FAREWELL TO ITALY.

FARET

NAREWELL to the Land of the South!

Farewell to the lovely clime, Where the sunny valleys smile in light,

And the piny mountains climb!
Farewell to her bright blue seas !
Farewell to her fervid skies !
O, many and deep are the thoughts which crowd

On the sinking heart, while it sighs,
“ Farewell to the Land of the South!”

As the look of a face beloved,

Was that bright land to me!
It enchanted my sense, it sank on my heart

Like music's witchery!
In every kindling pulse
I felt the genial air,
For life is life in that sunny clime,
'T is death of life elsewhere :

Farewell to the Land of the South !

The poet's splendid dreams

Have hallowed each grove and hill,
And the beautiful forms of ancient Faith

Are lingering round us still.
And the spirits of other days,
Invoked by fancy's spell,
Are rolled before the kindling thought,

While we breathe our last farewell
To the glorious Land of the South !

A long, a last adieu,

Romantic Italy !
Thou land of beauty and love and song,

As once of the brave and free!
Alas for thy golden fields !
Alas for thy classic shore !
Alas for thy orange and myrtle bowers !

I shall never behold them more,
Farewell to the Land of the South !

Anna Jameson.

ITALY.

Alban Hills.

THE VILLA.

OUR

UR villa, perhaps, you never have seen;

It lies on the slope of the Alban hill; Lifting its white face, sunny and still, Out of the olives' pale gray green, That, far away as the eye can go, Stretch up behind it, row upon row. There, in the garden, the cypresses, stirred By the sisting winds, half musing talk, And the cool, fresh, constant voice is heard Of the fountains spilling in every walk. There stately the oleanders grow, And one long gray wall is aglow With golden oranges burning between Their dark stiff leaves of sombre green, And there are hedges all clipped and square, As carven from blocks of malachite, Where fountains keep spinning their threads of light, And statues whiten the shadow there.

And, if the sun too fiercely shine,
And one would creep from its noonday glare,
There are galleries dark, where ilexes twine
Their branchy roofs above the head.
Or when at twilight the heats decline,
If one but cross the terraces,
And lean o'er the marble balustrade,
Between the vases whose aloes high
Show their sharp pike-heads against the sky,
What a sight — Madonna mia — he sees!
There stretches our great campagna beneath,
And seems to breathe a rosy breath
Of light and mist, as in peace it sleeps, –
And summery thunder-clouds of rain,
With their slanting spears, run over the plain,
And rush at the ruins, or, routed, fly
To the mountains that lift their barriers high,
And stand with their purple pits of shades
Split by the sharp-edged limestone blades,
With opaline lights and tender grades
Of color, that flicker and swoon and die,
Built up like a wall against the sky.

William Wetmore Story.

MONTE SACRO.

THE Sacred Mount, Crowned with the citadel of Latin Jove, Hangs o'er Alba's Lake, and o’er the towers Older than Rome, their daugliter. On its slopes

Aricia smiles, and stately Tusculum.
Beneath us Gabii, and, in shrouded sheen,
Regillus, famed for Tarquin's overthrow.
Northward leans Tibur o'er her cataract,
Fortress of Sabine wars. Fidenæ there,
And farther, Veii melts into the shade.

John Nichol.

Amalfi.

AMALFI.

THERE

THERE would I linger, then go forth again ;

And he who steers due east, doubling the cape, Discovers, in a crevice of the rock, The fishing-town, Amalfi. Haply there A heaving bark, an anchor on the strand, May tell him what it is; but what it was, Cannot be told so soon.

The time has been, When on the quays along the Syrian coast, 'T was asked and eagerly, at break of dawn, “What ships are from Amalfi ? ” when her coins, Silver and gold, circled from clime to clime; From Alexandria southward to Sennaar, And eastward, through Damascus and Cabul And Samarcand, to thy great wall, Cathay.

Then were the nations by her wisdom swayed ; And every crime on every sea was judged According to her judgments. In her port