Nowhere I sojourn but I thence depart,
Leaving a little portion of my heart;
Then day-dreams make the heart's division good
With many a loved Italian solitude.4
As sons the whole year scattered here and there
Gather at Christmas round their father's chair,
Prodigal memories tenderly come home—
Suns Neapolitan, white noons at Rome;
Watches that from the wreck'd Arena wall
Saw Alps and Plain deny the Sun in his fall,10
And rosy gold upon Verona tarry.
O Cloister-Castle that the high winds harry,
Butting Saint Benet's tower and doubling short
To whisper with the rosebush in the Court!14
How sweet the frogs by reedy Mantuan marges
Cried in the broken moonlight round the barges,
Where, glib decline of glass, the Mincio's march
Flaws in a riot at the Causeway arch!
How Cava from grey wall and silence green
Echoes the humming voice of the ravine,20
The while a second spell the brain composes,
Fresh elder mixt with sun-dishevelled roses!
How that first sunbeam on Assisi fell
To wake Saint-Mary-of-the-Angels' bell,
Before the tides of noonday washed the pale25
Mist-bloom from off the purple Umbrian vale!
Multitudinous colonies of my love!
But there's a single village dear above
Cities and scenes, a township of kind hearts,
The quick Boïte laughs to and departs30
Burying his snowy leaps in pools of green.
My tower that climbs to see what can be seen
Towards Three Crosses or the high Giaù daisies,
Or where the great white highway southward blazes!
My sloping barley plots, my hayfield lawn35
Breathing heavy and sweet, before the dawn
Shows up her pillared bulwarks one by one—
Cortina, open-hearted to the Sun!
Oft as the pilgrim spirit, most erect,
Dares the poor dole of Here and Now reject,40
The lust of larger things invades and fills—
The heart's homesickness for the hills, the hills!
J. S. Phillimore.
FAREWELL TO ITALY
I leave thee, beauteous Italy! no more
From the high terraces, at even-tide,
To look supine into thy depths of sky,
Thy golden moon between the cliff and me,
Or thy dark spires of fretted cypresses5
Bordering the channel of the milky-way.
Fiesole and Valdarno must be dreams
Hereafter, and my own lost Affrico
Murmur to me but in the poet's song.
I did believe (what have I not believed?),10
Weary with age, but unopprest by pain,
To close in thy soft clime my quiet day
And rest my bones in the Mimosa's shade.
Hope! Hope! few ever cherisht thee so little;
Few are the heads thou hast so rarely raised;15
But thou didst promise this, and all was well.
For we are fond of thinking where to lie
When every pulse hath ceast, when the lone heart
Can lift no aspiration ... reasoning
As if the sight were unimpaired by death,20
Were unobstructed by the coffin-lid,
And the sun cheered corruption! Over all
The smiles of Nature shed a potent charm,
And light us to our chamber at the grave.
W. S. Landor.
MESSINA
'Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto.'
Why, wedded to the Lord, still yearns my heart
Towards these scenes of ancient heathen fame?
Yet legend hoar, and voice of bard that came
Fixing my restless youth with its sweet art,
And shades of power, and those who bore a part5
In the mad deeds that set the world in flame,
So fret my memory here,—ah! is it blame?—
That from my eyes the tear is fain to start.
Nay, from no fount impure these drops arise;
'Tis but that sympathy with Adam's race10
Which in each brother's history reads its own.
So let the cliffs and seas of this fair place
Be named man's tomb and splendid record stone,
High hope, pride-stained, the course without the prize.
J. H. Newman.