Softly--oh, soft! let us rest on the oar, And vex not a billow that sighs to the shore:-- For sacred the spot where the starry waves meet With the beach, where the breath of the citron is sweet. There’s a spell on the waves that now waft us along To the last of our Muses, the Spirit of Song. RECITATIVE. The Eagle of old renown, And the Lombard’s iron crown And Milan’s mighty name are ours no more; But by this glassy water, Harmonia’s youngest daughter, Still from the lightning saves one laurel to our shore. II. CHORUS. They heard thee, Teresa, the Teuton, the Gaul, Who have raised the rude thrones of the North on our fall; They heard thee, and bow’d to the might of thy song; Like love went thy steps o’er the hearts of the strong; As the moon to the air, as the soul to the clay, To the void of this earth was the breath of thy lay. RECITATIVE. Honour for aye to her The bright interpreter Of Art’s great mysteries to the enchanted throng; While tyrants heard thy strains, Sad Rome forgot her chains; The world the sword had lost was conquer’d back by song! “Thou repentest, my Teresa, that thou hast renounced thy dazzling career for a dull home, and a husband old enough to be thy father,” said the husband to the wife, with a smile that spoke confidence in the answer. “Ah, no! even this homage would have no music to me if thou didst not hear it.” She was a celebrated personage in Italy--the Signora Cesarini, now Madame de Montaigne. Her earlier youth had been spent upon the stage, and her promise of vocal excellence had been most brilliant. But after a brief though splendid career, she married a French gentleman of good birth and fortune, retired from the stage, and spent her life alternately in the gay saloons of Paris and upon the banks of the dreamy Como, on which her husband had purchased a small but beautiful villa. She still, however, exercised in private her fascinating art; to which--for she was a woman of singular accomplishment and talent--she added the gift of the improvvisatrice. She had just returned for the summer to this lovely retreat, and a party of enthusiastic youths from Milan had sought the lake of Como to welcome her arrival with the suitable homage of song and music. It is a charming relic, that custom of the brighter days of Italy; and I myself have listened, on the still waters of the same lake, to a similar greeting to a greater genius--the queenlike and unrivalled Pasta--the Semiramis of Song! And while my boat paused, and I caught something of the enthusiasm of the serenaders, the boatman touched me, and, pointing to a part of the lake on which the setting sun shed its rosiest smile, he said, “There, Signor, was drowned one of your countrymen ‘bellissimo uomo! che fu bello!’”--yes, there, in the pride of his promising youth, of his noble and almost godlike