TO THE PO.

I.

RIVER, that rollest by the ancient walls, (1)
Where dwells the lady of my love, when she
Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls.
A faint and fleeting memory of me ;

(1) [Ravenna -a city to which Lord Byron afterwards declared himself more attached than to any other place, except Greece. He resided in it rather more than two years, "and quitted it," says Madame Guiccioli, "with the deepest regret, and with a presentiment that his departure would be the forerunner of a thousand evils: he was continually performing generous actions: many families owed to him the few prosperous days they ever enjoyed; his arrival was spoken of as a piece of public good fortune, and his departure as a public calamity." In the third Canto of " Don Juan," Lord Byron has pictured the tranquil life which, at this time, he was leading :

"Sweet hour of twilight! - in the solitude

Of the pine forest, and the silent shore
Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood,

Rooted where once the Adrian wave flow'd o'er,
To where the last Cæsarean fortress stood,
Evergreen forest! which Boccaccio's lore
And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me,
How have I loved the twilight hour and thee!

"The shrill cicalas, people of the pine,

Making their summer lives one ceaseless song,
Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine,
And vesper bells that rose the boughs among;
The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line,

His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng,
Which learn'd from this example not to fly

From a true lover, shadow'd my mind's eye."]

II.

What if thy deep and ample stream should be
A mirror of my heart, where she may read
The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,
Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed!

III.

What do I say —a mirror of my

heart?

Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong? Such as my feelings were and are, thou art; And such as thou art were my passions long.

IV.

Time may have somewhat tamed them,—not for ever;
Thou overflow'st thy banks, and not for aye
Thy bosom overboils, congenial river!

Thy floods subside, and mine have sunk away.

V.

But left long wrecks behind, and now again,
Borne in our old unchanged career, we move;
Thou tendest wildly onwards to the main,
And I to loving one I should not love.

VI.

The current I behold will sweep beneath

Her native walls and murmur at her feet; Her eyes will look on thee, when she shall breathe The twilight air, unharm'd by summer's heat.

VII.

She will look on thee,-I have look'd on thee,
Full of that thought; and, from that moment, ne'er
Thy waters could I dream of, name, or see,
Without the inseparable sigh for her!

VIII.

Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream,
Yes! they will meet the wave I gaze on now:
Mine cannot witness, even in a dream,
That happy wave repass me in its flow!

IX.

The wave that bears my tears returns no more:
Will she return by whom that wave shall sweep? —
Both tread thy banks, both wander on thy shore,
I by thy source, she by the dark-blue deep.

X.

But that which keepeth us apart is not

Distance, nor depth of wave, nor space of earth,

But the distraction of a various lot,

As various as the climates of our birth.

XI.

A stranger loves the lady of the land,

Born far beyond the mountains, but his blood

Is all meridian, as if never fann'd

By the black wind that chills the polar flood.

XII.

My blood is all meridian; were it not,
I had not left my clime, nor should I be,
In spite of tortures, ne'er to be forgot,
A slave again of love,- at least of thee.

XIII.

"Tis vain to struggle-let me perish youngLive as I lived, and love as I have loved; To dust if I return, from dust I sprung,

And then, at least, my heart can ne'er be moved.

STANZAS WRITTEN ON THE ROAD BETWEEN FLORENCE AND PISA. (1)

I.

Oн, talk not to me of a name great in story;
The days of our youth are the days of our glory;
And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty
Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.

II.

What are garlands and crowns to the brow that is wrinkled?

"Tis but as a dead-flower with May-dew besprinkled. Then away with all such from the head that is hoary! What care I for the wreaths that can only give glory?

III.

Oh FAME! (2)-if I e'er took delight in thy praises, 'Twas less for the sake of thy high sounding phrases, Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover She thought that I was not unworthy to love her.

(1) ["I composed these stanzas (except the fourth, added now) a few days ago, on the road from Florence to Pisa.”—B. Diary, Pisa, 6th Nov. 1821.]

(2) [In the same Diary, we find the following painfully interesting passage:- "As far as FAME goes (that is to say, living Fame), I have had my share, perhaps indeed, certainly · -more than my deserts. Some odd instances have occurred to my own experience of the wild and strange places to which a name may penetrate, and where it may impress. Two years ago (almost three, being in August, or July, 1819) I received at Ravenna a letter in English verse from Drontheim in Norway, written by