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(From Italy)
ITALIAN paradise, Sorrento! thou | |
| Hast spells enchaining; lo, yon bosomed bay | |
| Where the lone crag upheaves its cloven brow, | |
| Round which the blue waves chafe in idle play; | |
| Know’st thou whose mighty spirit casts a ray | 5 |
| O’er its dim cavern? know’st thou who stood there | |
| Embodying in his world-inspiring lay | |
| Its tale? whose genius fills, informs the air, | |
| Whose phantoms round that spot forever shall repair? | |
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| Even now, reclining on this mossy stone, | 10 |
| I see the sail spread from Lachæa’s isle: | |
| They scale the Cyclop’s cave, a shout, a groan, | |
| In his red eye is plunged the fiery pile! | |
| Lo, with the morning’s light the goats defile | |
| Slowly beneath the blinded monster’s hand: | 15 |
| Free stands at length the hero of the wile; | |
| And now the giant’s clamors fill the strand, | |
| As shouting bound from shore the Ulysséan band! | |
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| Thou everlasting Homer! every nook | |
| Of this all wild yet lovely coast is thine; | 20 |
| The Sirens yon gray islets have forsook, | |
| Yet is each vestige of their haunt divine: | |
| Doth not thy awful genius o’er them shine, | |
| Bright as yon setting sun that steeps them o’er | |
| With hues of life? so thy embodying line | 25 |
| From phantasy dost hero life restore, | |
| Until we hear their tongues and see the forms they wore. | |
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| For by thy hand truth, sceptre-like, was wielded; | |
| Lo, yon blue promontory, Circe’s spell | |
| There changed to brutes the slaves to vice who yielded; | 30 |
| Speaks not thy moral eloquently well? | |
| What herb save reason could her power compel, | |
| And bid her kneel to virtue? o’er the foam | |
| Why sighed the chief in Ithaca to dwell, | |
| Her charms unfelt and loathed her starry dome? | 35 |
| Grave duty showed afar his wife, his son, his home. | |
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| There was a dwelling on the sea-cliff’s side, | |
| No ruined vestige doth its site attest; | |
| A secret nook where love would choose to hide | |
| Its loved one from the world, a haven nest | 40 |
| Of shelter, when of all it asks possessed, | |
| The heart would find or make its earthly heaven | |
| Where only found, in woman’s answering breast; | |
| All other ties save that sole life-tie riven: | |
| The world’s neglect forgot, its injuries forgiven. | 45 |
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| A sacred spot! create it on thine eye; | |
| Hallowed by suffering and by virtue’s tear, | |
| And this is sanctified by memory | |
| Of venerating bosoms that revere | |
| The martyrs of the past who suffered here; | 50 |
| O’er whom are offered human sympathies, | |
| Heart-flowers, whose dews spiritualize the bier: | |
| A woman by that shore with heedful eyes | |
| Watches a nearing sail whose white whig homeward flies. | |
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| The sister’s love, the vestal, and the pure, | 55 |
| Recalls again affection’s wasted force | |
| In exiled Tasso: other loves endure | |
| To perish, lighted at an earthlier source, | |
| Satiate with passion, buried in remorse; | |
| If the heart own one pure receptacle, | 60 |
| One feeling flowing holier in its course, | |
| Love that a spirit might not blush to tell, | |
| ’T is when a sister’s heart to thine doth fondly swell. | |
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| The wanderer came for quiet: to forget | |
| The blighted hope, the inexpiable wrong, | 65 |
| To soften here in solitude regret | |
| Of a love stamped immortal in his song, | |
| That but for him had lain the dead among; | |
| Vain essay! if thou wouldst the thought conceal, | |
| Or forms that ghost-like to the past belong, | 70 |
| If the heart’s wounds corroding thou wouldst heal, | |
| That solitude thou seek’st to thee shall all reveal: | |
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| Making the past one present; odors bear | |
| Vibrations thrilling along memory’s chain, | |
| Felt in the chords of being till they wear | 75 |
| Its pulse away: so did he feel how vain | |
| To realize his boyhood’s hope again; | |
| Till his last refuge from self-tyranny, | |
| He flew from nature’s ever-populous reign | |
| Back to the desert of humanity, | 80 |
| To bear hate, scorn, repulse, to madden, and to die. | |
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