For here comes the whole of the tempest! no refuge, but

creep

Back again to my side and my shoulder, and listen or sleep.

Oh! how will your country show next week, when all the vine-boughs

Have been stripped of their foliage to pasture the mules and the cows?

Last eve, I rode over the mountains; your brother, my guide, Soon left me, to feast on the myrtles that offered, each side, Their fruit-balls, black, glossy, and luscious—or strip from the sorbs

A treasure, or, rosy and wondrous, those hairy gold orbs! But my mule picked his sure sober path out, just stopping to neigh

When he recognized down in the valley his mates on their way With the fagots and barrels of water. And soon we emerged From the plain where the woods could scarce follow; and still,

as we urged

Our way, the woods wondered, and left us. Up, up still we trudged,

Though the wild path grew wilder each instant, and place was e'en grudged

'Mid the rock-chasms and piles of loose stones like the loose broken teeth

Of some monster which climbed there to die, from the ocean beneath

Place was grudged to the silver-gray fume-weed that clung to the path,

And dark rosemary ever a-dying, that, 'spite the wind's wrath,
So loves the salt rock's face to seaward; and lentisks as stanch
To the stone where they root and bear berries: and . . . what
shows a branch

Coral-colored, transparent, with circlets of pale seagreen leaves ;
Over all trod my mule with the caution of gleaners o'er sheaves.
Still, foot after foot like a lady, still, round after round
He climbed to the top of Calvano: and God's own profound
Was above me, and round me the mountains, and under, the sea,
And within me my heart to bear witness what was and shall be.
Oh, heaven and the terrible crystal! no rampart excludes
Your eye from the life to be lived in the blue solitudes.
Oh, those mountains, their infinite movement! still moving

with you;

For, ever some new head and breast of them thrusts into view
To observe the intruder; you see it, if quickly you turn
And, before they escape you, surprise them. They grudge you
should learn

How the soft plains they look on, lean over and love (they pretend)

-Cower beneath them, the black sea-pine crouches, the wild fruit-trees bend,

E'en the myrtle leaves curl, shrink and shut all is silent and

grave:

'Tis a sensual and timorous beauty,-- how fair! but a slave. So, I turned to the sea; and there slumbered, as greenly as ever Those isles of the siren, your Galli. No ages can sever The Three, nor enable their sister to join them,-half way On the voyage, she looked at Ulysses-no farther to-day! Though the small one, just launched in the wave, watches breast-high and steady

From under the rock her bold sister, swum half-way already. Fortù, shall we sail there together, and see, from the sides, Quite new rocks show their faces, new haunts where the siren abides?

Shall we sail round and round them, close over the rocks, though

unseen,

That ruffle the gray glassy water to glorious green?

Then scramble from splinter to splinter, reach land, and explore, On the largest, the strange square black turret with never a

door,

Just a loop to admit the quick lizards? Then, stand there and hear

The birds' quiet singing, that tells us what life is, so clear?
-The secret they sang to Ulysses when, ages ago,

He heard and he knew this life's secret, I hear and I know.

Ah, see! The sun breaks o'er Calvano. He strikes the great gloom

And flutters it o'er the mount's summit in airy gold fume.

All is over. Look out, see, the gypsy, our tinker and smith, Has arrived, set up bellows and forge, and down-squatted forthwith

To his hammering under the wall there! One eye keeps aloof The urchins that itch to be putting his Jew's-harp to proof, While the other, through locks of curled wire, is watching how

sleek

Shines the hog, come to share in the windfall. Chew, abbot's own cheek!

All is over. Wake up and come out now, and down let us go,
And see the fine things got in order at church for the show
Of the Sacrament, set forth this evening. To-morrow's the

Feast

Of the Rosary's Virgin, by no means of Virgins the least :
As you'll hear in the off-hand discourse which (all nature, no art)

The Dominican brother, these three weeks, was getting by heart. Not a pillar nor post but is dizened with red and blue papers; All the roof waves with ribbons, each altar ablaze with long tapers.

But the great masterpiece is the scaffold rigged glorious to hold All the fiddlers and fifers and drummers and trumpeters bold Not afraid of Bellini nor Auber: who, when the priest's hoarse, Will strike us up something that's brisk for the feast's second

course.

And then will the flaxen-wigged Image be carried in pomp Through the plain, while, in gallant procession, the priests mean to stomp.

All round the glad church lie old bottles with gunpowder stopped,

Which will be, when the Image re-enters, religiously popped. And at night from the crest of Calvano great bonfires will hang: On the plain will the trumpets join chorus, and more poppers

bang.

At all events, come—to the garden, as far as the wall;
See me tap with a hoe on the plaster, till out there shall fall
A scorpion with wide angry nippers!

-

-“Such trifles!” you say?

Fortù, in my England at home, men meet gravely to-day
And debate, if abolishing corn-laws be righteous and wise!
-If t'were proper, Scirocco should vanish in black from the
skies!

UP AT A VILLA-DOWN IN THE CITY.

(AS DISTINGUISHED BY AN ITALIAN PERSON OF QUALITY.)

I.

HAD I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!

II.

Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast;
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than
a beast.

III.

Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull
Just on a mountain edge as bare as the creature's skull,
Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull!

-I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned

wool.

IV.

But the city, oh the city-the square with the houses! Why? They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's something to take the eye!

Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry;

You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by ;

Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high;

And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.

V.

What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights, 'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the

heights:

You've the brown plowed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze,

And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive trees.

VI.

Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all at once; In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns. 'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers

well,

The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell Like a thin clear 'bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell.

VII.

Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to spout and

splash!

In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash

On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and pash

Round the lady atop in her conch-fifty gazers do not abash, Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of sash.

VIII.

All the year long at the villa, nothing to see though you linger, Except yon cypress that points like death's lean lifted forefinger. Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix i' the corn and mingle, Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle. Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is shrill, And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on the hill.

Enough of the seasons,- I spare you the months of the fever

and chill.

Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin:

No sooner the bells leave off than the diligence rattles in:
You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin.
By and by there's the traveling doctor--gives pills, lets blood,
draws teeth,

Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath.
At the post-office such a scene-picture-the new play, piping
hot!

And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were

shot.

Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fatherly of rebukes, And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law of the Duke's!

Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and

SO

Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, St. Jerome, and Cicero,