Just left the slender throat exposed, as fair,
As graceful, as the cygnet's. Neither gems
Nor gold, marred youth's sweet simpleness; bút one
Slight flower lay on her neck, a green rosebud,
Tinged with faint promise of its future bloom;
And near it the young Painter leant his head,
Bowed, as in bitter thought upon his hand;
Over his cheek there was a burning, red,
Half passionate emotion, half disease,-
And the damp lay on his white brow, and hung
On his thick curls of auburn hair; his eyes,
Blue as his native sky when it shines forth
Amid the pauses of an April shower,
Seemed as they drank the Moon's light, with such bright
And such wild glance they turned towards her ray.
He was a stranger in fair Italy :
He sought her kingdom, for it was a home
For genius and for beauty; it had been
His land of promise through the sunny dreams
Of his impassioned boyhood; he had come
With a rich store of burning thoughts, of hopes
Like sunrise, vivid fancies, feelings wild,
High energies, all that young talent has;
And he had nourished them amid those shades
Hallowed by memories of old, and still
Kept sacred by their own green pleasantness,-
Amid the glorious works of glorious men,-
Pictures alive with light, and stately domes
Built for eternity, - music like hope,
So very sweet, and poetry, whose songs
Are Love's own words, until he dreamed that fame
Was a reality that he might win.
He dreamed but to awake with withered heart
And wasted health, and hopes like fallen stars,
Crushed and stained with the earth to which they fell.
Oh Genius! fling aside thy starry crown,
Close up thy rainbow wings, and on thy head
Heap dust and ashes for, this cold drear world
Is but thy prison-house. Alas! for him
Who has thy dangerous gifts, for they are like
The fatal ones that evil spirits give,-
Bright and bewildering, leading unto death !
Oh, not amid the chill and earthly cares
That waste our life, may those fine feelings live
That are the Painter's or the Poet's light.
Amid the many graves which in the shade
Of Rome's dark cypresses are graved with names
Of foreign sound to Italy's sweet tongue,
Was one, an English name was on the stone ;-
There that young Painter slept : around the sod
Were planted flowers and one or two green shrubs.
"Twas said that they were placed in fondness there
By an Italian Girl, whom he had loved !
BY THE REV. W. L. BOWLES.
WHEN last we parted thou wert young and fair;
How beautiful, let fond remembrance say !
Alas! since then, old Time has stol'n away
Full thirty years, leaving my temples bare.
So hath it perished like a thing of air,
The dream of Love and Youth! Now both are grey,
Yet still remembering that delightful day,
Though Time with his cold touch hath blanched my hair,
Though I have suffered many years of pain
Since then; though I did never think to live
To hear that voice or see those eyes again,
I can a sad, but cordial greeting give,
And for thy welfare breathe as warm a prayer,
Lady, as when I loved thee young and fair!
MOUNTAIN, who reignest o'er thine Alpine peers
Transcendently, and from that massive crown
Of arrowy brightness dartest down thy beams
Upon their lesser coronets, all hail!
Unto the souls in hallowed musing rapt,
Spirits in which creation's glorious forms
Do shadow forth and speak the invisible,
The ethereal, the eternal, thou dost shine
With emblematic brightness. Those untrod
And matchless domes, though many a weary league
Beyond the gazer, when the misty veil
Dies round them, start upon his dazzled sight
In vastness almost tangible; thy smooth
And bold convexity of silent snows
Raised on the still and dark blue firmament!
Mountain, Thou image of eternity!-
Oh, let not foreign feet,inquisitive,
Swift in untrained aspirings, proudly tempt
Thy searchless waste! - What half-taught fortitude
Can balance unperturbed above the clefts
Of yawning and unfathomable ice
That moat thee round; or wind the giddy ledge
Of thy sheer granite! Hath he won his way,
That young investigator? Yes; but now,
Quick panting on superior snows, his frame
Trembles in dizziness; his wandering look
Drinks pale confusion; the wide scene is dim;
Its all of firm or fleeting, near or far,
Deep rolling clouds beneath, and wavering mists
That flit above him with their transient shades,
And storm-deriding rocks, and treacherous snows,
And blessed sun-light, in his dying eye
Float dubious; and 'tis midnight at his heart!
Mountain, That firm and ardent Genevese,
The enthusiast child of science, whose bold foot
Bounded across thine ice rents, who disdained
The frozen outworks of thy steep ravines,
And through a labyrinth of chrystal rocks
Pressed his untired ascent, e'en he, and all
His iron-band of native mountaineers,
While scaling the aërial cupola
Of Nature's Temple, owned a breathless pang.
Thy most attenuate element is fit
For angel roamings. True, his zealous mind
Achieved its philosophic aim, and marked
And measured thee; but turned to earthly climes
Full soon, and bent in gladness toward the vale.
Mountain, The sons of science or of taste
Need not essay such triumph. 'Tis more wise
And happier till a fiery chariot wait,-
To scan from lesser heights thy glorious whole;
To climb above the deep though lofty plain
That wrongs thee; pass its line of envious peaks,
And stationed at thy cross, sublime Flegere!
Thence meditate the monarch's grandeur; while
His host of subject hills are spread beneath;
For scarce, till then, his own colossal might
Seems disenthralled; and mute astonishment,
Unquenched by doubt or dread, at each new step,
Shall own his aspect more celestial still.
There, in some hollow nook reclining, whence
The bright-eyed chamois sprang; with tufted bells
Of rhododendron blushing at my feet;
The unprofaned recess of Alpine life
Were all my world that hour; and the vast mount
In his lone majesty would picture heaven.
Bright mountain, Ah! but volumed clouds enwrap
Thy broad foundations, curtain all thy steeps,
And, rising as the orb of day declines,
Brood on the vassal chain that flank thee round,
Then thy whole self involve save, haply, when
A quick and changing vista may reveal
Some spotless portion of thy front, and shew
Thee not unstable, like the earth-born cloud,
Brilliant though hid, abiding if unseen.
Then, as the vale grows darker, and the sun
Deserts unnumbered hills, o'er that high zone
Of gathered vapour thou dost sudden lift
Thy silver brow, calm as the hour of eve,
Clear as the morning, still as the midnight,
More beautiful than noon; for lo! the sun
Lingers to greet thee with a roseate ray,
And on thy silver brow his bright farewell
Is gleaming:-Mountain, Though art half divine!
Severed from earth! Irradiate from heaven!
Thus e'en the taught of heaven, with joyless eye
Fixed on the sable clouds which fear hath cast
O'er all the landscape of his destiny,
May fail to pierce them; but, though legioned shapes
Of nether evil, though the deep array
Of stern adversities, and murky hosts
Of dark illusions blot his upper skies,
Yet, as they change, through that incumbent gloom
Shall he catch glimpses of the hallowed mount,
And weep that heaven is bright. And at the hour
Of stillness, when e'en frightful shadows fade,
When night seems closing o'er his latest hopes,
And his sun set for ever, then, behold,
Emerging in mid heaven, thy glistening top
Oh, Zion! and the God that ruled his day
Hath not departed; for he poureth now
His radiance on thy summits, glancing back
A thrilling flood into his servant's soul!
Joy full of glory!' - Was the noon-day dark ?
It was; but eve is cloudless; night is peace;
Rapture shall gild the never-ending morn!
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