COMPLACENT Fictions were they, yet the same
Involved a history of no doubtful sense,
History that proves by inward evidence
From what a precious source of truth it came.
Ne'er could the boldest Eulogist have dared
Such deeds to paint, such characters to frame,
But for coeval sympathy prepared

To greet with instant faith their loftiest claim.
None but a noble people could have loved
Flattery in Ancient Rome's pure-minded style:
Not in like sort the Runic Scald was moved;
He, nursed 'mid savage passions that defile.
Humanity, sang feats that well might call
For the blood-thirsty mead of Odin's riotous

Hall.

VI.

PLEA FOR THE HISTORIAN.

FORBEAR to deem the Chronicler unwise,
Ungentle, or untouched by seemly ruth,
Who, gathering up all that Time's envious tooth
Has spared of sound and grave realities,
Firmly rejects those dazzling flatteries,
Dear as they are to unsuspecting Youth,
That might have drawn down Clio from the skies
To vindicate the majesty of truth.

Such was her office while she walked with men,
A Muse, who, not unmindful of her Sire
All-ruling Jove, whate'er the theme might be
Revered her Mother, sage Mnemosyne,
And taught her faithful servants how the lyre
Should animate, but not mislead, the pen.

VII.

AT ROME.

THEY-who have seen the noble Roman's scorn
Break forth at thought of laying down his head,
When the blank day is over, garreted
In his ancestral palace, where, from morn
To night, the desecrated floors are worn
By feet of purse-proud strangers; they-who
have read

In one meek smile, beneath a peasant's shed,
How patiently the weight of wrong is borne;
They who have heard some learned Patriot

treat

Of freedom, with mind grasping the whole theme

From ancient Rome, downwards through that bright dream

Commonwealths, each city a starlike seat rival glory; they-fallen ItalyNor must, nor will, nor can, despair of Thee!

Our yesterday's procession did not sue
In vain; the sky will change to sunny blue,
Thanks to our Lady's grace.' I smiled to hear,
But not in scorn:-the Matron's Faith may
lack

The heavenly sanction needed to ensure
Fulfilment; but, we trust, her upward track
Stops not at this low point, nor wants the lure
Of flowers the Virgin without fear may own,
For by her Son's blest hand the seed was sown.

X.

NEAR Anio's stream, I spied a gentle Dove Perched on an olive branch, and heard her cooing

'Mid new-born blossoms that soft airs were wooing,

While all things present told of joy and love.
But restless Fancy left that olive grove
To hail the exploratory Bird renewing
Hope for the few, who, at the world's undoing,
On the great flood were spared to live and

move.

O bounteous Heaven; signs true as dove and bough

Brought to the ark are coming evermore, Given though we seek them not, but, while we plough

This sea of life without a visible shore,
Do neither promise ask nor grace implore
In what alone is ours, the living Now.

XI.

FROM THE ALBAN HILLS, LOOKING TOWARDS ROME.

FORGIVE, illustrious Country! these deep sighs, Heaved less for thy bright plains and hills be

strown

With monuments decayed or overthrown, For all that tottering stands or prostrate lies, Than for like scenes in moral vision shown, Ruin perceived for keener sympathies;

Then question not that, 'mid the austere Band,

Who breathe the air he breathed, tread where he trod,

Some true Partakers of his loving spirit
Do still survive, and, with those gentle hearts
Consorted, Others, in the power, the faith,
Of a baptized imagination, prompt

To catch from Nature's humblest monitors
Whate'er they bring of impulses sublime.
Thus sensitive must be the Monk, though
pale

With fasts, with vigils worn, depressed by

years,

Whom in a sunny glade I chanced to see
Upon a pine-tree's storm-uprooted trunk,
Seated alone, with forehead sky-ward raised,
Hands clasped above the crucifix he wore
Appended to his bosom, and lips closed
By the joint pressure of his musing mood
And habit of his vow. That ancient Man-
Nor haply less the Brother whom I marked,
As we approached the Convent gate, aloft
Looking far forth from his aerial cell,
A young Ascetic-Poet, Hero, Sage,
He might have been, Lover belike he was-
If they received into a conscious ear
The notes whose first faint greeting startled me,
Whose sedulous iteration thrilled with joy
My heart may have been moved like me to
think,

Ah! not like me who walk in the world's ways,

On the great Prophet, styled the Voice of One
Crying amid the wilderness, and given,
Now that their snows must melt, their herbs

and flowers

Revive, their obstinate winter pass away,
That awful name to Thee, thee, simple Cuckoo,
Wandering in solitude, and evermore
Foretelling and proclaiming, ere thou leave
This thy last haunt beneath Italian skies
To carry thy glad tidings over heights
Still loftier, and to climes more near the Pole.

Voice of the Desert, fare-thee-well; sweet
Bird!

If that substantial title please thee more,
Farewell!-but go thy way, no need hast thou
Of a good wish sent after thee; from bower
To bower as green, from sky to sky as clear,
Thee gentle breezes waft-or airs that meet
Thy course and sport around thee softly fan-
Till Night, descending upon hill and vale,
Grants to thy mission a brief term of silence,
And folds thy pinions up in blest repose.

XV.

AT THE CONVENT OF CAMALDOLI. GRIEVE for the Man who hither came bereft, And seeking consolation from above; Nor grieve the less that skill to him was left To paint this picture of his lady-love: Can she, a blessed saint, the work approve? And O, good Brethren of the cowl, a thing So fair, to which with peril he must cling, Destroy in pity, or with care remove. That bloom-those eyes-can they assist to bind

Thoughts that would stray from Heaven? The

lr am must cease

AT THE EREMITE OR UPPER CONVENT OF
CAMALDOLI.

WHAT aim had they, the Pair of Monks, in size
Enormous, dragged, while side by side they sate,
By panting steers up to this convent gate?
How, with empurpled cheeks and pampered
Dare they confront the lean austerities
eyes,
of Brethren who, here fixed, on Jesu wait
In sackcloth, and God's anger deprecate
Through all that humbles flesh and mortifies?
Where mingle, as for mockery combined,
Strange contrast !-verily the world of dreams,
Things in their very essences at strife,
Shows not a sight incongruous as the extremes
That everywhere, before the thoughtful mind,
Meet on the solid ground of waking life.

In the flower-besprent meadows his genius we

trace

Turned to humbler delights, in which youth might confide,

That would yield him fit help while prefiguring that Place

Where, if Sin had not entered, Love never had died.

When with life lengthened out came a desolate time,

And darkness and danger had compassed him round,

With a thought he would flee to these haunts of his prime,

And here once again a kind shelter be found.
And let me believe that when nightly the Muse
Did waft him to Sion, the glorified hill,
Here also, on some favoured height, he would
choose

To wander, and drink inspiration at will

Vallombrosa! of thee I first heard in the page Of that holiest of Bards, and the name for my mind

Had a musical charm, which the winter of age And the changes it brings had no power to unbind.

And now, ye Miltonian shades! under you
I repose, nor am forced from sweet fancy to

part,

While your leaves I behold and the brooks they will strew,

And the realised vision is clasped to my heart. Even so, and unblamed, we rejoice as we may In Forms that must perish, frail objects of

His Father served Jehovah; but how win
Due audience, how for aught but scorn defy
The obstinate pride and wanton revelry
Of the Jerusalem below, her sin
And folly, if they with united din
Drown not at once mandate and prophecy?
Therefore the Voice spake from the Desert,
thence

To Her, as to her opposite in peace,
Silence, and holiness, and innocence,
To Her and to all Lands its warning sent,
Crying with earnestness that might not cease,
"Make straight a highway for the Lord-re-
pent!

XXI.

AT FLORENCE.-FROM MICHAEL ANGELO.

RAPT above earth by power of one fair face,
Hers in whose sway alone my heart delights,
I mingle with the blest on those pure heights
Where Man, yet mortal, rarely finds a place.
With Him who made the Work that Work
accords

So well, that by its help and through his grace I raise my thoughts, inform my deeds and words,

Clasping her beauty in my soul's embrace.
Thus, if from two fair eyes mine cannot turn,
I feel how in their presence doth abide
Light which to God is both the way and guide;
And, kindling at their lustre, if I burn,
My noble fire emits the joyful ray
That through the realms of glory shines for

aye.

XXII.

AT FLORENCE.-FROM M. ANGELO.

ETERNAL Lord! eased of a cumbrous load, And loosened from the world, I turn to Thee; Shun, like a shattered bark, the storm, and flee To thy protection for a safe abode.

The crown of thorns, hands pierced upon the tree,

The meek, benign, and lacerated face,
To a sincere repentance promise grace,
To the sad soul give hope of pardon free.
With justice mark not Thou, O Light divine,
My fault, nor hear it with thy sacred ear;
Neither put forth that way thy arm severe;
Wash with thy blood my sins; thereto incline
More readily the more my years require
Help, and forgiveness speedy and entire.

XXIII.

AMONG THE RUINS OF A CONVENT IN THE
APENNINES.

YE Trees! whose slender roots entwine
Altars that piety neglects;
Whose infant arms enclasp the shrine
Which no devotion now respects;
If not a straggler from the herd
Here ruminate, nor shrouded bird,
Chanting her low-voiced hymn, take pride
In aught that ye would grace or hide-
How sadly is your love misplaced,
Fair Trees, your bounty run to waste!
Ye, too, wild Flowers! that no one heeds,
And ye-full often spurned as weeds-
In beauty clothed, or breathing sweetness
From fractured arch and mouldering wall--

Do but more touchingly recal
Man's headstrong violence and Time's fleetness,
Making the precincts ye adorn
Appear to sight still more forlorn

XXIV.

IN LOMBARDY.

SEE, where his difficult way that Old Man wins
Bent by a load of Mulberry leaves!-most hard
Appears his lot, to the small Worm's compared,
For whom his toil with early day begins.
Acknowledging no task-master, at will
(As if her labour and her ease were twins)
She seems to work, at pleasure to lie still
And softly sleeps within the thread she spins.
So fare they-the Man serving as her Slave.
Ere long their fates do each to each conform;
Both pass into new being, but the Worm,
Transfigured, sinks into a hopeless grave;
His volant Spirit will, he trusts, ascend
To bliss unbounded, glory without end.

As indignation mastered grief, my tongue
Spake bitter words; words that did ill agree
With those rich stores of Nature's imagery,
And divine Art, that fast to memory clung-
Thy gifts, magnificent Region, ever young
In the sun's eye, and in his sister's sight
How beautiful! how worthy to be sung
In strains of rapture, or subdued delight!
I feign not; witness that unwelcome shock
That followed the first sound of German speech,
Caught the far-winding barrier Alps among.

that announcement, greeting seemed to mock Parting; the casual word had power to reach My heart, and filled that heart with conflict strong.

XXVII.

OMPOSED AT RYDAL ON MAY MORNING, 1838. IF with old love of you, dear Hills! I share ew love of many a rival image brought rom far, forgive the wanderings of my thought: Nor art thou wronged, sweet May! when I compare

hy present birth-morn with thy last, so fair, o rich to me in favours. For my lot Then was, within the famed Egerian Grot To sit and muse, fanned by its dewy air

Mingling with thy soft breath! That morning

too,

Warblers I heard their joy unbosoming
Amid the sunny, shadowy, Coliseum;
Heard them, unchecked by aught of saddening
hue,

For victories there won by flower-crowned
Spring,

Chant in full choir their innocent Te Deum.

XXVIII

THE PILLAR OF TRAJAN. WHERE towers are crushed, and unforbidden weeds

O'er mutilated arches shed their seeds;
And temples, doomed to milder change, unfold
A new magnificence that vies with old;
Firm in its pristine majesty hath stood
A votive Column, spared by fire and flood:-
And, though the passions of man's fretful race
Have never ceased to eddy round its base,
Not injured more by touch of meddling hands
Than a lone obelisk, 'mid Nubian sands,
Or aught in Syrian deserts left to save
From death the memory of the good and brave.
Historic figures round the shaft embost
Ascend, with lineaments in air not lost:
Still as he turns, the charmed spectator sees
Group winding after group with dream-like ease
Triumphs in sunbright gratitude displayed,
Or softly stealing into modest shade.

-So, pleased with purple clusters to entwine Some lofty elm-tree, mounts the daring vine; The woodbine so, with spiral grace, and breathes Wide spreading odours from her flowery wreaths.

Borne by the Muse from rills in shepherds'

ears

Murmuring but one smooth story for all years,
I gladly commune with the mind and heart
Of him who thus survives by classic art,
His actions witness, venerate his mien,
And study Trajan as by Pliny seen;
Behold how fought the Chief whose conquering

sword

Stretched far as earth might own a single lord:
In the delight of moral prudence schooled,
How feelingly at home the Sovereign ruled;
Best of the good-in pagan faith allied
To more than Man, by virtue deified.

Memorial Pillar! 'mid the wrecks of Time The exultations, pomps, and cares of Rome, Preserve thy charge with confidence sublime--Whence half the breathing world received its doom;

Things that recoil from language; that, if shown
By apter pencil, from the light had flown.
A Fontiff, Trajan here the Gods implores,
There greets an Embassy from Indian shores :
Lo! he harangues his cohorts-there the storm
Of battle meets him in authentic form!
Unharnessed, naked, troops of Moorish horse
Sweep to the charge; more high, the Dacian
force,

To hoof and finger mailed ;-yet, high or low,
None bleed, and none lie prostrate but the foe;
In every Roman, through all turns of fate,
Is Roman dignity inviolate;

Spirit in him pre-eminent, who guides,