CONTENTS.

The Apennines: Florence. Apostrophe to Italy; illustrious men
born, or residents at Florence. The Piazza Gran' Duca. Perseus: Cosmo.
The Duomo and the Campanile. The Tribune: the Venus. Niobe:
the Mercury Genius of Death: Plato. Love and Psyche: The Dan-
cing Fawn: The Medusa: St. John of Raffaelle. The Day and Night,
Santa Croce: Galileo: Michael Angelo: Dante: A Vision of the Dead.

Fiesole Apostrophe to Nature: to the Air. The Vale of Arno, and
Florence in the distance. Farewell to Youth: remembrances of its
joys and sorrows. Ascent to Vallambrosa moral influences of Nature on
the soul: on Liberty. Wild and sublime Scenery of Vallambrosa: analo-
gies; remembrances of Milton: Eulogy on that Great Poet. Farewell
to Vallambrosa; The Adriatic: Apostrophe to England, recalling its na-
tional glories: Conclusion.

ITALY.

I.

If thou wert aught, Time-hallowed phantom, Muse!

Save the creation of immortal mind,

Here, throned apart, thy temple would'st thou choose:

Oh! never on Parnassus' heights enshrined,

'Mid Ida's woods, or Delphic shades reclined,

Was a sublimer, worthier Altar thine

Than where I stand, companion of the Wind,

Cloud-folded on the stormy APENNINE !

Than where I feel thee linked with Nature's life and

mine.

II.

Else, wherefore, Vision of the Soul! wert thou

Embodied ever from mankind apart,

Throned on the mountain's heaven-encircled brow?

Save that the Poet felt thou wert and art

From Nature's forms created by the heart:

The crag, the cloud, the spirit-stirring Air!

All elements that kindred Power impart;

Thou, who her gentler communings would'st share,

The vale, or brooklet seek, and thou shalt find her there!

III.

Stand-for unseen beneath a world lies shrouded:

An upper and a nether heaven; behold

Above-the boundless azure spreads unclouded:
Beneath-the mists voluminous enrolled

In wave-like ridges, fold enwrapped o'er fold:
Now, broken, feathering up the mountain's side
In billowy wreaths of gusty vapour rolled;

Now, through its yawning gorges spreading wide,

Like smoke whose eddying palls those rocky cauldrons

hide;

IV.

Upwards from their all-fathomless chasms seething As from the Abyss of Hell! lo, dimly seen,

Hung round their sides the blasted pines stretch wreathing

Their arms with a forlorn and witch-like mien ;

Above-beneath-the Quiet how serene!

The Motion and the Silence! the bright Sun

Casting o'er yon cloud-waves its dazzling sheen;
A solemn Sea! still fluctuating on,

As heaved the waves o'er earth ere yet from Chaos won.

V.

Lo, Life's true isthmus, thou who standest here,

Rising between the two eternities;

The infinite of yonder azure sphere:

The floating Ocean of the Cloud that lies

Beneath thee, and the world o'ercanopies:

Thou, the sole link between that earth and heaven;

How thy grand isolation magnifies

Thy spirit to the mighty Vision given!

Away, each lowlier thought, each earthlier memory

driven.

VI.

Hark-on the air the Goatherd's simple bell!
Oh! how that Voice of Silence hath a charm,
Awakening, with its more than magic spell,
All those affectionate memories that warm

The heart, which chilled by distance, peril, storm,
Bounds to the past, and welcomes hope and home!
How those fond words can ill itself disarm,

Where'er the way-worn wanderer may roam;

Or scorched on desert sands, or rocked on Ocean's foam.

VII.

Lo, the Wind entering yon cloudy Ocean,
Hath shook its dewy folds, and now, ascending
The broken mists, with an uncertain motion,

Unveils their depths, with their blue shadows blending
What now appear like trees-now, towers impending,
Based on their evanescent banks below:

Till, step by step, thy loftier throne descending,
Dark Apennine! those shapes aërial grow

Palpably fixed-till rising, shadowed by thy brow,