DESCRIPTIVE. Weehawken and the New York Bay. [From "Fanny."] JEEHAWKEN! In thy mountain scenery yet, And frolic hour of infancy is met; And never has a summer morning smiled Amid thy forest solitudes he climbs O'er crags that proudly tower above the deep, Like the death music of his coming doom, And clings to the green turf with desperate force, As the heart clings to life; and when resume The currents in his veins their wonted course, In such an hour he turns, and on his view Of summer's sky in beauty bending o'er him, Tall spire, and glittering roof, and battlement, And white sails o'er the calm blue waters bent, And many a scene forgot, the heart will hold Its memory of this: nor lives there one THE The Isles of Greece. HE isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! Where burning Sappho loved and sung, Where grew the arts of war and peaceWhere Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung! Eternal summer gilds them yet, But all, except their sun, is set. The Scian and the Teian muse, The hero's harp, the lover's lute, The Mountains look on Marathon- I dreamed that Greece might still be free; For standing on the Persian's grave, I could not deem myself a slave. A king sat on the rocky brow Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis; And ships, by thousands, lay below, And men in nations;-all were his! He counted them at break of day And when the sun set, where were they? And where are they? and where art thou, My country? On thy voiceless shore The heroic lay is tuneless now The heroic bosom beats no more! And must thy lyre, so long divine, Degenerate into hands like mine? 'Tis something, in the dearth of fame, Though linked among a fettered race, To feel at least a patriot's shame, Even as I sing, suffuse my face; For what is left a poet here? For Greeks a blush-for Greece a tear. Must we but weep o'er days more blest? -Byron. B Palestine. LEST land of Judea! thrice hallowed of song, In the shade of thy palms, by the shores of thy sea, Lo, Bethlehem's hill-side before me is seen, Oh, here with His flock the sad wanderer came- The founts where He drank by the wayside still flow, And the same airs are blowing which breathed on His brow! And what if my feet may not tread where He stood, To the meek, and the lowly, and penitent here; Oh, the outward hath gone!-but, in glory and power, Coliseum by Moonlight. [From "Manfred."] HE 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 I learned the language of another world. I do remember me, that in my youth, More near, from out the Cæsar's palace came ments, And twines its root with the imperial hearths. While Caesar's chambers and the Augustan halls Grovel on earth in distinct decay, And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon And making that which was not, till the place Our spirits from their urns. -Lord Byron. K Sunny Italy. NOWEST thou the land which lovers ought to Like blessings there descend the sparkling dews; The purple vintage clusters in the sun; [loves. Until thy light feet press that green shore's yellow sand. Or touched with silver by the stars and moon, It looks a dimple on the face of earth, The place's genius, feminine and fair; The winds are awed, nor dare to breathe aloud; A View Across the Roman Campagna---1861. VER the dumb campagna-sea, Out in the offing through mist and rain, St. Peter's Church heaves silently Like a mighty ship in pain, Facing the tempest with struggle and strain. Motionless waifs of ruined towers, That mountain range upon either hand, And over the dumb campagna sea Where the ship of the church heaves on to wreck, Alone and silent as God must be The Christ walks! -Ay, but Peter's neck Is stiff to turn on the foundering deck. Peter, Peter, if such be thy name, Now leave the ship for another to steer, And proving thy faith evermore the same Come forth, tread out through the dark and drear, Since He who walks on the sea is here! Peter, Peter!-he does not speak He is not as rash as in old Galilee. Safer a ship, though it toss and leak, Than a reeling foot on a rolling sea! -And he's got to be round in the girth, thinks he. Peter, Peter! he does not stir His nets are heavy with silver fish: He reckons his gains, and is keen to infer, "The broil on the shore, if the Lord should wish, But the sturgeon goes to the Cæsar's dish." |