowed from the turf, and cased in stone,
Seats and gradations of a theatre,
Which emptied of its population now
Shall never be refilled : and all these things,
Memorials of the busy life of man,
Or of his ample means for pomp and pride,
Scattered among the solitary hills,
And lying open to the sun and showers,
And only visited at intervals
By wandering herds, or pilgrims like ourselves
From distant lands; with now no signs of life,
Save where the goldfinch built his shallow nest
Mid the low bushes, or where timidly
The rapid lizard glanced between the stones,
All saying that the fashion of this world
Passes away; that not philosophy
Nor eloquence can guard their dearest haunts
From the rude touch of desecrating time.
What marvel, when the very fanes of God,
The outward temples of the Holy One,
Claim no exemption from the general doom,
But lie in ruinous heaps ; when nothing stands,
Nor may endure to the end, except alone
The spiritual temple built with living stones ?
Richard Chenevix Trench.
THE
HE moon is up, and yet it is not night,
Sunset divides the sky with her,
Of glory streams along the Alpine heiglit
Of blue Friuli's mountains ; Heaven is free
From clouds, but of all colors seems to be, –
Melted to one vast Iris of the West,
Where the Day joins the past Eternity;
While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest
Floats through the azure air, an island of the blest!
A single star is at her side, and reigns
With her o'er half the lovely heaven; but still
Yon sunny sea beaves brightly, and remains
Rolled o’er the peak of the far Rhætian bill,
As Day and Night contending were, until
Nature reclaimed her order; — gently flows
The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instil
The odorous purple of a new-born rose,
Which streams upon her stream, and glassed with
glows.
Filled with the face of heaven, which, from afar,
Comes down upon the waters; all its hues,
From the rich sunset to the rising star,
Their magical variety diffuse :
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