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| ON this lovely Western Shore, where no tempests rage and roar, | |
| Over olive-bearing mountains, by the deep and violet sea, | |
| There, through each long happy day, winding slowly on our way, | |
| Travellers from across the ocean, toward Italia journeyed we,— | |
| Each long day, that, richer, fairer, | 5 |
| Showed the charming Riviera. | |
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| There black war-ships doze at anchor, in the Bay of Villa-Franca; | |
| Eagle-like, gray Esa, clinging to its rocky perch, looks down; | |
| And upon the mountain dim, ruined, shattered, stern, and grim, | |
| Turbia sees us through the ages with its austere Roman frown,— | 10 |
| While we climb, where cooler, rarer, | |
| Breezes sweep the Riviera. | |
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| Down the hillside steep and stony, through the old streets of Mentone, | |
| Quiet, half-forgotten city of a drowsy prince and time, | |
| Through the mild Italian midnight, rolls upon the wave the moonlight, | 15 |
| Murmuring in our dreams the cadence of a strange Ligurian rhyme,— | |
| Rhymes in which each heart is sharer, | |
| Journeying on the Riviera. | |
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| When the morning air comes purer, creeping up in our vettura, | |
| Eastward gleams a rosy tumult with the rising of the day; | 20 |
| Toward the north, with gradual changes, steal along the mountain-ranges | |
| Tender tints of warmer feeling, kissing all their peaks of gray; | |
| And far south the waters wear a | |
| Smile along the Riviera. | |
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| Helmed with snow, the Alpine giants at invaders look defiance, | 25 |
| Gazing over nearer summits, with a fixed, mysterious stare, | |
| Down along the shaded ocean, on whose edge in tremulous motion | |
| Floats an island, half transparent, woven out of sea and air;— | |
| For such visions, shaped of air, are | |
| Frequent on our Riviera. | 30 |
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| He whose mighty earthquake-tread all Europa shook with dread, | |
| Chief whose infancy was cradled in that old Tyrrhenic isle, | |
| Joins the shades of trampling legions, bringing from remotest regions | |
| Gallic fire and Roman valor, Cimbric daring, Moorish guile, | |
| Guests from every age to share a | 35 |
| Portion of this Riviera. | |
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| Then the Afric brain, whose story fills the centuries with its glory, | |
| Moulding Gaul and Carthaginian into one all-conquering band, | |
| With his tuskéd monsters grumbling, mid the alien snow-drifts stumbling, | |
| Then, an avalanche of ruin, thundering from that frozen land | 40 |
| Into vales their sons declare are | |
| Sunny as our Riviera. * * * * * | |
| Thus forever, in our musing, comes man’s spirit interfusing | |
| Thought of poet and of hero with the landscape and the sky; | |
| And this shore, no longer lonely, lives the life of romance only: | 45 |
| Gauls and Moors and Northern Sea-Kings, all are gliding, ghostlike, by. | |
| So with Nature man is sharer | |
| Even on the Riviera. | |
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