More rich than other climes' fertility;

Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced
With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced.

The moon is up, and yet it is not night;
Sunset divides the sky with her; a sea
Of glory streams along the Alpine height
Of blue Friuli's mountains; Heaven is free
From clouds, but of all colours seems to be,-
Melted to one vast Iris of the West,-
Where the Day joins the past Eternity;

While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest
Floats through the azure air-an island of the blest!

A single star is at her side, and reigns

With her o'er half the lovely heaven; but still
Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains
Roll'd o'er the peak of the far Rhætian hill,
As Day and Night contending were, until
Nature reclaim'd her order: gently flows
The deep-dyed Brenta,-where their hues instil
The odorous purple of a new-born rose,

Which streams upon her stream, and glass'd within it glows,

Fill'd with the face of heaven, which, from afar,

Comes down upon the waters; all its hues,
From the rich sunset to the rising star,
Their magical variety diffuse:

And now they change; a paler shadow strews
Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day
Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues
With a new colour as it gasps away,

The last still loveliest, till-'tis gone-and all is gray.

CHILDE HAROLD.-Canto IV.

THE FIELD OF THRASIMENE.

33

THE FIELD OF THRASIMENE.-THE CLITUMNUS.

THERE be more things to greet the heart and eyes
In Arno's dome of Art's most princely shrine,
Where sculpture with her rainbow sister vies;
There be more marvels yet-but not for mine;
For I have been accustom'd to entwine
My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields,
Than Art in galleries: though a work divine
Calls for my spirit's homage, yet it yields
Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields

Is of another temper, and I roam

By Thrasimene's lake, in the defiles Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home; For there the Carthaginian's warlike wiles Come back before me, as his skill beguiles The host between the mountains and the shore,* Where Courage falls in her despairing files, And torrents, swoln to rivers with their gore, Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scatter'd o'er,

Like to a forest fell'd by mountain winds ;
And such the storm of battle on this day,
And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds
To all save carnage, that, beneath the fray,
An earthquake reel'd unheededly away!
None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet,

* The valley into which Hannibal lured the Romans was girt in part by a semicircle of hills, and the lake, which runs from one extremity of the ridge to the other, completed the enclosure. Hannibal posted his troops in the surrounding heights, and in the mist of the morning he attacked the astonished enemy at every point. Fifteen thousand Romans were slain, and more than twenty thousand taken prisoners.

VOL. IL

D

And yawning forth a grave for those who lay

Upon their bucklers for a winding sheet;

Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet!

The Earth to them was as a rolling bark
Which bore them to Eternity; they saw
The Ocean round, but had no time to mark
The motions of their vessel; Nature's law,
In them suspended, reck'd not of the awe

Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds
Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdraw

From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds Stumble o'er heaving plains, and man's dread hath no words.

Far other scene is Thrasimene now;

Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain
Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough;

Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain

Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta'en

A little rill of scanty stream and bed

A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain
And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead

;

Made the earth wet, and turn'd the unwilling waters red.

But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave

Of the most living crystal that was e'er
The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave

Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear
Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer
Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters!

And most serene of aspect, and most clear;

Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughtersA mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters!

FALLS OF TERNI.

And on thy happy shore a Temple still,
Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,
Upon a mild declivity of hill,

Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps
Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps
The finny darter with the glittering scales,
Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;
While, chance, some scatter'd water-lily sails

Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling

tales.

CHILDE HAROLD.-Canto IV.

FALLS OF TERNI.

THE roar of waters !-from the headlong height
Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;
The fall of waters! rapid as the light

The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;
The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,
And boil in endless torture; while the sweat
Of their great agony, wrung out from this
Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet
That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,

And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again
Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,
With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,

Is an eternal April to the ground,

Making it all one emerald :-how profound

The gulf! and how the giant element

From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,

Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent

To the broad column which rolls on, and shows
More like the fountain of an infant sea

Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes
Of a new world, than only thus to be
Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,

With many windings, through the vale :-Look back!
Lo! where it comes like an eternity,

As if to sweep down all things in its track, Charming the eye with dread,—a matchless cataract,

Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,
From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,
An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,
Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn
Its steady dyes, while all around is torn
By the distracted waters, bears serene

Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn :
Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene,
Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.
CHILDE HAROLD.-Canto IV.

ROME.

Он Rome! my country! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires! and control
In their shut breasts their petty misery.

What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye!
Whose agonies are evils of a day—

A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.