A princely people's awful princes,
The grave, severe Genovese of old.

At Florence too what golden hours,
In those long galleries, were ours;
What drives about the fresh Cascinè,1
Or walks in Boboli's ducal bowers.

In bright vignettes,2 and each complete,
Of tower or duomo, sunny-sweet,

Or palace, how the city glitter'd,
Thro' cypress avenues, at our feet.

But when we crost the Lombard plain
Remember what a plague of rain;

Of rain at Reggio, rain at Parma ;
At Lodi, rain, Piacenza, rain.

3

And stern and sad (so rare the smiles
Of sunlight) look'd the Lombard piles;
Porch-pillars on the lion resting,
And sombre, old, colonnaded aisles.

O Milan, O the chanting quires,
The giant windows' blazon'd fires,

The height, the space, the gloom, the glory! A mount of marble, a hundred spires!

1 Cascinè.] The "Hyde Park" of Florence. The Boboli Gardens, also well known to all dwellers in that beautiful city.

2 Vignettes.] Tennyson has here seized a characteristic of Italian scenery. It always "goes into pictures" in a way English scenery, however beautiful, rarely does. Any tyro at sketching must have noticed this.

3 Rain at Parma.] This word "rain" not in 1st edition.

I climb'd the roofs at break of day;
Sun-smitten Alps before me lay.

I stood among the silent statues,1
And statued pinnacles, mute as they.

How faintly-flush'd, how phantom-fair,
Was Monte Rosa, hanging there

A thousand shadowy-pencill'd valleys
And snowy dells in a golden air.

Remember how we came at last
To Como; shower and storm and blast
Had blown the lake beyond his limit,
And all was flooded; and how we past

From Como, when the light was gray,
And in my head, for half the day,
The rich Virgilian rustic measure
Of Lari Maxume,2 all the way,

1 Silent statues.] See Wordsworth's lines on the eclipse of the sun, 1820, as imagined on Milan Cathedral, where Fancy

""Mid that aërial host

Of Figures human and divine,
White as the snows of Apennine
Indurated by frost.

Sees long-drawn files, concentric rings,

Each narrowing above each;-the wings

The uplifted palms, the silent marble lips,

The starry zone of sovereign height-
All steeped in this portentous light,

All suffering dim eclipse!'

2 Lari Maxume.]

"Anne lacus tantos, te Lari maxume, teque

Fluctibus et fremitu adsurgens, Benace, marino?"

Virgil, Georg. ii. 159, referring to the Lakes of Como (Larius) and Garda (Benacus).

Like ballad-burthen music, kept,
As on The Lariano crept

1

To that fair port 1 below the castle
Of Queen Theodolind,2 where we slept;

Or hardly slept, but watch'd awake
A cypress in the moonlight shake,
The moonlight touching o'er a terrace
One tall Agave3 above the lake.

What more? we took our last adieu,
And up the snowy Splugen drew,
But ere we reach'd the highest summit
I pluck'd a daisy, I gave it you.

It told of England then to me,
And now it tells of Italy.

O love, we two shall go no longer
To lands of summer across 4 the sea;

So dear a life your arms enfold
Whose crying is a cry for gold:

Yet here to-night in this dark city,
When ill and weary, alone and cold,

1 Port.] Probably at Como.

2 Theodolind.] Theodolind, Queen of the Lombards, a powerful and orthodox monarch, who did all in her power to extirpate Arianism, and conferred on the Archbishop of Milan the guardianship of the iron crown of Lombardy. She built a magnificent palace in Monza, and near it a cathedral, A.D. 595, where the crown was kept and coronations were held. Various relics of Theodolind, including her tomb, are to be seen in the cathedral, where the crown is still preserved. It is a thin strip of iron, said to be made of a nail of the true Cross, richly adorned, however, with gold and gems.

3 Agavè.] The American aloe.

4 Across.] 1st edition, "beyond."

I found, tho' crush'd to hard and dry,
This nurseling of another sky

Still in the little book you lent me,
And where you tenderly laid it by:

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.

Perchance, to lull the throbs of pain,
Perchance, to charm a vacant brain,
Perchance, to dream you still beside me,
My fancy fled to the South again.

TO THE REV. F. D. MAURICE

COME, when no graver cares employ,
God-father, come and see your boy:
Your presence will be sun in winter,
Making the little one leap for joy.

For, being of that honest few,
Who give the Fiend himself his due,

Should eighty-thousand college-councils 1
Thunder "Anathema," 2 friend, at you;

Should all our churchmen foam in spite
At you, so careful of the right,

Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome (Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight;

Where, far from noise and smoke of town,
I watch the twilight falling brown

All round a careless-order'd garden
Close to the ridge of a noble down.

1 College-councils.] Referring to the disputes and misunderstandings at King's College, London, at this time, in consequence of which Maurice withdrew from his office.

2 Anathema.] Anything devoted, especially to evil. Anathema generally used in a bad sense; anathema, a votive offering.