Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

AN ITALIAN SONG.

DEAR is my little native vale,

The ring-dove builds and murmurs there;

Close by my cot she tells her tale
To every passing villager.
The squirrel leaps from tree to tree,
And shells his nuts at liberty.

In orange-groves and myrtle-bowers,

That breathe a gale of fragrance round, I charm the fairy-footed hours

With my loved lute's romantic sound;

Or crowns of living laurel weave

vant must popular prouuctions of the press. His "Italy" will for ever hold place among the finest poems in the language. Its leading feature is simplicity. Nature itself is not more free from meretricious and inappropriate ornament. It is the record of a "keen observer"learned and contemplative-passing through a country, every spot of which has been made familiar to the scholar by his books, telling all he sees, hears, and thinks, in language so unforced and natural, so graceful and impressive, that the people with their habits, and the palaces with their traditions, appear actually before the reader. In a brief preface to the work, he says, "wherever he came he could not but REMEMBER;"-it is, however, in calling actual observation and experience to the aid of memory and reading, that his great excellence consists. His descriptions are marvellously accurate with a single sentence he pictures a whole scene; the worthy and the unworthy of past ages are brought, as it were, under our very eyes; and the deep pathos with which the legendary tales are told, is singularly affecting. Who that has read the story of Ginevra can ever forget it? How different from-because how much more natural than the solemn dignity of Childe Harold, or the impassioned glow of Corinne, is the "Italy" of Rogers. It is, indeed, a romance without exaggeration; a book of travels, without a tedious detail; a history of classic ground, which may be acquired without struggling to obtain it through the schools; and a poem, with all the

[graphic][subsumed][merged small][merged small]

DEAR is my little native vale,

The ring-dove builds and murmurs there ;

Close by my cot she tells her tale
To every passing villager.
The squirrel leaps from tree to tree,
And shells his nuts at liberty.

In orange-groves and myrtle-bowers,

That breathe a gale of fragrance round, I charm the fairy-footed hours

With my loved lute's romantic sound ; Or crowns of living laurel weave

The shepherd's horn at break of day,
The ballet danced in twilight glade,
The canzonet and roundelay

Sung in the silent greenwood shade :
These simple joys, that never fail,
Shall bind me to my native vale.

ON A TEAR.

Он! that the Chemist's magic art
Could crystallize this sacred treasure!
Long should it glitter near my heart,
A secret source of pensive pleasure.

The little brilliant, ere it fell,

Its lustre caught from Chloe's eye; Then, trembling, left its coral cell,The spring of Sensibility!

Sweet drop of pure and pearly light! In thee the rays of virtue shine,More calmly clear, more mildly bright, Than any gem that gilds the mine.

Benign restorer of the soul !

Who ever fly'st to bring relief,-
When first we feel the rude controul
Of love or pity, joy or grief.

The sage's and the poet's theme,
In every clime-in every age;
Thou charm'st in fancy's idle dream,
In reason's philosophic page.

That very law which moulds a tear, And bids it trickle from its source, That law preserves the earth a sphere,

TO AN OLD OAK.

ROUND thee, alas! no shadows move,

From thee no sacred murmurs breathe! Yet within thee, thyself a grove, Once did the eagle scream above, And the wolf howl beneath!

There once the steel-clad knight reclined,
His sable plumage tempest-toss'd;
And, as the death-bell smote the wind,
From towers long fled by human kind,
His brow the hero cross'd!

Then culture came, and days serene,

And village-sports, and garlands gay : Full many a pathway cross'd the green,And maids and shepherd-youths were seen To celebrate the May!

Father of many a forest deep,

Whence many a navy thunder fraught! Erst in thy acorn-cells asleep, Soon destined o'er the world to sweep, Opening new spheres of thought!

Wont in the night of woods to dwell,
The holy Druid saw thee rise;
And, planting there the guardian-spell,
Sung forth, the dreadful pomp to swell
Of human sacrifice !

Thy singed top and branches bare

Now straggle in the evening sky; And the wan moon wheels round to glare On the long corse that shivers there Of him who came to die!

« AnteriorContinuar »