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Such walls surround her, that no nine-pounder
Could ever plunder her place of strength;
But Oliver Cromwell, he did her pommel,
And made a breach in her battlement.

There's gravel walks there for speculation
And conversation, in sweet solitude;
'Tis there the lover may hear the dove, or
The gentle plover, in the afternoon.
And if a lady should be so engaging

As to walk alone in those shady bowers,
'Tis there her courtier, he may transport her
Into some fort, or all under ground.

For 'tis there's a cave where no daylight enters,
But cats and badgers are forever bred;
Being mossed by nature which makes it sweeter
Than a coach-and-six, or a feather bed.
'Tis there the lake is, well-stored with perches,
And comely eels in the verdant mud;
Besides the leeches, and the groves of beeches,

All standing in order for to guard the flood.

There's statues gracing this noble place in,
All heathen gods and nymphs so fair:
Bold Neptune, Plutarch, and Nicodemus,
All standing naked in the open air.
So now to finish this brave narration,
Which my poor genii could not entwine;
But were I Homer or Nebuchadnezzar,

'Tis in every feature I would make it shine.
Richard Alfred Millikin [1767-1815]

THE BELLS OF SHANDON

Sabbata pango;
Funera plango;
Solemnia clango.

INSCRIPTION ON AN OLD BELL

WITH deep affection and recollection

I often think of the Shandon bells,

Whose sounds so wild would, in the days of childhood, Fling round my cradle their magic spells.

"De Gustibus-"

On this I ponder where'er I wander,

And thus grow fonder, Sweet Cork, of thee,-
With thy bells of Shandon,

That sound so grand on

The pleasant waters of the river Lee.

I've heard bells chiming full many a clime in,
Tolling sublime in cathedral shrine,

While at a glib rate brass tongues would vibrate;
But all their music spoke naught to thine.
For memory, dwelling on each proud swelling
Of thy belfry, knelling its bold notes free,
Made the bells of Shandon

Sound far more grand on

The pleasant waters of the river Lee.

I've heard bells tolling "Old Adrian's Mole" in,
Their thunder rolling from the Vatican,-
And cymbals glorious, swinging uproarious
In the gorgeous turrets of Notre Dame;

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But thy sounds were sweeter than the dome of Peter Flings o'er the Tiber, pealing solemnly.

O, the bells of Shandon

Sound far more grand on

The pleasant waters of the river Lee.

There's a bell in Moscow, while on tower and Kiosko
In St. Sophia the Turkman gets,

And loud in air, calls men to prayer,
From the tapering summit of tall minarets.
Such empty phantom I freely grant them;

But there's an anthem more dear to me,—
'Tis the bells of Shandon,

That sound so grand on

The pleasant waters of the river Lee.

Francis Sylvester Mahony [1804-1866]

"DE GUSTIBUS-"

YOUR ghost will walk, you lover of trees,

(If our loves remain)

In an English lane,

By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.
Hark, those two in the hazel coppice—
A boy and a girl, if the good fates please,
Making love, say,

The happier they!

Draw yourself up from the light of the moon And let them pass, as they will too soon, With the beanflowers' boon,

And the blackbird's tune,

And May, and June!

What I love best in all the world
Is a castle, precipice-encurled,

In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine.
Or look for me, old fellow of mine,
(If I get my head from out the mouth
O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands,
And come again to the land of lands)—
In a sea-side house to the farther South,
Where the baked cicala dies of drouth,
And one sharp tree 'tis a cypress-stands,
By the many hundred years red-rusted,
Rough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted,
My sentinel to guard the sands

To the water's edge. For, what expands
Before the house, but the great opaque
Blue breadth of sea without a break?
While, in the house, forever crumbles
Some fragment of the frescoed walls,
From blisters where a scorpion sprawls.
A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles
Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons,
And says there's news to-day-the king
Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing,

Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling:

-She hopes they have not caught the felons Italy, my Italy!

Queen Mary's saying serves for me→→→

(When fortune's malice

Lost her Calais)

Italian Rhapsody

Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it, "Italy."
Such lovers old are I and she:

So it always was, so shall ever be!

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Robert Browning [1812-1889]

ITALIAN RHAPSODY

DEAR Italy! The sound of thy soft name
Soothes me with balm of Memory and Hope.
Mine, for the moment, height and sweep and slope

That once were mine. Supreme is still the aim

To flee the cold and gray

Of our December day,

And rest where thy clear spirit burns with unconsuming flame.

There are who deem remembered beauty best,
And thine, imagined, fairer is than sight
Of all the charms of other realms confessed,
Thou miracle of sea and land and light.
Was it lest, envying thee,

The world unhappy be,

Benignant Heaven gave to all the all-consoling Night?

Remembered beauty best? Who reason so?
Not lovers, yearning to the same dumb star
That doth disdain their passion-who, afar,
Seek touch and voice in velvet winds and low.
No, storied Italy,

Not thine that heresy,

Thou who thyself art fairer far than Fancy e'er can show.

To me thou art an ever-brooding spell;

An old enchantment, exorcised of wrong;
A beacon, where-against the wings of Song
Are bruised so, they cannot fly to tell;
A mistress, at whose feet

A myriad singers meet,

To find thy beauty the despair of measures full and sweet.

Of old, ere caste or custom froze the heart,
What tales of thine did Chaucer re-indite,-
Of Constance, and Griselda, and the plight
Of pure Cecilia,—all with joyous art!

Oh, to have journeyed down

To Canterbury town,

And known, from lips that touched thy robe, that triad of renown!

Fount of Romance whereat our Shakespeare drank!
Through him the loves of all are linked to thee

By Romeo's ardor, Juliet's constancy.

He sets the peasant in the royal rank;

Shows under mask and paint

Kinship of knave and saint,

And plays on stolid man with Prospero's wand and Ariel's prank.

Another English foster-child hadst thou

When Milton from the breast of thy delight

Drew inspiration. With a vestal's vow

He fed the flame caught from thy sacred light.

And when upon him lay

The long eclipse of day,

Thou wert the memory-hoarded treasure of his doomèd sight.

Name me a poet who has trod thy soil:
He is thy lover, ever hastening back,
With thee forgetting weariness and toil,
The nightly sorrow for the daily lack.
How oft our lyric race

Looked last upon thy face!

Oh, would that I were worthy thus to die in thine embrace!

Oh, to be kin to Keats as urn with urn

Shares the same Roman earth!-to sleep, apart,
Near to the bloom that once was Shelley's heart,

Where bees, like lingering lovers, re-return;

Where the proud pyramid,

To brighter glory bid,

Gives Cestius his longed-for fame, marking immortal Art.

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