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| THERE are bright scenes beneath Italian skies, | |
| Where glowing suns their purest light diffuse, | |
| Uncultured flowers in wild profusion rise, | |
| And Nature lavishes her warmest hues; | |
| But trust thou not her smile, her balmy breath,— | 5 |
| Away! her charms are but the pomp of death! | |
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| He in the vine-clad bowers, unseen, is dwelling, | |
| Where the cool shade its freshness round thee throws; | |
| His voice, in every perfumed zephyr swelling, | |
| With gentlest whisper lures thee to repose; | 10 |
| And the soft sounds that through the foliage sigh | |
| But woo thee still to slumber and to die. | |
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| Mysterious danger lurks, a siren there, | |
| Not robed in terrors, or announced in gloom, | |
| But stealing o’er thee in the scented air, | 15 |
| And veiled in flowers, that smile to deck thy tomb; | |
| How may we deem, amidst their deep array, | |
| That heaven and earth but flatter to betray? | |
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| Sunshine and bloom and verdure! Can it be | |
| That these but charm us with destructive wiles? | 20 |
| Where shall we turn, O Nature, if in thee | |
| Danger is masked in beauty, death in smiles? | |
| O, still the Circe of that fatal shore, | |
| Where she, the Sun’s bright daughter, dwelt of yore! | |
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| There, year by year, that secret peril spreads, | 25 |
| Disguised in loveliness, its baleful reign, | |
| And viewless blights o’er many a landscape sheds, | |
| Gay with the riches of the south, in vain; | |
| O’er fairy bowers and palaces of state | |
| Passing unseen, to leave them desolate. | 30 |
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| And pillared halls, whose airy colonnades | |
| Were formed to echo music’s choral tone, | |
| Are silent now, amidst deserted shades, | |
| Peopled by sculpture’s graceful forms alone; | |
| And fountains dash unheard, by lone alcoves, | 35 |
| Neglected temples, and forsaken groves. | |
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| And there, where marble nymphs, in beauty gleaming, | |
| Midst the deep shades of plane and cypress rise | |
| By wave or grot might Fancy linger, dreaming | |
| Of old Arcadia’s woodland deities. | 40 |
| Wild visions!—there no sylvan powers convene: | |
| Death reigns the genius of the Elysian scene. * * * * * | |
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