| |
| CAN I forget that beauteous day, | |
| When, sheltered from the burning beam, | |
| First in thy haunted grot I lay, | |
| And loosed my spirit, to its dream, | |
| Beneath the broken arch, o’erlaid | 5 |
| With ivy, dark with many a braid, | |
| That clasped its tendrils to retain | |
| The stone its roots had writhed in twain? | |
| No zephyr on the leaflet played, | |
| No bent grass bowed its slender blade, | 10 |
| The coiled snake lay slumber-bound; | |
| All mute, all motionless around, | |
| Save, livelier, while others slept, | |
| The lizard on the sunbeam leapt; | |
| And louder, while the groves were still, | 15 |
| The unseen cigali, sharp and shrill | |
| As if their chirp could charm alone | |
| Tired noontide with its unison. | |
| |
| Stranger! that roam’st in solitude! | |
| Thou, too, mid tangling bushes rude, | 20 |
| Seek in the glen, yon heights between, | |
| A rill more pure than Hippocrene, | |
| That from a sacred fountain fed | |
| The stream that filled its marble bed. | |
| Its marble bed long since is gone, | 25 |
| And the stray water struggles on, | |
| Brawling through weeds and stones its way. | |
| There, when o’erpowered at blaze of day | |
| Nature languishes in light, | |
| Pass within the gloom of night, | 30 |
| Where the cool grot’s dark arch o’ershades | |
| Thy temples, and the waving braids | |
| Of many a fragment brier that weaves | |
| Its blossom through the ivy leaves. | |
| Thou, too, beneath that rocky roof, | 35 |
| Where the moss mats its thickest woof, | |
| Shalt hear the gathered ice-drops fall | |
| Regular, at interval, | |
| Drop after drop, one after one, | |
| Making music on the stone, | 40 |
| While every drop, in slow decay, | |
| Wears the recumbent nymph away. | |
| Thou, too, if e’er thy youthful ear | |
| Thrilled the Latian lay to hear, | |
| Lulled to slumber in that cave, | 45 |
| Shalt hail the nymph that held the wave; | |
| A goddess, who there deigned to meet | |
| A mortal from Rome’s regal seat, | |
| And, o’er the gushing of her fount, | |
| Mysterious truths divine to earthly ear recount. | 50 |
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