Receives all day long the seductive homage
Óf her obedient, courteous, gay cicisbeo,

And sees not, or cares nót to see, which way,
Or whether more than one way, roves the husband.
The daughters, to the convent sent, learn plain
And fancy work, a little music, spelling,
Less writing, and no counting but to know
Upon the rosary how many beads,
Hów many Saint's- days in the calendar,
And on the satin frock to be presented
To the Madonna on her Son's birthday
How many spangles will have best effect.
Ah, Ítaly! thou that so chaf'st against

A fóreign yoke, so kick'st against the pricks,
Ere into thy long-unaccustomed hands

Thou ták'st the government of thyself, first teach

One of thy sóns to govern well himself

Ánd his own house; the social virtues
Precéde, not follow, the political;

An independant State 's created by,

Ére it creátes, good husbands, parents, children.

Between me and my home lies many an Alp
With many a toilsome, rugged, steep ascent,
And sheer descending, dizzy precipice,
And mány a chasm, and awful, black abyss,
Ravine and fissure in the splintered mountain,
Tó be crossed over on the insecure

And crázy footing of half-rotten plank
Móssgrown and slippery with the drizzling spray
Óf the loud roáring cataract beneath.

From my youth úp I 've loved thee, Switzerland;
At school, in college loved thee; of thee dreamed
While ón mine ears the lecturer's dry theme

Unfructifying fell, or in my hand.

Forgót and useless lay dissector's knife;

And when at last the college Term went by,
Ánd the damp foggy days and long dark nights
Gave way to joyous July's glowing sun,

With what a light, elastic heart I threw
My knapsack on my shoulder, in my hand
My wánderer's staff took, and set out to scale
Thy snowy mountains, thy green valleys tread,
Drink thy free air and feel myself a man!
Lonely my wanderings then, my sole companions
The river and the breeze, the cloudy rack,
Or some stray goat, or sheep that to my hand,
Expécting salt, came bleating; later years
Brought me a cómrade; a coeval youth,
Woóer like me of Nature, by my side

Stép for step taking with me, the long way,

The day tempestuous or the evening's gloom
Cheered with sweet interchange of thoughts congenial.
Upón this mossy bank we sat together,
Twenty five years ago this very day,

And watched September's mitigated sun

Go down, as now it goes, behind yon Stockhorn;
From Mérligen's white steeple on our left

Rest rést, ye weary! even as now was tolling;

And high above, high high above, the horn

Of Morgenberg, the Jungfrau's frozen cheeks
And Mönch's and Eigher's glowed, as now, bright vermeil
Únder the last kiss of departing Day;

Before us in the mirror of the lake

The Niésen pyramid, point downward, trembled,
And down below the point the crescent moon
And, lówer still, gray evening's silver star
Their unpretentious, mingled light as now

Were wide and wider every moment spreading
O'er the subaqueous heaven's fast waning blue;
Hére on this bánk we sat opposite the Niesen,
My friend and I, that calm September evening,
Plánning our journey for the following year
Up yónder Simmenthal to well loved Leman;
Bút to my friend, alas! no following year
Came ever; to his fatherland returned.
An early grave received him, and for years
Long years thou 'st been to me a stranger, Thun!
And thy sweet, placid lake, and Simmenthal,
And well loved Leman. With the more delight
Albeit subdued, I myself changed meanwhile,

View from this well known bank the unchanged prospect,
Mountain and lake, blue sky and star and moon,
And snów rosetínged by the same setting sunbeams.
Áh, that insénsitive nature so should live
While every thing that feels so dies and changes!
Yet lét me not complain, for out of death,
Death only, comes new life, and if my youth's
And manhood's friends lie in their sepulchres,
I've here beside me sitting on this bank
The friend of my declining years, my daughter,
Sháring the toils and pleasures of my travel
And from me learning early to despise

The brilliancy of cities, and to seek
Léss on the horse's back and in the carriage
Than from the use pedestrian of her limbs
In daily journies over hill and valley
Bódily vigor; more the mind's adornment

In observation and comparison,

With her own eyes and ears and head and hands,
Of wonder-working Nature's ways and means,
Thán in the formal, cold accomplishments

Of fashionable boardingschool or college
Skilled to inculcate fundamental errors
As fúndamental truths, and in the name
Of reason, virtue and religion teach
Gróss superstition, immorality,

And how to reason ill and falsely judge.

But faded from the Jungfrau's highest snows

And Mönch's and Eigher's, day's last roseate tint;
The moon, grown yellower, 's sinking fast behind
The darkening Niesen; and no more a lone
Spangle of silver on gray Evening's brow
Shines Hésperus, but brightest of the bright
Diamonds that sparkle in Night's jewelled crown
Come cóme, my child, let 's hasten to the hamlet;
Mind well thy steps; the night 's dark, the way rocky:
Good night, sweet lake, we meet again tomorrow.

Walking from PETERZELL (CANTON ST. GALL, SWITZERLAND) by the Lakes of THE FOUR FOREST CANTONS, SARNEN, and THUN to FALKAU in the BLACK FOREST, BADEN; Sept. 16 to Octob. 7, 1854.

WRITTEN UNDER A PORTRAIT OF CARDINAL MEZZOFANTI FAMED FOR HAVING SPOKEN WITH FLUENCY TWENTY SEVEN LANGUAGES.

WHAT a wónder of wisdom, it has often been said,
Mezzofánti with twenty seven tongues in one heád!
Greater wonder of wisdom I vów I don't mock

Mezzofánti with twenty seven keys for one lóck.

Walking from ARGENTHAL to SIMMERN (RHENISH PRUSSIA); Octob. 29, 1854.

ONCE on a time it happened as I was lounging in the Vatican
I met an old friend of mine, a very leárned mán
"Now I could almost swear I know the very man you mean;
A shilling to a penny, it has Cardinal Mai been."
Done! and you 've lost your bet for these weighty reasons two:
He's neither learned nor a friend of mine, that pippin-hearted
Jew;

Unless you count it learning, to be perpetually men's ears boring

With his scouring of old book-shelves, and pálimpsest restoring,
And unless you call it friendship that twice my hand he shook
And kissed me on both cheeks, and took a present of my book;
So much as this of his Eminence I learned three years ago,
And more than this of his Eminence I don't desire to know.
So to go back to where I was when you interrupted me: -
"I'm heartily glad," said I, "my good old friend to see;
And are you very well? and when did you come to Rome?
And what is it brings you here? and how are all at home?”
"I'm very well," said he, “and at home I left all well,
And since yesterday I 'm here, and now please to me tell
How things are going on here, and what 's the newest news
With the Pope or the Consulta or your own sweet Irish Muse."
"As for my Muse," said I for I always put her first
"Of all places in the wide world Rome is for her the worst,
For she's always kept so busy here gazing round on every side
With uplifted hands and open mouth and eyelids staring wide
On painting, arch and statue, pillar, obelisk and dome
And all the thousand wonders of ever wondrous Rome,