And he sinks, as sank the town,
Uuresisting, fathoms down,
Into caverus cool and deep !

Walled about with drifts of snow,
Hearing the fierce north-wind blow,
Seeing all the landscape white,
And the river cased in ice,
Comes this memory of delight,
Comes this vision unto me
Of a long-lost Paradise,
In the land beyond the sea.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Apennines, The.

PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES.

,

To the whisper of the Apennine;
It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar,
Or like the sea on a northern shore,
Heard in its raging ebb and flow
By the captives pent in the cave below.
The Apennine in the light of day
Is a mighty mountain dim and gray,
Which between the earth and sky doth lay;

But when night comes, a chaos dread
On the dim starlight then is spread,
And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm.

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

TO THE APENNINES.

YOUR

JR peaks are beautiful, ye Apennines !

In the soft light of these serenest skies ;
From the broad highland region, black with pines,

Fair as the hills of Paradise they rise,
Bathed in the tint Peruvian slaves behold
In rosy flushes on the virgin gold.
There, rooted to the aerial shelves that wear

The glory of a brighter world, might spring
Sweet flowers of heaven to scent the unbreathed air,

And heaven's fleet messengers might rest the wing, To view the fair earth in its summer sleep, Silent, and cradled by the glimmering deep.

Below you lie men's sepulchres, the old

Etrurian tombs, the graves of yesterday ; The herd's white bones lie mixed with human mould, –

Yet up the radiant steeps that I survey Death never climbed, nor life's soft breath, with pain, Was yielded to the elements again.

Ages of war have filled these plains with fear:

How oft the hind has started at the clash Of spears, and yell of meeting armies here,

Or seen the lightning of the battle flash

From clouds, that, rising with the thunder's sound, Hung like an earth-born tempest o'er the ground !

Ab me! what armed nations Asian horde

And Lybian host, the Scythian and the Gaul-
Have swept your base and through your passes poured,

Like ocean-tides uprising at the call
Of tyrant winds, against your rocky side
The bloody billows dashed, and howled, and died.

How crashed the towers before beleaguering foes,

Sacked cities smoked, and realms were rent in twain; And commonwealths against their rivals rose,

Trode out their lives, and earned the curse of Cain : While in the noiseless air and light that flowed Round

your

far brows, eternal Peace abode. Here pealed the impious hymn, and altar flames

Rose to false gods, a dream-begotten throng, Jove, Bacchus, Pan, and earlier, fouler names ;

While, as the unheeding ages passed along, Ye, from your station in the middle skies, Proclaimed the essential Goodness, strong and wise. In you the heart that sighs for freedom seeks

Her image; there the winds no barrier know, Clouds come, and rest, and leave your fairy peaks ;

While even the immaterial Mind, below, And Thought, her winged offspring, chained by power, Pine silently for the redeeming hour.

William Cullen Bryant. THE ASCENT OF THE APENNINES.

THE

THE plains recede; the olives dwindle:

The ilex and chestnut are left behind : The skirts of the billowy pinewoods kindle

In the evening lights and the wind.
Not here we sigh for the Alpine glory

Of peak primeval and death-pale snow :
Not here for the cold green, and glacier hoary,

Or the blue caves that yawn below.
The landscape here is mature and mellow;
Fruit-like, not flower-like; — long hills embrowned;
Gradations of violet purple and yellow

From flushed stream to ridge church-crowned : 'T is a region of mystery, hushed and sainted :

As still as the dreams of those artists old When the thoughts of Dante bis Giotto painted :

The summit is reached ! Beliold !
Like a sky condensed lies the lake far down;

It curves like the orbit of some fair planet !
A fire-wreath falls on the cliffs that frown

Above it, dark walls of granite !
Thick-set, like an almond tree newly budded,

The hillsides with homesteads and hamlets glow: With convent towers are the red rocks studded,

With villages zoned below.
Down drops by the island's woody shores
The bannered barge with its rhythmic oars.

Aubrey de Vere.

Arno, the River.

THE RIVER ARNO.

A

ND I: “Through midst of Tuscany there wanders

A streamlet that is born in Falterona,

And not a hundred miles of course suffice it; From thereupon do I this body. bring.

To tell you who I am were speech in vain,

Because my name as yet makes no great noise.” “If well thy meaning I can penetrate

With intellect of mine," then answered me

He who first spake, “thou speakest of the Arno." And said the other him: “Why concealed

This one the appellation of that river,

Even as a man doth of things horrible?” And thus the shade that questioned was of this

Himself acquitted: “I know not; but truly

'T is fit the name of such a valley perish; For from its fountain-head (where is so pregnant

The Alpine mountain whence is cleft Peloro

That in few places it that mark surpasses) To where it yields itself in restoration

Of what the heaven doth of the sea dry up,

Whence have the rivers that which goes with them, Virtue is like an enemy avoided

By all, as is a serpent, through misfortune

Of place, or through bad habit that impels them; Ou which account have so transformed their nature