Isola Bella.

NAPOLEON AT ISOLA BELLA.

IN the Isola Bella, upon the Lago Maggiore, where the richest vegetation of the tropics grows in the vicinity of the Alps, there is a lofty laureltree (the bay), tall as the tallest oak, on which, a few days before the battle of Marengo, Napoleon carved the word "Battaglia." The bark has fallen away from the inscription, most of the letters are gone, and the few left are nearly effaced.

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FAIRY island of a fairy sea,

Wherein Calypso might have spelled the Greek, Or Flora piled her fragrant treasury,

Culled from each shore her zephyr's wings could seek,

From rocks where aloes blow,

Tier upon tier, Hesperian fruits arise;

The hanging bowers of this soft Babylon;
An India mellows in the Lombard skies,
And changelings, stolen from the Lybian sun,
Smile to yon Alps of snow.

Amid this gentlest dreamland of the wave
Arrested, stood the wondrous Corsican;
As if one glimpse the better angel gave
Of the bright garden-life vouchsafed to man
Ere blood defiled the world.

He stood,

that grand Sesostris of the North, While paused the car to which were harnessed kings;

And in the airs, that lovingly sighed forth
The balms of Araby, his eagle-wings
Their sullen thunder furled

And o'er the marble hush of those large brows
Dread with the awe of the Olympian nod,
A giant laurel spread its breathless boughs,
The prophet-tree of the dark Pythian god,
Shadowing the doom of thrones!

What, in such hour of rest and scene of joy,
Stirs in the cells of that unfathomed brain?
Comes back one memory of the musing boy,
Lone gazing at the yet unmeasured main,
Whose waifs are human bones?

Write on the sacred bark such native prayer,
As the mild power may grant in coming years,
Some word to make thy memory gentle there;
More than renown, kind thought for men endears
A hero to mankind.

Slow moved the mighty hand, - a tremor shook
The leaves, and hoarse winds groaned along the wood;
The Pythian tree the damning sentence took,
And to the sun the battle-word of blood
Glared from the gashing rind.

So thou hast writ the word, and signed thy doom: Farewell, and pass upon thy gory way.

The direful skein the pausing Fates resume!
Let not the Elysian grove thy steps delay
From thy Promethean goal.

The fatal tree the abhorrent word retained
Till the last battle on its bloody strand
Flung what were nobler had no life remained,
The crownless front, and the disarméd hand,
And the foiled Titan soul;

Now, year by year, the warrior's iron mark
Crumbles away from the majestic tree,
The indignant life-sap ebbing from the bark
Where the grim death-word to humanity
Profaned the Lord of Day.

High o'er the pomp of blooms, as greenly still,
Aspires that tree, - the archetype of fame,
The stem rejects all chronicle of ill,

The bark shrinks back, — the tree survives the same, The record rots away.

Lord Lytton.

Lastra.

LASTRA A SIGNA.

HE is old! she is old, our Lastra!

Sold with thousands of years;

Yet her bold, brave gates stand up to-day

As in years agone, when her Tuscan spears From the sunny hill-top drove at bay

Foe after foe, in reddening lines,

Over the crest of the Apennines.

She is old! she is old, our Lastra!
Her noble walls are rent;

Yet they stand to-day on the great highway,
With the ruined battlement,

And the beacon tower, dark and gray:

She sees, like a dream, the Arno flow
By beautiful Florence, far below.

She is old! she is old, our Lastra!
Yet Ferruchio held her dear;

He gave her his heart, his sword, his life,
Yet she wasted never a tear,

With head unbowed in the bitter strife,

As on, through her gateway, the hosts of France Passed at the traitor Baldini's glance.

They stormed at her walls, our Lastra!
They pierced her with fire and steel;
Orange came down from the hills of Spain,

He trampled her turf with his iron heel,
Pillaged, and slew to her hurt and pain,
Till she fought no more; her banners were rent,
And the warder goue from her battlement.

But they left her the gray old mountains,
And the green of her olive-fields;

LA VERNA (ALVERNA), THE MOUNTAIN. 191

The blessed cross and the holy shrine,

And her marvellous carven shields,
Painted in colors rare and fine,

On the beautiful gateway, her crown and pride,
Dear to the hearts, where Amalfi died.

On the stones of her mighty watch-tower
Women spin in the sun;

Pilgrims tread on her broad highway;
Her days of battle are done.

Soft breezes blow o'er the scented hay,
And scarlet poppies bloom large and sweet,
By the blowing barley and fields of wheat.

She is older, our pride, our Lastra,
Than the tombs of Etruscan kings;
She is wise with the wisdom of sages,
For her living she smiles and sings,
As she looks to the coming ages;
And her dead, they whisper, "Waste no tear,
We only sleep, we are waiting here!"

Sarah D. Clarke.

La Verna (Alverna), the Mountain.

THE CONVENT.

THERE is a lofty spot

Visible amongst the mountains Apennine,
Where once a hermit dwelt, not yet forgot