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EARTH.

The nook in which the captive, overtoiled,
Lay down to rest at last, and that which holds
Childhood's sweet blossoms, crushed by cruel hands..
Send up a plaintive sound. From battle-fields,
Where heroes madly drave and dashed their hosts
Against each other, rises up a noise,

As if the armed multitudes of dead

Stirred in their heavy slumber. Mournful tones
Come from the green abysses of the sea-
A story of the crimes the guilty sought

To hide beneath its waves. The glens, the groves,
Paths in the thicket, pools of running brook,

And banks and depths of lake, and streets and lanes
Of cities, now that living sounds are hushed,
Murmur of guilty force and treachery.

Here, where I rest, the vales of Italy
Are round me, populous from early time,
And field of the tremendous warfare waged
"Twixt good and evil. Who, alas, shall dare
Interpret to man's ear the mingled voice

From all her ways and walls, and streets and streams,
And hills and fruitful fields? Old dungeons breathe
Of horrors veiled from history; the stones
Of mouldering amphitheatres, where flowed
The life-blood of the warrior slave, cry out.
The fanes of old religions, the proud piles
Reared with the spoil of empires, yea, the hearths
Of cities dug from their volcanic graves,

Report of human suffering and shame

And folly.

Even the common dust, among

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The springing corn and vine-rows, witnesses
To ages of oppression. Ah, I hear
A murmur of confused languages,

The utterance of nations now no more,

Driven out by mightier, as the days of heaven
Chase one another from the sky. The blood
Of freemen shed by freemen, till strange lords
Came in the hour of weakness, and made fast
The yoke that yet is worn, appeals to Heaven.
What then shall cleanse thy bosom, gentle Earth,
From all its painful memories of guilt?

The whelming flood, or the renewing fire,
Or the slow change of time? that so, at last,
The horrid tale of perjury and strife,
Murder and spoil, which men call history,
May seem a fable, like the inventions told
By poets of the gods of Greece. Oh thou,
Who sittest far beyond the Atlantic deep,
Among the sources of thy glorious streams,
My native Land of Groves! a newer page
In the great record of the world is thine,
Shall it be fairer? Fear, and friendly Hope,
And Envy, watch the issue, while the lines,
By which thou shalt be judged, are written down.

TO THE APENNINES.

YOUR peaks are beautiful, ye Apennines!
In the soft light of these serenest skies;
From the broad highland region, black with pines,
Fair as the hills of Paradise they rise,
Bathed in the tint Peruvian slaves behold
In rosy flushes on the virgin gold.

There, rooted to the aerial shelves that wear

The glory of a brighter world, might spring Sweet flowers of heaven to scent the unbreathed air, And heaven's fleet messengers might rest the wing, To view the fair earth in its summer sleep, Silent, and cradled by the glimmering deep.

Below you lie men's sepulchres, the old

Etrurian tombs, the graves of yesterday;

The herd's white bones lie mixed with human mouldYet up the radiant steeps that I

survey

Death never climbed, nor life's soft breath, with pain,

Was yielded to the elements again.

Ages of war have filled these plains with fear;
How oft the hind has started at the clash

Of spears, and yell of meeting armies here,
Or seen the lightning of the battle flash

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TO THE APENNINES.

From clouds, that rising with the thunder's sound,
Hung like an earth-born tempest o'er the ground.

Ah me! what armed nations-Asian horde,

And Lybian host-the Scythian and the Gaul, Have swept your base and through your passes poured, Like ocean-tides uprising at the call

Of tyrant winds-against your rocky side

The bloody billows dashed, and howled, and died.

How crashed the towers before beleaguering foes,

Sacked cities smoked and realms were rent in twain;

And commonwealths against their rivals rose,

Trode out their lives and earned the curse of Cain! While in the noiseless air and light that flowed Round your far brows, eternal Peace abode.

Here pealed the impious hymn, and altar flames
Rose to false gods, a dream-begotten throng,
Jove, Bacchus, Pan, and earlier, fouler names;
While, as the unheeding ages passed along,
Ye, from your station in the middle skies,
Proclaimed the essential Goodness, strong and wise.

In you the heart that sighs for freedom seeks

Her image; there the winds no barrier know, Clouds come and rest and leave your fairy peaks; While even the immaterial Mind, below,

And Thought, her winged offspring, chained by power, Pine silently for the redeeming hour.

THE KNIGHT'S EPITAPH.

THIS is the church which Pisa, great and free, Reared to St. Catharine. How the time-stained walls, That earthquakes shook not from their poise, appear To shiver in the deep and voluble tones

Rolled from the organ! Underneath my feet
There lies the lid of a sepulchral vault.

The image of an armed knight is graven

Upon it, clad in perfect panoply―

Cuishes, and greaves, and cuirass, with barred helm,
Gauntleted hand, and sword, and blazoned shield.
Around, in Gothic characters, worn dim

By feet of worshippers, are traced his name,
And birth, and death, and words of eulogy.
Why should I pore upon them? This old tomb,
This effigy, the strange disused form

Of this inscription, eloquently show

His history. Let me clothe in fitting words
The thoughts they breathe, and frame his epitaph.
"He whose forgotten dust for centuries
Has lain beneath this stone, was one in whom
Adventure, and endurance, and emprise
Exalted the mind's faculties and strung

The body's sinews. Brave he was in fight,
Courteous in banquet, scornful of repose,

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