EARTH. The nook in which the captive, overtoiled, As if the armed multitudes of dead Stirred in their heavy slumber. Mournful tones To hide beneath its waves. The glens, the groves, And banks and depths of lake, and streets and lanes Here, where I rest, the vales of Italy From all her ways and walls, and streets and streams, Report of human suffering and shame And folly. Even the common dust, among 57 The springing corn and vine-rows, witnesses The utterance of nations now no more, Driven out by mightier, as the days of heaven The whelming flood, or the renewing fire, TO THE APENNINES. YOUR peaks are beautiful, ye Apennines! 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; Of spears, and yell of meeting armies here, 60 TO THE APENNINES. From clouds, that rising with the thunder's sound, 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 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 The image of an armed knight is graven Upon it, clad in perfect panoply― Cuishes, and greaves, and cuirass, with barred helm, By feet of worshippers, are traced his name, Of this inscription, eloquently show His history. Let me clothe in fitting words The body's sinews. Brave he was in fight, |