Classic Poem

OI TALY ! thou givest me no rest,
But ever, like the thoughts of absent love,
Thou stirrest a burning fever in my breast,
A mad desire to see thee and to prove
Thou art more fair than my resplendent dream;
For well I wot this cold, ungracious clime
Has neither old romance, nor scene, nor time
Whereby to picture forth how thou dost seem.

Not that I love my native land the less;
She is my mother, passionless but kind;
And, mayhap, sick with alien loneliness,
I might turn looks of tenderness behind,
And yearn once more to see her cold blue skies,
Her solemn hills, uncastled and unsung;
To hear again the tuneless Saxon tongue,
And reunite too rudely severed ties.

But Italy! across the pathless sea,
O'er whose waste wistfully I gaze afar,
I hear thy voice forever calling me,
As love's voice calls beneath the evening star;
I hear from dim, old spires the vesper bell,
The plash of tideless waves on Baiæ's shore,
And from the Arno, darkness brooding o'er,
The strains of some impassioned ritornelle.

Young Keats, asleep beside the Roman wall!
I deem not thine a destiny for tears;
To tread the holy ground where thou didst fall,
I too would turn the brief page of my years.
And Shelley, no regret have I for thee!
Thy heart lies in the silent Cistian grove
And mingles with the soil which thou didst love,
Where my heart is, though I may never be.