LXVI.

But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave 36 Of the most living crystal was e'er

The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear Thy grassy banks whereon the milk - white steer Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters! And most serene of aspect, and most clear: Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaugthers-A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters!

LXVII.

And on thy happy shore a temple still,
Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,
Upon a mild declivity of hill,

Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps
Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps
The finny darter with the glittering scales
Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;
While, chance, some scatter'd water-lily sails
Down where the shallower wave still tells its bub-
ling tales.

LXVIII.

Pass not unblest the Genius of the place!
If through the air a zephyr more serene
Win to the brow, 'tis his; and if ye trace
Along his margin a more eloquent green,
If on the heart the freshness of the scene
Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust
Of weary life a moment lave it clean
With Nature's baptism, 'tis to him ye must
Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust.

LXIX.

The roar of waters! from the headlong height Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;

The fall of waters! rapid as the light

The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;

The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,

LXX.

And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again
Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,
With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,
Is an eternal April to the ground,
Making it all one emerald:- how profound
The gulf! and how the giant element

From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound, Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent

LXXI.

To the broad column which rolls on, and shows
More like the fouutain of an infant sea

Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes
Of a new world, than only thus to be
Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,
With many windings, through the vale: Look
back!

Lo! where it comes like an eternity,

As if to sweep down all things in its track, Charming the eye with dread, - a matchless cataract, 37

LXXII.

Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,

From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,
An iris sits, amidst the infernal

surge,

38

Like Hope upon a death bed, and, unworn
Its steady dyes, while all around is torn
By the distracted waters, bears serene

Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn:
Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene,
Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.

LXXIII.

Once more upon the woody Apennine,
The infant Alps, which-had I not before
Gazed on their migthier parents, where the pine
Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar
The thundering lauwine might be worshipp'd
more; 39

But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear
Her never▾ trodden snow, and seen the hoar
Glaciers of bleak Mont-Blanc both far and near,
And in Chimari heard the thunder- hills of fear,

LXXIV.

Th' Acroceraunian mountains of old name; And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly Like spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame, For still they soar'd unutterably high: I've look'd on Ida with a Trojan's eye; Athos, Olympus, Aetna, Atlas, made These hills seem things of lesser dignity, All, save the lone Socrate's height, display'd Not now in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid

LXXV.

For our remembrance, and from out the plain Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break, And on, the curl hangs pausing: not in vain May he, who will, his recollections rake And quote in classic raptures, and awake The hills with Latian echoes; I abhorr'd Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake, The drill'd dull lesson, forced down word by word 40 In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record