Take the hoary Roman head and shatter it, hold it abomin

able,

Cut the Roman boy to pieces in his lust and voluptuousness, Lash the maiden into swooning, me they lash'd and humiliated, Chop the breasts from off the mother, dash the brains of the little one out,

Up my Britons! On my chariot! On my chargers! Trample them under us!'

So the Queen Boadicea, standing loftily charioted,

Brandishing in her hand a dart and rolling glances lioness-like, Yelled and shrieked between her daughters in her fierce volubility.

Till her people all around the royal chariot agitated,

Madly dash'd the darts together, writhing barbarous lineäments, Made the noise of frosty woodlands, when they shiver in Jan

uary,

Roar'd as when the roaring breakers boom and blanch on the precipices,

Yell'd as when the winds of winter tear an oak on a promon

tory,

So the silent colony hearing her tumultuous adversaries

Clash the darts and on the buckler beat with rapid unanimous

hand,

Thought on all her evil tyrannies, all her pitiless avarice,
Till she felt the heart within her fall and flutter tremulously,
Then her pulses at the clamoring of her enemy fainted away.
Out of evil evil flourishes, out of tyranny tyranny buds.
Ran the land with Roman slaughter, multitudinous agonies.
Perish'd many a maid and matron, many a valorous legionary.
Fell the colony, city, and citadel, London, Verulam, Cámulo-

dúne.

"COME DOWN, O MAID.”

Come down, O Maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang)
In height and cold, the splendor of the hills?
But cease to move so near the heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or fox-like in the vine; nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley; let the wild,
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air;

So waste not thou; but come, for all the vales

Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth

Arise to thee: the children call, and I

Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms
And murmuring of innumerable bees.

THE DAISY.

WRITTEN AT EDINBURGH.

O Love, what hours were thine and mine,
In lands of palm and southern pine;

In lands of palm, of orange-blossom,

Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine.

What Roman strength Turbia show'd
In ruin by the mountain road;

How like a gem, beneath, the city
Of little Monaco, basking, glow'd.

How richly down the rocky dell
The torrent vineyard streaming fell

To meet the sun and sunny waters,
That only heaved with a summer swell.

What slender campanili grew

By bays, the peacock's neck in hue;

Where, here and there, on sandy beaches

A milky-bell'd amaryllis grew.

Here young Columbus seem'd to rove,

Yet present in his natal grove,

Now watching high on mountain Cornice,

And steering, now, from a purple cove.

Now pacing mute by ocean's rim;
Till, in a narrow street and dim,

I stay'd the wheels at Cogoletto,
And drank, and loyally drank to him.

Nor knew we well what pleased us most, Not the clipt palm of which they boast;

But distant color, happy hamlet,

A moulder'd citadel on the coast,

Or tower, or high hill-convent, seen
A light amid its olives green;
Or olive-hoary cape in ocean;
Or rosy blossom in hot ravine.

Where oleanders flush'd the bed

Of silent torrents, gravel-spread;
And, crossing, oft we saw the glisten
Of ice, far up on a mountain head.

We loved that hall, tho' white and cold, Those nichèd shapes of noble mould,

A princely people's awful princes, The grave, severe Genovese of old.

At Florence, too, what golden hours,
In those long galleries, were ours;
What drives about the fresh Cascine,
Or walks in Boboli's ducal bowers.

In bright vignettes, and each complete, Of tower or Duomo, sunny-sweet,

Or palace, how the city glitter'd, Thro' cypress avenues, at our feet.

But when we crost the Lombard plain
Remember what a plague of rain;

Of rain at Reggio, rain at Parma;
At Lodi, rain, Piacenza, rain.

And stern and sad (so rare the smiles
Of sunlight) looked the Lombard piles;
Porch-pillars on the lion resting,
And sombre, old, colonnaded aisles.

O Milan, O the chanting quires,
The giant windows' blazon'd fires,

The height, the space, the gloom, the glory!

A mount of marble, a hundred spires! ·

I climbed the roofs at break of day;
Sun-smitten Alps before me lay.

I stood among the silent statues,
And statued pinnacles, mute as they.

How faintly-flushed, how phantom-fair,
Was Monte Rosa, hanging there

A thousand shadowy-pencill'd valleys
And snowy dells in a golden air.

Remember how we came at last
To Como; shower and storm and blast
Had blown the lake beyond his limit,
And all was flooded; and how we past

From Como, when the light was gray,
And in my head, for half the day,
The rich Virgilian rustic measure

Of Lari Maxume, all the way,

Like ballad-burthen music, kept,

As on the Lariano crept

To that fair port below the castle

Of Queen Theodolind, where we slept ;