True, to the dream of Fancy, Ocean has His darker tints; but where the element That chequers not its usefulness to man
With casual terror? Scathes not Earth sometimes Her children with Tartarean fires, or shakes The shrieking cities, and with one last clang Of bells for their own ruín, strews them flat As riddled ashes-silent as the grave? Walks not Contagion on the Air itself? I should-old Ocean's Saturnalian days And roaring nights of revelry and sport With wreck and human woe-be loth to sing; For they are few, and all their ills weigh light Against his sacred usefulness, that bids Our pensile globes revolve in purer air.
Here Morn and Eve with blushing thanks receive Their freshening dews, gay fluttering breezes cool Their wings to fan the brow of fevered climes, And here the Spring dips down her emerald urn For showers to glad the earth.
Infinity of ages ere we breathed
Existence and he will be beautiful
When all the living world that sees him now Shall roll unconscious dust around the sun.
Quelling from age to age the vital throb
In human hearts, Death shall not subjugate The pulse that swells in his stupendous breast, Or interdict his minstrelsy to sound
In thundering concert with the quivering winds;
But long as man to parent Nature owns Instinctive homage, and in times beyond
The power of thought to reach, bard after bard Shall sing thy glory, BEATIFIC SEA.
How beautiful is sunset when the glow Of heaven descends upon a land like thee, Thou paradise of exiles, Italy!
Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the
Of cities they encircle !-It was ours
To stand on thee beholding it; and then
Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men Were waiting for us with the gondola.
As those who pause on some delightful way, Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood Looking upon the evening and the flood, Which lay between the city and the shore, Paved with the image of the sky: the hoar And airy Alps, towards the north, appeared, Through mist, a heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared
Between the east and west; and half the sky Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry, Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew Down the steep west into a wondrous hue Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent Among the many-folded hills-they were Those famous Eugunean Hills, which bear As seen from Lido through the harbour piles The likeness of a clump of peaked isles- And then as if the earth and sea had been Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen, Those mountains towering as from waves of
Around the vaporous sun, from which there came The inmost purple spirit of light, and made Their very peaks transparent. "Ere it fade, Said my companion, "I will show you soon A better station," So, o'er the lagune We glided, and from that funeral bark I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark How from their many isles, in evening's gleam, Its temples and its palaces did seem Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven.
How calm, how beautiful comes on The stilly hour, when storms are gone; When warring winds have died away, And clouds, beneath the glancing ray, Melt off, and leave the lands and sea Sleeping in bright tranquillity.- Fresh as if day again were born, Again upon the lap of morn! When the light blossoms, rudely torn And scattered at the whirlwind's will, Hang floating in the pure air still, Filling it all with precious balm, In gratitude for this sweet calm ;— And every drop the thunder-showers Have left upon the grass and flowers Sparkles, as 'twere, that lightning-gem Whose liquid flame is born of them! When, 'stead of one unchanging breeze, There blow a thousand gentle airs, And each a different perfume bears,- As if the loveliest plants and trees Had vassal breezes of their own To watch and wait on them alone, And waft no other breath than theirs;
When the blue waters rise and fall, In sleepy sunshine mantling all; And even that swell the tempest leave Is like the full and silent heaves Of lovers' hearts, when newly blest,- Too newly to be quite at rest.
LORD of the day-star! how many words portray Of thy chaste glory one reflected ray? Whate'er the soul could dream, the hand could
Of regal dignity and heavenly grace;
Each purer effluence of the fair and bright, Whose fitful gleams have broke on mortal sight; Each bold idea, borrowed from the sky, To vest the embodied form of Deity; All, all in thee ennobled and refined,
Breathe and enchant, transcendently combined; Son of Elysium! years and ages gone
Have bowed, in speechless homage, at thy throne, And days unborn, and nations yet to be,
Shall gaze, absorbed in ecstacy, on thee!
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