Near the walls the ducal herdsman by the dusty roadside

slept;

While his camels, resting round him, half alarmed the sullen ox,

Seeing those Arabian monsters pasturing with Etruria's flocks.

Then it was, like one who wandered, lately, singing by the Rhine,

Strains perchance to maiden's hearing sweeter than this verse of mine,

That we bade Imagination lift us on her wing divine, And the days of Pisa's greatness rose from the sepulchral past,

When a thousand conquering galleys bore her standard at the mast.

Memory for a moment crowned her sovereign mistress of the seas,

When she braved, upon the billows, Venice and the Genoese,

Daring to deride the Pontiff, though he shook his angry

keys.

When her admirals triumphant, riding o'er the Soldan's

waves,

Brought from Calvary's holy mountain fitting soil for knightly graves.

When the Saracen surrendered, one by one, his pirate

isles,

And Ionia's marbled trophies decked Lungarno's Gothic

piles,

Where the festal music floated in the light of ladies'

smiles;

Soldiers in the busy courtyard, nobles in the hall above, O, those days of arms are over, - arms and courtesy and love!

Down in yonder square at sunrise, lo! the Tuscan troops arrayed,

Every man in Milan armor, forged in Brescia every blade:

Sigismondi is their captain, Florence! art thou not dismayed?

There's Lanfranchi! there the bravest of Gherardesca

stem,

Hugolino, — with the bishop; but enough, enough of

them.

Now, as on Achilles' buckler, next a peaceful scene succeeds;

Pious crowds in the cathedral duly tell their blessed

beads;

Students walk the learned cloister; Ariosto wakes the

reeds;

Science dawns; and Galileo opens to the Italian youth, As he were a new Columbus, new discovered realms of

truth.

Hark! what murmurs from the million in the bustling market rise!

All the lanes are loud with voices, all the windows dark

with eyes;

Black with men the marble bridges, heaped the shores with merchandise;

Turks and Greeks and Libyan merchants in the square their councils hold,

And the Christian altars glitter gorgeous with Byzantine gold.

Look! anon the masqueraders don their holiday attire; Every palace is illumined, — all the town seems built of

fire,

-

Rainbow-colored lanterns dangle from the top of every

spire.

Pisa's patron saint hath hallowed to himself the joyful

day,

Never on the thronged Rialto showed the Carnival more

gay.

Suddenly the bell beneath us broke the vision with its chime.

Signors," quoth our gray attendant, "it is almost vesper time."

Vulgar life resumed its empire, - down we dropt from the sublime.

Here and there a friar passed us, as we paced the

silent streets,

And a cardinal's rumbling carriage roused the sleepers from the seats.

Thomas William Parsons.

Po (Eridanus), the River.

THE

THE RIVER PO.

HE Po, that, rushing with uncommon force, O'ersets whole woods in its tumultuous course, And, rising from Hesperia's watery veins, The exhausted land of all its moisture drains. The Po, as sings the fable, first conveyed Its wondering current through a poplar shade: For when young Phaeton mistook his way, Lost and confounded in the blaze of day, This river, with surviving streams supplied, When all the rest of the whole earth were dried, And nature's self lay ready to expire,

Quenched the dire flame that set the world on fire.

Lucan. Tr. Joseph Addison.

Του

TO THE RIVER PO, ON QUITTING LAURA.

THOU, Po, to distant realms this frame mayst bear,

On thy all-powerful, thy impetuous tide;

But the free spirit that within doth bide
Nor for thy might nor any might doth care:
Not varying here its course, nor shifting there,
Upon the favoring gale it joys to glide;
Plying its wings toward the laurel's pride,
In spite of sails or oars, of sea or air.
Monarch of floods, magnificent and strong,

That meet'st the sun as he leads on the day,
But in the west dost quit a fairer light;
Thy curvéd course this body wafts along;
My spirit on love's pinions speeds its way,
And to its darling home directs its flight!

Francesca Petrarca. Tr. John Nott.

THE SWANS OF ERIDAN.

10 down the silver streams of Eridan,

S%

On either side banked with a lily wall, Whiter than both rides the triumphant swan, And sings his dirge, and prophecies his fall, Diving into his watery funeral!

But Eridan to Cedron must submit

His flowery shore; nor can he envy it
If, when Apollo sings, his swans do silent sit.

Giles Fletcher.

STANZAS TO THE PO.

IVER, that rollest by the ancient walls,

RIVER,

Where dwells the lady of my love, when she Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls A faint and fleeting memory of me;

What if thy deep and ample stream should be
A mirror of my heart, where she may read
The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,
Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed!