And England's fair and youthful Queen, And in the smokeless morning thou In Bethnal Green, or Heaven knows where, And well thou know'st that length and breadth And through our hamlets thou hast borne Then turning from our northern mists Didst thou not sicken o'er the wave That heaves betwixt Boulogne and Dover? Then on the hills and plains of France, With the olive and the vine, Did not thy boyish thoughts entwine? Hast thou not burned with noble thirst The web of nature to unravel? And felt thyself indeed a king Of sweet intoxicating travel? Which sets at nought the host of thoughts Of enterprise promotes the man, And feelest thou not along the blood Here in Provence, they led the dance More would I ask: but I have watch'd Thy mien before those bounteous ladies; A pedlar, business-like and keen, And must thou starve, or Donizetti- To hear each favourite canzonette And all the while are thy dark eyes Is thine, which he who runs may read; Perambulate this thronged hotel, Around dispense instruction meet; Through pain, ungentle nurture, wrong, Avignon, November 2, 1843. ON THE REMAINS OF THE ROMAN AQUEDUCT, CALLED THE PONT DU GARD. Ο 'ER the gray rocks the olive's silvery green tween The goatherd's children under natural bowers In that lone spot, where, 'gainst the dark blue sky, Whence, as through cloud-made loopholes, lights and shades Chequer long alternating colonnades, Gigantic, yet proportionate :-span that fills Harmoniously the bosom of the hills; Subdued to their complexion by the wear Of centuries; rich, soft, though regular. Yet what distempered fancy thus could dream Of cleaving upper air to cross that nether stream? C |