And let the land whose hearths he saved from shame For many and many an age proclaim At civic revel and pomp and game, Their ever-loyal iron leader's fame, With honour, honour, honour, honour to him, Eternal honour to his name. 9 Peace, his triumph will be sung Far on in summers that we shall not see : 1 For one about whose patriarchal knee Late the little children clung: O peace, it is a day of pain For one, upon whose hand and heart and brain e revere, and we refrain From talk of battles loud and vain, And brawling memories all too free As befits a solemn fane: We revere, and while we hear The tides of Music's golden sea Setting toward eternity, Uplifted high in heart and hope are we, 1A day of pain.] "Pain" here used in the sense of "" regret. sorrow or Until we doubt not that for one so true And Victor he must ever be. For tho' the Giant Ages1 heave the hill On God and Godlike men we build our trust. Hush, the Dead March wails in the people's ears: The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and tears: The black earth yawns: the mortal disappears; He is gone who seem'd so great.— Lay your earthly fancies down, And in the vast cathedral leave him. 1852. 1 Giant ages.] Alluding to the Greek fable of the giants heaping Pelion on Ossa, here finely applied to the great forces of Nature. 2 World on world.] 1st edition, "worlds on worlds." THE DAISY1 WRITTEN AT EDINBURGH O LOVE, what hours were thine and mine, What Roman strength Turbìa 2 show'd How like a gem, beneath, the city How richly down the rocky dell To meet the sun and sunny waters, What slender campanili grew By bays, the peacock's neck in hue; Where, here and there, on sandy beaches A milky-bell'd amaryllis blew. 1 This poem was addressed to the author's wife, shortly after the birth of their eldest child, and recalling a previous tour in Italy. Its metre was called by the author a "far-off echo of the Horatian Alcaic" (Life, i. 341). 2 Turbia.] On the Cornice. So Dante, Purgatorio, iii. : "Tra Lerici e Turbia la più deserta La più romita via è una scala How young Columbus seem'd to rove, Now watching high on mountain cornice, Now pacing mute by ocean's rim ; I stay'd the wheels at Cogoletto,1 Nor knew we well what pleased us most, A moulder'd citadel on the coast, Or tower, or high hill-convent, seen Where oleanders flush'd the bed We loved that hall,2 tho' white and cold, 1 Cogoletto.] The traditional birthplace of Columbus, sixteen miles west of Genoa; though he himself said of the latter place in his will, "Thence I came, and there I was born.' " 2 That hall.] Of the Banco di San Giorgio, in the old Dogana. "The upper hall, a striking picture of neglected and decaying magnificence, is surrounded by two ranges of grand life-size statues of Genoese heroes-Spinolas, Dorias, Fieschis, etc., the upper row standing, the lower seated" (Hare's Cities of Northern Italy, i. 36). |