"Let me sit here and muse by thee Awhile, aerial Fiesole! Thy sheltered walks and cooler grots, Villas, and vines, and olive plots, Catch me, entangle me, detain me, And laugh to hear that aught can pain me."--Vol. ii. p. 625. And the FAREWELL TO ITALY. "I leave thee, beauteous Italy; no more From thy high terraces at even-tide To look supine into thy depths of sky, Thy golden moon between the cliff and me, On thy dark spires of fretted cypresses, Bordering the channel of the milky-way. Fiesole and Valdarno must be dreams Hereafter, and my own lost Affrico Murmur to me but in the poet's song. I did believe,--what have I not believed?-- Weary with age, but unoppressed by pain, To close in thy soft clime my quiet day, And rest my bones in the Mimosa shade. Hope! hope! few ever cherished thee so little; Few are the heads thou hast so rarely raised; But thou didst promise this, and all was well. For we are fond of thinking where to lie When every pulse hath ceased, when the lone heart Can lift no aspiration ... reasoning As if the sight were unimpaired by death, Were unobstructed by the coffin lid, And the sun cheered corruption. Over all The smiles of nature shed a potent charm, And light us to our chamber at the grave."--Vol. ii. p. 647. Let us conclude our quotations with one from his Conversations, equally redolent of Italy. It is in his conversation between himself and the Marchese Pallavicini. The scene is on the lake of Como, and a more beautiful tribute was never paid to trees, especially to that soft, graceful, and fragrant tree, the linden. "Grumello! Let me enjoy the sight while I can. He appears instinct with life, nodding the network of vines upon his head, and beckoning, and inviting us, while the fig-trees, and mulberries, and chestnuts, and walnuts, and these lofty and eternal cypresses, stand motionless around. His joyous mates, all different in form and features, push forward; and, if there is not something in the air, or something in my eyesight, illusory, they are running a race along the borders. Stop a moment; how shall we climb over these two enormous pines? Ah, Don Pepino! old trees in their living state are the only things that money can not command. Rivers leave their beds, run into cities, and traverse mountains for it; obelisks and arches, palaces and temples, amphitheaters and pyramids, rise up like exhalations at its bidding; even the free spirit of man, the only great thing on earth, crouches and cowers in its presence. It passes away and vanishes before venerable trees. What a sweet odor is here! Whence comes it? Sweeter it appears to me, and stronger than the pine itself." "I imagine," said he, "from the linden; yes, certainly." "Is that a linden? It is the largest, and, I should imagine, the oldest upon earth, if I could perceive that it had lost any of its branches."