THE AVE MARIA.

(DON JUAN, Canto iii. Stanzas 102-109.)

AVE Maria! blessed be the hour!

The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft Have felt that moment in its fullest power

Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft, While swung the deep bell in the distant tower, Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft, And not a breath crept through the rosy air, And yet the forest leaves seem'd stirr'd with prayer.

Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of prayer!

Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of love!

Ave Maria! may our spirits dare

Look up to thine and to thy Son's above!

Ave Maria! oh, that face so fair!

Those downcast eyes beneath the Almighty doveWhat though 'tis but a pictured image?-strike

That painting is no idol-'tis too like.

Sweet hour of twilight!—in the solitude

Of the pine forest, and the silent shore
Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood,
Rooted where once the Adrian wave flowed o'er,
To where the last Cæsarean fortress stood,
Evergreen forest! which Boccaccio's lore

And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me,
How have I loved the twilight hour and thee!

The shrill cicalas, people of the pine,

Making their summer lives one ceaseless song, Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine, And vesper bell's that rose the boughs along ; The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line,

His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng Which learn'd from this example not to fly From a true lover,-shadow'd my mind's eye.

Oh, Hesperus! thou bringest all good things—
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer,
To the young bird the parent's brooding wings,
The welcome stall to the o'erlabour'd steer;
Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings,

Whate'er our household gods protect of dear,

Are gather'd round us by thy look of rest;
Thou bring'st the child, too, to the mother's breast.

Soft hour! which wakes the wish and melts the heart Of those who sail the seas, on the first day

When they from their sweet friends are torn apart;
Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way

As the far bell of vesper makes him start,
Seeming to weep the dying day's decay;
Is this a fancy which our reason scorns?
Ah! surely nothing dies but something mourns!

When Nero perish'd by the justest doom
Which ever the destroyer yet destroy'd,
Amidst the roar of liberated Rome,

Of nations freed, and the world overjoy'd,
Some hand unseen strew'd flowers upon his tomb :
Perhaps the weakness of a heart not void

Of feeling for some kindness done, when power
Had left the wretch an uncorrupted hour.

ARQUA.

(Childe Harold, Canto iv. Stanzas 30-32.)

THERE is a tomb in Arqua ;-rear'd in air,
Pillar'd in their sarcophagus, repose
The bones of Laura's lover; here repair
Many familiar with his well-sung woes,
The pilgrims of his genius. He arose
To raise a language, and his land reclaim
From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes :
Watering the tree which bears his lady's name
With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame.

They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died;
The mountain-village where his latter days
Went down the vale of years; and 'tis their pride—
An honest pride—and let it be their praise,
To offer to the passing stranger's gaze
His mansion and his sepulchre; both plain
And venerably simple, such as raise

A feeling more accordant with his strain
Than if a pyramid form'd his monumental fane.

And the soft quiet hamlet where he dwelt
Is one of that complexion which seems made
For those who their mortality have felt,

And sought a refuge from their hopes decay'd
In the deep umbrage of a green hill's shade,
Which shows a distant prospect far away
Of busy cities, now in vain display'd,
For they can lure no further; and the ray
Of a bright sun can make sufficient holiday.

CLITUMNUS.

(CHILDE HAROLD, Canto iv. Stanzas 66, 67.)

BUT thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave
Of the most living crystal that was e'er
The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave
Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear
Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer
Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters!

And most serene of aspect, and most clear;

Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughtersA mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters!

And on thy happy shore a Temple still,
Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,
Upon a mild declivity of hill,

Its memory of thee; beneath 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 scatter'd water-lily sails

Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales.

TERNI.

(CHILDE HAROLD, Canto iv. Stanzas 69-72.)

THE roar of waters !-from the headlong height
Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;

The fall of waters! rapid as the light

The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;
The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,
And boil in endless torture; while the sweat
Of their great agony, wrung out from this
Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet
That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,

And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again
Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,
With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,
Is an eternal April to the ground,

Making it all one emerald :—how profound

The gulf! and how the giant element

From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,

Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent

To the broad column which rolls on, and shows
More like the fountain of an infant sea

Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes

Of a new world, than only thus to be
Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,

With many windings, through the vale :-Look back!
Lo! where it comes like an eternity,

As if to sweep down all things in its track, Charming the eye with dread, a matchless cataract,