Gathering blackness, till the stranger calls, And, for a pittance, decks his far-off walls With " Raphaels," "Claudes," and other rubbish lies, While the poor artist in his garret dies. In yon low cell, that reeks with ancient damp, The student sculptor burns his nightly lamp; The summer day too short to tire his heart. Art is his toil; his pastime still is art. There hews his statue; suffering as he carves, And at the feet of his first effort starves. Here toiled a courage hunger could not tame, Till crushed ambition sapped the failing frame. Here the young soul for truth and beauty sighed, Till Envy smote him, and the victim died. O'erveiled the mountains; and the | And wore it grandly, spite the thorns vesper bells, Like hooded hermits lodged in turret cells, Chanted their "Aves." All the mel The sounds, the sunset, and the charméd air, Were Italy, and he was really there. He looked, and dreamed, until his conjuring gaze Saw marvellous shadows issuing through the haze. Like clouds, they passed majestically slow; Silent as shadows of those clouds below; Stately as ships that skirt the horizon's bar, Bearing their freight of mystery afar. All the great dead of Italy went by, Or rather say, the great, who cannot die; Poets and painters, sculptors, and the rest, Who wore the fire of glory in their breast; Burning, until, consumed with their own flame, They passed to Death, the chief highpriest of Fame, And were thenceforth immortal. Every brow Wore the green chaplet won in toil below, beneath, In gloomy quiet sat she, and her throne Seemed but a ruin rankly overgrown; Of ruins only was her queenly seat, And fallen columns lay about her feet, Enough to corridor the starry heaven; While rising round her, through the golden even, Shone grandly many a spectral arch and dome, Shattered, as they had stood a siege at Rome. An empty scabbard in her right hand lay, The other propt her cheek; her hair, half gray, Fell subject to the wind; her droop- | And, lo! the glad Sicilian shepherds ing head Ached with three crowns, and all her forehead bled; Her once bright mantle, trampled in the dust, Lay tattered, while a foreign robe was thrust A melody of colors deftly met. His marble peak, they halt their furi ous race, And pass demurely, voiceless, with bent heads. Sighing, they pass with melancholy pace Where Keats and Shelley lie in flowery beds. The lowest deity of classic Greece Here, like the highest, bows the willing knee: From the near lawn there comes the The last of her anointed bards were pagna feet these, Though born in exile, where the northern sea Climbs the white cliffs, and, blind with his own locks, Chants to the land Homeric tales of war, Chase the tarantula about the green, | Or, like pale Sappho, on the summer Where smiles and flashing eyes together meet. rocks |
