From purple heavens its lingering beam
Seems melting into Tiber's stream,
And softly tints each Roman hill
With glowing light, as clear and still,
As if, unstain'd by crime or woe,
Its hours had pass'd in silent flow.
The day sets calmly-it hath been
Mark'd with a strange and awful scene;
One guilty bosom throbs no more,
And Otho's pangs and life are o’er.
And thou, ere yet another sun
His burning race hath brightly run,
Released from anguish by thy foes,
Daughter of Rome! shalt find repose.
Yes! on thy country's lovely sky
Fix yet once more thy parting eye!
A few short hours - and all shall be

The silent and the past for thee.
Oh! thus with tempests of a day
We struggle, and we pass away,
Like the wild billows as they sweep,
Leaving no vestige on the deep!
And o'er thy dark and lowly bed
The sons of future days shall tread,
The pangs, the conflicts, of thy lot,
By them unknown, by thee forgot.

THE DEATH OF CONRADIN.

No cloud to dim the splendor of the day Which breaks o'er Naples and her lovely bay, And lights that brilliant sea and magic shore With every tint that charm'd the great of yore; Th' imperial ones of earth-who proudly bade Their marble domes e'en Ocean's realm invade.

That race is gone- - but glorious Nature here Maintains unchanged her own sublime career, And bids these regions of the sun display Bright hues, surviving empires pass'd away.

The beam of Heaven expands its kindling smile
Reveals each charm of many a fairy isle,
Whose image floats, in softer coloring drest,
With all its rocks and vines, on Ocean's breast.
Misenum's cape hath caught the vivid ray,
On Roman streamers there no more to play;
Still, as of old, unalterably bright,

Lovely it sleeps on Posilippo's height,
With all Italia's sunshine to illume
The ilex canopy of Virgil's tomb.

Campania's plains rejoice in light, and spread
Their gay luxuriance o'er the mighty dead;
Fair glittering to thine own transparent skies,
Thy palaces, exulting Naples! rise;

While, far on high, Vesuvius rears his peak,
Furrow'd and dark with many a lava streak.

Oh, ye bright shores of Circe and the Muse!
Rich with all Nature's and all fiction's hues;
Who shall explore your regions, and declare
The poet err'd to paint Elysium there?
Call up his spirit, wanderer! bid him guide
Thy steps, those siren-haunted seas beside;
And all the scene a lovelier light shall wear,
And spells more potent shall pervade the air.
What though his dust be scatter'd, and his urn
Long from its sanctuary of slumber torn,
Still dwell the beings of his verse around,
Hovering in beauty o'er th' enchanted ground:
His lays are murmur'd in each breeze that roves
Soft o'er the sunny waves and orange groves;
His memory's charm is spread o'er shore and sea,
The soul, the genius of Parthenope;

Shedding o'er myrtle shade and vine-clad hill
The purple radiance of Elysium still.

Yet that fair soil and calm resplendent sky

Have witness'd many a dark reality.

Oft o'er those bright blue seas the gale hath borne The sighs of exiles never to return.

-

There with the whisper of Campania's gale
Hath mingled oft affection's funeral wail,
Mourning for buried heroes while to her
That glowing land was but their sepulchre.
And there of old the dread mysterious moan
Swell'd from strange voices of no mortal tone;
And that wild trumpet, whose unearthly note
Was heard, at midnight, o'er the hills to float
Around the spot where Agrippina died,
Denouncing vengeance on the matricide.

Past are those ages—yet another crime,
Another woe, must stain th' Elysian clime.
There stands a scaffold on the sunny shore-
It must be crimson'd ere the day is o'er!
There is a throne in regal pomp array'd,-

A scene of death from thence must be survey'd.
Mark'd ye the rushing throngs?-each mien is pale,
Each hurried glance reveals a fearful tale;
But the deep workings of th' indignant breast,
Wrath, hatred, pity, must be all suppress'd;
The burning tear awhile must check its course,
Th' avenging thought concentrate all its force;
For tyranny is near, and will not brook
Aught but submission in each guarded look.
Girt with his fierce Provençals, and with mien
Austere in triumph, gazing on the scene,
And in his eye a keen suspicious glance
Of jealous pride and restless vigilance,
Behold the conqueror ! — vainly in his face,
Of gentler feeling hope would seek a trace:
Cold, proud, severe, the spirit which hath lent
Its haughty stamp to each dark lineament;
And pleading Mercy, in the sternness there,
May read at once her sentence -to despair.

But thou, fair boy! the beautiful, the brave,
Thus passing from the dungeon to the grave,
While all is yet around thee which can give
A charm to earth, and make it bliss to live;
Thou on whose form hath dwelt a mother's eyc,
Till the deep love that not with thee shall die
Hath grown too full for utterance Can it be?
And is this pomp of death prepared for thee?

Young, royal Conradin ! who shouldst have known
Of life as yet the sunny smile alone!

Oh! who can view thee, in the pride and bloom
Of youth, array'd so richly for the tomb,

Nor feel, deep swelling in his inmost soul,
Emotions tyranny may ne'er control?

Bright victim! to Ambition's altar led,

Crown'd with all flowers that heaven on earth can shed, Who, from th' oppressor towering in his pride,

May hope for mercy -if to thee denied?

There is dead silence on the breathless throng,
Dead silence all the peopled shore along,

As on the captive moves

the only sound,

To break that calm so fearfully profound,
The low, sweet murmur of the rippling wave,
Soft as it glides, the smiling shore to lave;
While on that shore, his own fair heritage,
The youthful martyr to a tyrant's rage

Is passing to his fate the eyes are dim
Which gaze, through tears that dare not flow, on him.
He mounts the scaffold — doth his footstep fail?
Doth his lip quiver? doth his cheek turn pale?
Oh! it may be forgiven him if a thought
Cling to that world, for him with beauty fraught,
To all the hopes that promised glory's meed,
And all th' affections that with him shall bleed!
If, in his life's young dayspring, while the rose
Of boyhood on his cheek yet freshly glows,
One human fear convulse his parting breath,
And shrink from all the bitterness of death!
But no! the spirit of his royal race

Sits brightly on his brow-that youthful face.