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| O LOVE, what hours were thine and mine | |
| In lands of palm and southern pine,— | |
| In lands of palm, of orange-blossom, | |
| Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine. | |
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| What Roman strength Turbìa showed | 5 |
| In ruin, by the mountain road; | |
| How like a gem, beneath, the city | |
| Of little Monaco, basking, glowed. | |
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| How richly down the rocky dell | |
| The torrent vineyard streaming fell | 10 |
| To meet the sun and sunny waters, | |
| That only heaved with a summer swell. | |
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| What slender campanili grew | |
| By bays, the peacock’s neck in hue; | |
| Where, here and there, on sandy beaches | 15 |
| A milky-belled amaryllis blew. | |
| |
| How young Columbus seemed to rove, | |
| Yet present in his natal grove, | |
| Now watching high on mountain cornice, | |
| And steering, now, from a purple cove, | 20 |
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| Now pacing mute by ocean’s rim | |
| Till, in a narrow street and dim, | |
| I stayed the wheels at Cogoletto, | |
| And drank, and loyally drank to him. | |
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| Nor knew we well what pleased us most, | 25 |
| Not the clipt palm of which they boast; | |
| But distant color, happy hamlet, | |
| A mouldered citadel on the coast, | |
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| Or tower, or high hill-convent, seen | |
| A light amid its olives green; | 30 |
| Or olive-hoary cape in ocean; | |
| Or rosy blossom in hot ravine, | |
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| Where oleanders flushed the bed | |
| Of silent torrents, gravel-spread; | |
| And, crossing, oft we saw the glisten | 35 |
| Of ice, far up on a mountain head. | |
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| We loved that hall, though white and cold, | |
| Those nichéd shapes of noble mould, | |
| A princely people’s awful princes, | |
| The grave, severe Genovese of old. | 40 |
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| At Florence, too, what golden hours | |
| In those long galleries were ours; | |
| What drives about the fresh Cascinè, | |
| Or walks in Boboli’s ducal bowers. | |
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| In bright vignettes, and each complete, | 45 |
| Of tower or duomo, sunny-sweet, | |
| Or palace, how the city glittered, | |
| Through cypress avenues, at our feet. | |
| |
| But when we crost the Lombard plain | |
| Remember what a plague of rain; | 50 |
| Of rain at Reggio, rain at Parma; | |
| At Lodi, rain, Piacenza, rain. | |
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| And stern and sad (so rare the smiles | |
| Of sunlight) looked the Lombard piles; | |
| Porch-pillars on the lion resting, | 55 |
| And sombre, old, colonnaded aisles. | |
| |
| O Milan, O the chanting quires, | |
| The giant windows’ blazoned fires, | |
| The height, the space, the gloom, the glory! | |
| A mount of marble, a hundred spires! | 60 |
| |
| I climbed the roofs at break of day; | |
| Sun-smitten Alps before me lay. | |
| I stood among the silent statues, | |
| And statued pinnacles, mute as they. | |
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| How faintly flushed, how phantom-fair, | 65 |
| Was Monte Rosa hanging there | |
| A thousand shadowy-pencilled valleys | |
| And snowy dells in a golden air. | |
| |
| Remember how we came at last | |
| To Como; shower and storm and blast | 70 |
| Had blown the lake beyond his limit, | |
| And all was flooded; and how we past | |
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| From Como, when the light was gray, | |
| And in my head, for half the day, | |
| The rich Virgilian rustic measure | 75 |
| Of Lari Maxume, all the way, | |
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| Like ballad-burden music, kept, | |
| As on the Lariano crept | |
| To that fair port below the castle | |
| Of Queen Theodolind, where we slept; | 80 |
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| Or hardly slept, but watched awake | |
| A cypress in the moonlight shake, | |
| The moonlight touching o’er a terrace | |
| One tall agavè above the lake. | |
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| What more? we took our last adieu, | 85 |
| And up the snowy Splugen drew, | |
| But ere we reached the highest summit | |
| I plucked a daisy, I gave it you. | |
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| It told of England then to me, | |
| And now it tells of Italy. | 90 |
| O love, we two shall go no longer | |
| To lands of summer across the sea; | |
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| So dear a life your arms enfold | |
| Whose crying is a cry for gold: | |
| Yet here to-night in this dark city, | 95 |
| When ill and weary, alone and cold, | |
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| I found, though crushed to hard and dry, | |
| This nursling of another sky | |
| Still in the little book you lent me, | |
| And where you tenderly laid it by: | 100 |
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| And I forgot the clouded Forth, | |
| The gloom that saddens heaven and earth, | |
| The bitter east, the misty summer | |
| And gray metropolis of the North. | |
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| Perchance to lull the throbs of pain, | 105 |
| Perchance to charm a vacant brain, | |
| Perchance to dream you still beside me, | |
| My fancy fled to the South again. | |
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