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(From The Story of Guido and Lita)
HAIL, Riviera! hail the mountain-range | |
| That guards from northern winds and seasons’ change | |
| Yon southern spurs, descending fast to be | |
| The sunlit capes along the tideless sea, | |
| Whose waters, azure as the sky above, | 5 |
| Reflect the glories of the scene they love! | |
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| Here every slope and intervening dale | |
| Yields a sweet fragrance to the passing gale, | |
| From the thick woods, where dark caroubas twine | |
| Their massive verdure with the hardier pine, | 10 |
| And, mid the rocks, or hid in hollowed cave, | |
| The fern and iris in profusion wave; | |
| From countless terraces, where olives rise, | |
| Unchilled by autumn’s blast or wintry skies, | |
| And round the stems, within the dusky shade, | 15 |
| The red anemones their home have made; | |
| From gardens, where its breath forever blows | |
| Through myrtle thickets and their wreaths of rose. | |
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| Like the proud lords who oft, with clash of mail, | |
| Would daunt the commerce that the trader’s sail | 20 |
| Had sought to bring, enriching and to bless, | |
| The lands they plagued with conflict and distress, | |
| Till none but robber chiefs and galley slaves | |
| Ruled the fair shores or rode the tranquil waves,— | |
| So stand their forts upon the hills; with towers | 25 |
| Still frowning, sullen at the genial showers, | |
| That, brought on white-winged clouds, have come to dower | |
| The arid soil with recreative power. | |
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| No warrior’s tread is echoed by their halls, | |
| No warder’s challenge on the silence falls. | 30 |
| Around, the thrifty peasants ply their toil | |
| And pluck in orange groves the scented spoil | |
| From trees, that have for purple mountains made | |
| A vestment bright of green, and gold inlaid. | |
| The women, baskets poised above their brows, | 35 |
| In long array beneath the citron boughs | |
| Drive on the loaded mules with sound of bells, | |
| That, in the distance, of their presence tells, | |
| To springs that, hid from the pursuing day, | |
| Love only Night; who, loving them, doth stay | 40 |
| In the deep waters, moss and reed o’ergrown,— | |
| Or cold in caverns of the chilly stone,— | |
| Sought of the steep-built towns, whose white walls gleam | |
| High midst the woods, or close by ocean’s stream. | |
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| Like flowering aloes, the fair belfries soar | 45 |
| O’er houses clustered on the sandy shore; | |
| From ancient battlements the eye surveys | |
| A hundred lofty peaks and curving bays, | |
| From where, at morn and eve, the sun may paint | |
| The cliffs of Corsica with colors faint; | 50 |
| To where the fleets of haughty Genoa plied | |
| The trade that humbled the Venetian’s pride, | |
| And the blue wastes, where roamed the men who came | |
| To leaguer tower and town with sword and flame. | |
| For by that shore, the scene of soft repose | 55 |
| When happy Peace her benison bestows, | |
| Have storms, more dire than Nature’s, lashed the coasts, | |
| When met the tides of fierce contending hosts; | |
| From the far days when first Liguria’s hordes | |
| Stemmed for a while the rush of Roman swords, | 60 |
| Only to mark how, on their native hill, | |
| Turbia’s trophy stamped the tyrant’s will; | |
| To those bright hours that saw the Moslem reel | |
| Back from the conflict with the Christian steel. * * * * * | |
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