CCXV. THE JEWS' CEMETERY. Lido of Venice. A TRACT of land swept by the salt sea-foam, Sad is the place, and solemn. Grave by grave, Lost in the dunes, with rank weeds overgrown, Pines in abandonment; as though unknown, Uncared for, lay the dead, whose records pave This path neglected; each forgotten stone Wept by no mourner but the moaning wave. CCXVI. A CRUCIFIX IN THE ETSCH THAL. BLUE mists lie curled along the sullen stream: Stretch the gaunt mountain-flanks without one gleam. It is a twilight land without a name : Heart-breaking is the world-old human strife In records fugitive as human life. Ah Christ! The land is thine. Those tortured eyes, That thorn-crowned brow, those mute lips, thin and pale, Appeal from man's pain to the impiteous skies. CCXVII. A DREAM OF BURIAL IN MID-OCEAN. Down through the deep deep grey-green seas, in sleep, Then all those dreadful faces of the sea, Jagged fins grotesque, fanged ghastly jaws of hell. CCXVIII. VENETIAN SUNRISE. How often have I now outwatched the night Round yonder sharp acanthus-leaves the light And dim discerned erewhile through roseate gloom, CCXIX. MONTENEGRO. THEY rose to where their sovran eagle sails, And red with blood the crescent reels from fight Before their dauntless hundreds, in prone flight By thousands down the crags and thro' the vales. O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years, Great Tsernogora! never since thine own Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers. |