| |
(From Ruins of Many Lands)
MUSING and slow, we pass Averno’s tide, | |
| Hell’s entrance feigned, where phantoms wail and glide; | |
| But fairer scenes are near,—we climb yon hill, | |
| Where Taste at Nature’s charms might drink her fill,— | |
| Posilipo, o’erlooking shore and sea, | 5 |
| And Love’s own city, bright Parthenope. | |
| Glorious that landscape spreads around, below, | |
| In hues of heaven all earth appears to glow; | |
| Through vales of flowers the wild bee blithely wings, | |
| Mid orange-groves the soft-plumed mavis sings. | 10 |
| Kissing the shores, and stretching far away, | |
| One sheet of sapphire spreads the isle-gemmed bay. | |
| Vines clad the mountains, myrtles fringe the wave, | |
| And harp-like music whispers from each cave: | |
| The very winds seem born of joy and love, | 15 |
| And earth laughs up to laughing skies above. | |
| O lovely land! when banished angels flew | |
| From Eden’s bowers, and bade our world adieu, | |
| The heavenly strangers dropped their parting tear, | |
| And stamped their smiles, and left their footprints here! | 20 |
| |
| Yet ’t is not Nature’s beauties, glowing round, | |
| Lend the chief charm to this enchanted ground, | |
| But brilliant memories of long-vanished years, | |
| The priceless lore which hallows and endears. | |
| Each ruin tells a tale; rock, grove, and stream, | 25 |
| The classic haunt of some bright spirit seem. | |
| What rises near?—a fabric lone and gray, | |
| That boasts no pillars rich, no friezes gay; | |
| An ilex bends above its moss-clad walls, | |
| In long festoons the dark green ivy falls, | 30 |
| And pale-eyed flowers, like watching vestals, bloom,— | |
| Kneel, stranger, kneel! that cell is Virgil’s tomb! | |
| Ay, doubt not, though thou find’st nor urn nor bust, | |
| That slumbers there the immortal poet’s dust; | |
| Gaze on his laurelled brow with Fancy’s eye, | 35 |
| And hear his harp amid the ruins sigh. | |
| |
