Poems MacCarthy, Florence Denis

189
In Andalusia's Eden clime,
Or 'neath Italia's kindred skies.
Chiefly when evening's golden gloom
Veil'd Rome's serenest ether soft,
Bending in thoughtful musings oft,
Above the lost Alastor's tomb;
Or the twin-poet's; he who sings
"A thing of beauty never dies,"
Paying them back in fragrant sighs,
The love they bore all loveliest things.
The flower[110] whose bronz`ed cheeks recalls
The incessant beat of wind and sun,
Spoke of the lore his search had won
Upon Pompeii's rescued walls.
How, in his antiquarian march,
He crossed the tomb-strewn plain of Rome,
Sat on some prostrate plinth, or clomb
The Coliseum's topmost arch.
And thence beheld in glad amaze
What Nero's guilty eyes, aloof,
Drank in from off his golden roof--
The sun-bright city all ablaze:
Ablaze by day with solar fires--
Ablaze by night with lunar beams,
With lambent lustre on its streams,
And golden glories round its spires!
Thence he beheld that wondrous dome,
That, rising o'er the radiant town,
Circles, with Art's eternal crown,
The still imperial brow of Rome.
Nor was the Marigold remiss,
But told how in her crown of gold
She sat, like Persia's king of old,