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; This Aziola was some tedious woman, And laughed, and said, “Disquiet yourself not; 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, Dominic, the boatman, has brought the mast The stars burnt out in the pale blue air, 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, With streams and fields and marshes bare, * 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 The white clouds are driving merrily, The chain is loosed, the sails are spread, As with dews and sunrise fed, Comes the laughing morning wind ;- And hangs upon the wave, and stems Which fervid from its mountain source It sweeps into the affrighted sea; 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. THE WITCH OF ATLAS. TO MARY. ARCTING TO THE FOLLOWING POEM, UPON THE ay dear Mary, are you critic-bitten vipers kill, though dead), by some review, 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. hand would crush the silken-winged fly, re the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions? thine, which lent it life awhile. |