Imatges de pàgina
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THE AZIOLA

"Do you not hear the Aziola cry? Methinks she must be nigh,"

Said Mary, as we sate

In dusk, ere stars were lit, or candles brought;
And I, who thought

This Aziola was some tedious woman,
Asked, "Who is Aziola * How elate
I felt to know that it was nothing human,
No mockery of myself to fear or hate:
And Mary saw my soul,

And laughed, and said, “Disquiet yourself not;
Tis nothing but a little downy owl.”

Sad Aziola! many an eventide

Thy music I had heard

By wood and stream, meadow and mountain side, And fields and marshes wide,

Such as nor voice, nor lute, nor wind, nor bird, The soul ever stirred;

Unlike and far sweeter than them all.

Sad Aziola! from that moment I

Loved thee and thy sad cry.

THE BOAT ON THE SERCHIO.

OUR boat is asleep on Serchio's stream,
Its sails are folded like thoughts in a dream,
The helm sways idly, hither and thither;

Dominic, the boatman, has brought the mast
And the oars and the sails; but 'tis sleeping fast,
Like a beast, unconscious of its tether.

The stars burnt out in the pale blue air,
And the thin white moon lay withering there,
To tower, and cavern, and rift and tree,
The owl and the bat fled drowsily.

Day had kindled the dewy woods,

And the rocks above and the stream below,

And the vapours in their multitudes,

And the Apennine's shroud of summer snow, And clothed with light of aëry gold

The mists in their eastern caves uprolled.

Day had awakened all things that be,

The lark and the thrush and the swallow free,

And the milkmaid's song and the mower's scythe, And the matin-bell and the mountain bee: Fire-flies were quenched on the dewy corn, Glow-worms went out on the river's brim, Like lamps which a student forgets to trim: The beetle forgot to wind his horn,

The crickets were still in the meadow and hill: Like a flock of rooks at a farmer's gun Night's dreams and terrors, every one, Fled from the brains which are their prey From the lamp's death to the morning ray.

vil rose to do the task He set to each,

Who shaped us to his ends and not our own; The million rose to learn, and one to teach What none yet ever knew or can be known. And many rose

Whose woe was such that fear became desire ;Melchior and Lionel were not among those; They from the throng of men had stepped aside, And made their home under the green hill side. It was that hill, whose intervening brow

Screens Lucca from the Pisan's envious eye,
Which the circumfluous plain waving below,
Like a wide lake of green fertility,

With streams and fields and marshes bare,
Divides from the far Apennines-which lie
Islanded in the immeasurable air.

* What think you, as she lies in her green cove, Our little sleeping boat is dreaming of?"

It morning dreams are true, why I should guess That she was dreaming of our idleness,

Aud of the miles of watery way

We should have led her by this time of day.”—

"Never mind,” said Lionel,

"Give care to the winds, they can bear it well
About yon poplar tops; and see

The white clouds are driving merrily,
And the stars we miss this morn will light
More willingly our return to-night-
How it whistles, Dominic's long black hair!
1st, my dear fellow; the breeze blows fair :
ar how it sings into the air."

The chain is loosed, the sails are spread,
The living breath is fresh behind,

As with dews and sunrise fed,

Comes the laughing morning wind ;-
The sails are full, the boat makes head
Against the Serchio's torrent fierce,
Then flags with intermitting course,

And hangs upon the wave, and stems
The tempest of the

Which fervid from its mountain source
Shallow, smooth and strong doth come,—
Swift as fire, tempestuously

It sweeps into the affrighted sea;
In morning's smile its eddies coil,
Its billows sparkle, toss and boil,
Torturing all its quiet light

Into columns fierce and bright.

The Serchio, twisting forth Between the marble barriers which it clove

At Ripafratta, leads through the dead chasm The wave that died the death which lovers love, Living in what it sought; as if this spasm Had not yet past, the toppling mountains cling, But the clear stream in full enthusiasm Pours itself on the plain, then wandering Down one clear path of effluence crystalline, Sends its superfluous waves, that they may fling At Arno's feet tribute of corn and wine, Then, through the pestilential desarts wild

Of tangled marsh and woods of stunted pine, It rushes to the Ocean.

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THE WITCH OF ATLAS.

TO MARY.

ARCTING TO THE FOLLOWING POEM, UPON THE
VAS OF ITS CONTAINING NO HUMAN INTEREST.)

ay dear Mary, are you critic-bitten

vipers kill, though dead), by some review,
That you condemn these verses I have written,
Suse they tell no story, false or true!
W though

no mice are caught by a young kitten, Naw it not leap and play as grown cats do, 7 claws come? Prithee, for this one time, Ce thee with a visionary rhyme.

[graphic]

hand would crush the silken-winged fly,
youngest of inconstant April's minions,
e it cannot climb the purest sky,

re the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions?
ne, Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die,
n day shall hide within her twilight pinions,
ent eyes, and the eternal smile,

thine, which lent it life awhile.

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