A MEDIEVAL CITY.

124

At my feet the city slumbered.

From its chimneys here and there, Wreaths of snow-white smoke ascending, vanished, ghostlike, into air.

Not a sound rose from the city at that early morning hour,

But I heard a heart of iron beating in the ancient tower.

From their nests beneath the rafters sang the swallows wild and high; And the world, beneath me sleeping, seemed more distant than the sky.

Then most musical and solemn, bringing back the olden times,
With their strange, unearthly changes, rang the melancholy chimes,

Like the psalms from some old cloister, when the nuns sing in the choir; And the great bell tolled among them, like the chanting of a friar.

Visions of the day departed, shadowy phantoms filled my brain;
They who lived in history only, seemed to walk the earth again.

I beheld the pageants splendid, that adorned those days of old;
Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who bore the Fleece of Gold.

Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep-laden argosies;
Ministers from twenty nations; more than royal pomp and ease.

Then the sound of drums aroused me. The awakened city's roar

Chased the phantoms I had summoned back into their graves once more.

Hours had passed away like minutes; and, before I was aware,
Lo! the shadow of the belfry crossed the sun-illumined square.

LONGFELLOW.

NAPLES.

A CITY ON THE SEA.

ROBE of sunlight hung o'er all thy bowers,
Fair city as with music's stirring strain,-
Whose pattering echoes fell like summer-rain
Upon thy sleeping wave,-we neared thy towers
Grey with antiquity. On either shore

Myriads of forms were glancing in the light,
And crowds expectant crowned each shining height,
As the gay vessel up thy haven bore ;

Bright pennons glittered in the noon-tide ray,
And heaven and earth kept jubilee that day.

Alas! that man should mar a scene like this,

With vain aspirings after perfect bliss ;

Some bright, ideal, ever distant good

For which he'll barter kindred, home, and blood!

ANONYMOUS.

NAPLES.

APLES! thou heart of man which ever pantest
Naked beneath the lidless eye of heaven!

Elysian City, which to calm enchantest

The mutinous air and sea! they round thee, even
As sleep round Love, are driven !

Metropolis of a ruined Paradise

Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained!

Bright altar of the bloodless sacrifice,

125

126

AN ANCIENT CITY.

Which armed Victory offers up unstained

To Love, the flower-enchained!

Thou which wert once and then did cease to be,
Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free,
If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail,
Hail, hail, all hail !

From Freedom's form divine,

From Nature's inmost shrine,

Strip every impious gawd, rend error veil by veil:
O'er ruin desolate,

O'er falsehood's fallen state,

Sit thou sublime, unawed; be the Destroyer pale!
And equal laws be thine,

And wingéd word let sail,

Freighted with truth even from the throne of God:
That wealth, surviving fate,

Be thine. All hail!

SHELLEY.

AN ANCIENT CITY.

N thought I saw the palace domes of Tyre,
The gorgeous treasures of her merchandise,
All her proud people in their brave attire,
Thronging her streets for sports or sacrifice.
I saw her precious stones and spiceries;

The singing-girl with flower-wreathed instrument;
And slaves whose beauty asked a monarch's price,
Forth from all lands all nations to her went,

AN ANCIENT CITY.

And kings to her on embassy were sent.

I saw with gilded prow and silken sail, Her ships, that of the sea had government.

Oh, gallant ships! 'gainst you what might prevail ! She stood upon her rock, and in her pride

Of strength and beauty, waste and woe defied.

I looked again-I saw a lonely shore,

A rock amid the waters, and a waste

Of trackless sand :—I heard the black sea's roar,
And winds that rose and fell with gusty haste.
There was one scathéd tree, by storm defaced,
Round which the sea-birds wheeled with screaming cry.
Ere long came on a traveller slowly paced;
Now east, then west he turned with curious eye,

Like one perplexed with an uncertainty.

Awhile he looked upon the sea, and then

Upon a book as if it might supply

The thing he lacked :-he read and gazed again;

Yet as if unbelief so on him wrought,

He might not deem this shore, the shore he sought.

Again, I saw him come :-'twas eventide;

The sun shone on the rock amid the sea;
The winds were hushed; the quiet billows sighed
With a low swell:-the birds winged silently
Their evening flight around the scathéd tree;

The fisher safely put into the bay,

And pushed his boat ashore ;-then gathered he His nets, and hasting up the rocky way,

127

Spread them to catch the warm sun's evening ray.
I saw that stranger's eye gaze on the scene;
"And this was Tyre!" said he, "how has Decay
Within her palaces a despot been.

Ruin and silence in her courts are met,
And on her city rock, the fisher spreads his net."

MARY HOWITT.

BABEL.

ORTH walked the king upon the terraced height
Of Babel :-forth he walked and saw how fair
Shone all its palaces, its hanging groves,
Its massy sculptures, and its waters broad

Beating its walls, and clad with many a sail.
And as his eye now upward glanced, and viewed
The heaven-ascending tower-his wondrous work,
And downwards, whence the hum of myriads came,
Proudly his heart did question of itself,
-As one long after on the self-same spot-
"Is not this Babel, that my hand hath built

For the great house of my unbounded realm,

And for the honour of my majesty?"

Oh, 'twas a glorious scene! Throughout the earth

Lay one wide solitude.

Babel arose, sole city of the earth,

Sole home of man, the mother of all realms,

And through its wide, fair streets, and on its roofs,

And up its marble flight of many steps