The moon is at her full, and, riding high,
Floods the calm fields with light;
The airs that hover in the summer-sky
Are all asleep to-night.
There comes no voice from the great woodlands round
That murmured all the day;
Beneath the shadow of their boughs the ground
Is not more still than they.
But ever heaves and moans the restless Deep;
His rising tides I hear,
Afar I see the glimmering billows leap;
I see them breaking near.
Each wave springs upward, climbing toward the fair
Pure light that sits on high—
Springs eagerly, and faintly sinks, to where
The mother-waters lie.
Upward again it swells; the moonbeams show
Again its glimmering crest;
Again it feels the fatal weight below,
And sinks, but not to rest.
Again and yet again; until the Deep
Recalls his brood of waves;
And, with a sullen moan, abashed, they creep
Back to his inner caves.
Brief respite! they shall rush from that recess
With noise and tumult soon,
And fling themselves, with unavailing stress,
Up toward the placid moon.
O restless Sea, that, in thy prison here,
Dost struggle and complain;
Through the slow centuries yearning to be near
To that fair orb in vain;
The glorious source of light and heat must warm
Thy billows from on high,
And change them to the cloudy trains that form
The curtain of the sky.
Then only may they leave the waste of brine
In which they welter here,
And rise above the hills of earth, and shine
In a serener sphere.
ITALY.
Voices from the mountains speak,
Apennines to Alps reply;
Vale to vale and peak to peak
Toss an old-remembered cry:
"Italy
Shall be free!"
Such the mighty shout that fills
All the passes of her hills.
All the old Italian lakes
Quiver at that quickening word;
Como with a thrill awakes;
Garda to her depths is stirred;
Mid the steeps
Where he sleeps,
Dreaming of the elder years,
Startled Thrasymenus hears.
Sweeping Arno, swelling Po,
Murmur freedom to their meads.
Tiber swift and Liris slow
Send strange whispers from their reeds.
"Italy
Shall be free!"
Sing the glittering brooks that slide,
Toward the sea, from Etna's side.
Long ago was Gracchus slain;
Brutus perished long ago;
Yet the living roots remain
Whence the shoots of greatness grow;
Yet again,
Godlike men,
Sprung from that heroic stem,
Call the land to rise with them.
They who haunt the swarming street,
They who chase the mountain-boar,
Or, where cliff and billow meet,
Prune the vine or pull the oar,
With a stroke
Break their yoke;
Slaves but yestereve were they—
Freemen with the dawning day.
Looking in his children's eyes,
While his own with gladness flash,
"These," the Umbrian father cries,
"Ne'er shall crouch beneath the lash!
These shall ne'er
Brook to wear
Chains whose cruel links are twined
Round the crushed and withering mind."
Monarchs! ye whose armies stand
Harnessed for the battle-field!
Pause, and from the lifted hand
Drop the bolts of war ye wield.
Stand aloof
While the proof
Of the people's might is given;
Leave their kings to them and Heaven!
Stand aloof, and see the oppressed
Chase the oppressor, pale with fear,
As the fresh winds of the west
Blow the misty valleys clear.
Stand and see
Italy
Cast the gyves she wears no more
To the gulfs that steep her shore.
A DAY-DREAM.
A day-dream by the dark-blue deep;
Was it a dream, or something more?
I sat where Posilippo's steep,
With its gray shelves, o'erhung the shore.
On ruined Roman walls around
The poppy flaunted, for 'twas May;
And at my feet, with gentle sound,
Broke the light billows of the bay.
I sat and watched the eternal flow
Of those smooth billows toward the shore,
While quivering lines of light below
Ran with them on the ocean-floor:
Till, from the deep, there seemed to rise
White arms upon the waves outspread,
Young faces, lit with soft blue eyes,
And smooth, round cheeks, just touched with red.
Their long, fair tresses, tinged with gold,
Lay floating on the ocean-streams,
And such their brows as bards behold—
Love-stricken bards—in morning dreams.
Then moved their coral lips; a strain
Low, sweet and sorrowful, I heard,
As if the murmurs of the main
Were shaped to syllable and word.
"The sight thou dimly dost behold,
Oh, stranger from a distant sky!
Was often, in the days of old,
Seen by the clear, believing eye.
"Then danced we on the wrinkled sand,
Sat in cool caverns by the sea,
Or wandered up the bloomy land,
To talk with shepherds on the lea.
"To us, in storms, the seaman prayed,
And where our rustic altars stood,
His little children came and laid
The fairest flowers of field and wood.
"Oh woe, a long, unending woe!
For who shall knit the ties again
That linked the sea-nymphs, long ago,
In kindly fellowship with men?
"Earth rears her flowers for us no more;
A half-remembered dream are we;
Unseen we haunt the sunny shore,
And swim, unmarked, the glassy sea.
"And we have none to love or aid,
But wander, heedless of mankind,
With shadows by the cloud-rack made,
With moaning wave and sighing wind.
"Yet sometimes, as in elder days,
We come before the painter's eye,
Or fix the sculptor's eager gaze,
With no profaner witness nigh.
"And then the words of men grow warm
With praise and wonder, asking where
The artist saw the perfect form
He copied forth in lines so fair."
As thus they spoke, with wavering sweep
Floated the graceful forms away;
Dimmer and dimmer, through the deep,
I saw the white arms gleam and play.
Fainter and fainter, on mine ear,
Fell the soft accents of their speech,
Till I, at last, could only hear
The waves run murmuring up the beach.
THE RUINS OF ITALICA.
FROM THE SPANISH OF RIOJA.