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Its memory of thee; bencath it sweeps
Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps
The finny darter with the glittering scales,
Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps,
While, chance, some scattered water-lily sails

Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales.

The Greek statues at Florence are then inimitably described, after which the poet visits Rome, and revels in the ruins of the Palatine and Coliseum, and the glorious remains of ancient art. We give two of these portraitures:

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Statue of Apollo.

Or view the Lord of the unerring bow,
The God of life, and poesy, and light-
The Sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow
All radiant from his triumph in the fight;

The shaft hath just been shot-the arrow bright
With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye
And nostril beautiful disdain, and might
And majesty, flash their full lightnings by,
Developing in that one glance the Deity.

But in his delicate form-a dream of Love,
Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast
Longed for a deathless lover from above,
And maddened in that vision-are expressed
All that ideal beauty ever blessed

The mind within its most unearthly mood,
When each conception was a heavenly guest-
A ray of immortality-and stood

Starlike, around, until they gathered to a god!

The Gladiator.

I see before me the gladiator lie:

He leans upon his hand; his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony.

And his drooped head sinks gradually low:

And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,

Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now

The arena swims around him; he is gone,

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.

He heard it, but he heeded not; his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away:
He recked not of the life he lost, nor prize,
But where his rude but by the Danube lay;
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother-he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday.

All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire,
And unavenged? Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire!

The poem concludes abruptly with an apostrophe to the sea, his joy of youthful sports,' and a source of lofty enthusiasm and pleasure in his solitary wanderings on the shores of Italy and Greece.

Apostrophe to the Ocean.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar;
I love not inan the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan-
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths-thy fields
Are not a spoil for him-thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray,
And howling to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,

And dashest him again to earth: there let him lay.

The armaments which thunder-strike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take

Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war:

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters washed them power while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thon; Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play. Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow: Such as creation's dawn beheld, thon rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark-heaving, boundless, endless, and sublime-
The image of Eternity-the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone

Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear;
For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,

And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here.

An Italian Evening on the Banks of the Brenta. From Childe

Harold.'

The moon is up, and yet it is not night—
Sunset divides the sky with her a sea
Of glory streams along the alpine height
Of blue Friuli's mountains: heaven is free.
From clouds, but of all colours seems to be
Melted to one vast Iris of the west,
Where the day joins the past eternity,
While on the other hand, meek Dian's crest
Floats through the azure air-an island of the blest.

A single star is at her side, and reigns

With her o'er half the lovely heaven; but still
Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains
Rolled o'er the peak of the far Rhætian hill,
As day and night contending were, until
Nature reclaimed her order: gently flows
The deep-ayed Brenta, where their hucs instil

The odorous purple of a new-born rose,

Which streams upon her stream, and glassed within it glows.

Filled with the face of heaven, which, from afar,

Comes down upon the waters; all its hues,

From the rich sunset to the rising star,

Their magical variety diffuse:

And now they change; a paler shadow strews

Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day

Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues
With a new colour as it gasps away,

The last still loveliest, till-'tis gone-and all is gray.

Midnight Scene in Rome.-From 'Manfred.'

The stars are forth, the moon above the tops
Of the snow-shining mountains. Beautiful!
I linger yet with nature, for the night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness,

I learned the language of another worla.

I do remember me, that in my youth,
When I was wandering, upon such a night
I stood within the Coliseum's wall,

'Midst the chief relics of all-mighty Rome:
The trees which grew along the broken arches
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber; and
More near, from out the Cæsars' palace came
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly,

Of distant sentinels the fitful song
Begun and died upon the gentle wind.
Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach
Appeared to skirt the horizon, yet they stood
Within a bowshot. Where the Caesars dwelt,
And dwell the tuneless birds of night amidst
A grove which springs through levelled battlements,.
And twines its roots with the imperial hearths,
Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth;
But the gladiator's bloody circus stands
A noble wreck in ruinous perfection!

While Cæsar's chambers and the Augustan halls
Grovel on earth in indistinct decay.

And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon
All this, and cast a wide and tender light,
Which softened down the hoar austerity
Of rugged desolation, and filled up,

As 'twere anew, the gaps of centuries;
Leaving that beautiful which still was so,
And making that which was not, till the place
Became religion, and the heart ran o'er
With silent worship of the great of old-

The dead, but sceptred sovereigus, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns!

The following extracts are from 'Don Juan:'
The Shipwreck.

"Twas twilight, and the sunless day went down
Over the waste of waters; like a veil

Which, if withdrawn, would but disclose the frown
Of one whose hate is masked but to assail.
Thus to their hopeless eyes the night was shewn,
And grimly darkled o'er the faces pale,
And the dim desolate deep: twelve days had Fear
Been their familiar, and now Death was here. . . .

Then rose from sea to sky the wild farewell

Then shrieked the timid, and stood still the brave-
Then some leaped overboard with dreadful yell,
As eager to anticipate their grave;

And the sea yawned around her like a hell,

And down she sucked with her the whirling wave,
Like one who grapples with his enemy,

And strives to strangle him before he die.

And first one universal shriek there rushed,
Louder than the loud ocean, like a crash
Of echoing thunder; and then all was hushed,
Save the wild wind and the remorseless dash
Of billows; but at intervals there gushed,
Accompanied with a convulsive splash,

A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry

Of some strong swimmer in is agony....

There were two fathers in this ghastly crew,

And with them their two sons, of whom the one

Was more robust and hardy to the view;

But he died early; and when he was gone,

His nearest messmate told his sire, who threw

One glance on him, and said: Heaven's will be done!

I can do nothing' and he saw him thrown

Into the deep without a tear or groan.

The other father had a weaklier child,
Of a soft cheek, and aspect delicate;
But the boy bore up long, and with a mild
And patient spirit held aloof his fate;
Little he said, and now and then he smiled,
As if to win a part from off the weight
He saw increasing on his father's heart,
With the deep deadly thought that they must part.
And o'er him bent his sire, and never raised

His eyes from off his face, but wiped the foam
From his pale lips, and ever on him gazed:

And when the wished for shower at length was come, And the boy's eyes, which the dull film half glazed, Brightened, and for a moment seemed to roam, He squeezed from out a rag some drops of rain Into his dying child's mouth; but in vain !

The boy expired-the father held the clay,

And looked upon it long; and when at last Death left no doubt, and the dead burden lay

Stiff on his heart, and pulse and hope were past, He watched it wistfully, until away

"Twas borne by the rude wave wherein 'twas cast; Then he himself sunk down all dumb and shivering, And gave no sign of life, save his limbs quivering.

Description of Haidee.

Her brow was overhung with coins of gold
That sparkled o'er the auburn of her hair;
Her clustering hair, whose longer locks were rolled
In braids behind; and though her stature were
Even of the highest for a female mould,

They nearly reached her heels; and in her air
There was a something which bespoke command,
As one who was a lady in the land.

Her hair, I said, was auburn; but her eyes

Were black as death, their lashes the same hue,
Of downcast length, in whose silk shadow lies
Deepest attraction; for when to the view
Forth from its raven fringe the full glance flies,
Ne'er with such force the swiftest arrow flew:
"Tis as the snake late coiled, who pours his length,
And hurls at once his venom and his strength.

Her brow was white and low; her cheek's pure dye,'
Like twilight, rosy still with the set sun;"
Short upper lip-sweet lips! that make us sigh
Ever to have seen such; for she was one
Fit for the model of a statuary

(A race of mere impostors when all's doneI've seen much finer women, ripe and real, Than all the nonsense of their stone ideal).

Haidee visits the shipwrecked Don Juan.

And down the cliff the island virgin came,
And near the cave her quick light footsteps drew,
While the sun smiled on her with his first flame,
And young Aurora kissed her lips with dew.
Taking her for her sister; just the same

Mistake you would have made on seeing the two,

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