Poems MacCarthy, Florence Denis

242
It seemed as if the magic scene
No human skill had planted;
The trees remained for ever green,
As if they were enchanted:
And so I said to Sweetest-eyes,
My dear, I think that we owe
To fairy hands this paradise
Of Campo de Estio.
How swiftly flew the hours away!
I read and rhymed and revelled;
In interchange of work and play,
I built, and drained, and levelled;
"The Pope," so "happy," days gone by
(Unlike our ninth Pope Pio),
Was far less happy then than I
In Campo de Estio.
For children grew in that sweet place,
As in the grape wine gathers--
Their mother's eyes in each bright face,
In each light heart, their father's:
Their father, who by some was thought
A literary 'leo,'
Ne'er dreamed he'd be so soon forgot
In Campo de Estio.
But so it was:--Of hope bereft,
A year had scarce gone over,
Since he that sweetest place had left,
And gone--we'll say--to Dover,
When letters came where he had flown.
Returned him from the "P. O.,"
On which was writ, O Heavens! "NOT KNOWN
IN CAMPO DE ESTIO!"
"Not known" where he had lived so long,
A "cintra" home created,
Where scarce a shrub that now is strong
But had its place debated;