Night rests in beauty on Mont Alto.Beneath its shade the beauteous Arno sleepsIn vallombrosas bosom, and dark treesBend with a calm and quiet shadow downUpon the beauty of that silent river. Still in the west a melancholy smileMantles the lips of day, and twilight paleMoves like a spectre in the dusky sky,While eves sweet star on the fast-fading yearSmiles calmly. Music steals at intervalsAcross the water, with a tremulous swell,From out the upland dingle of tall firs;And a faint footfall sounds, where, dim and dark,Hangs the gray willow from the rivers brink,Oershadowing its current. Slowly thereThe lovers gondola drops down the stream,Silent, save when its dipping oar is heard,Or in its eddy sighs the rippling wave.Mouldering and moss-grown through the lapse of years,In motionless beauty stands the giant oak;Whilst those that saw its green and flourishing youthAre gone and are forgotten. Soft the fount,Whose secret springs the star-light pale discloses,Gushes in hollow music; and beyondThe broader river sweeps its silent way,Mingling a silver current with that sea,Whose waters have no tides, coming nor going.On noiseless wing along that fair blue seaThe halcyon flits; and where the wearied stormLeft a loud moaning, all is peace again. A calm is on the deep. The winds that cameOer the dark sea-surge with a tremulous breathing,And mourned on the dark cliff where weeds grew rank,And to the autumnal death-dirge the deep seaHeaved its long billows, with a cheerless songHave passed away to the cold earth again,Like a wayfaring mourner. SilentlyUp from the calm seas dim and distant verge,Full and unveiled, the moons broad disk emerges.On Tivoli, and where the fairy huesOf autumn glow upon Abruzzis woods,The silver light is spreading. Far above,Encompassed with their thin, cold atmosphere,The Apennines uplift their snowy brows,Glowing with colder beauty, where unheardThe eagle screams in the fathomless, ether,And stays his wearied wing. Here let us pause.The spirit of these solitudes the soulThat dwells within these steep and difficult places Spearks a mysterious language to mine own,And brings unutterable musings. EarthSleeps in the shades of nightfall, and the seaSpreads like a thin blue haze beneath my feet;Whilst the gray columns and the mouldering tombsOf the Imperial City, hidden deepBeneath the mantle of their shadows, rest. My spirit looks on earth. A heavnly voiceComes silently: Dreamer, is earth thy dwelling? Lo! Nursed within that fair and fruitful bosom,Which has sustained thy being, and withinThe colder breast of Ocean, lie the germsOf thine own dissolution! Een the air,That fans the clear blue sky, and gives thee strength,Up from the sullen lake of mouldering reeds,And the wide waste of forest, where the osierThrives in the damp and motionless atmosphere,Shall bring the dire and wasting pestilence,And blight they cheek. Dram thou of higher things:This world is not thy home! And yet my eyeRests upon earth again. How beautiful,Where wild Velino heaves its sullen avesDown the high cliff of gray and shapeless granite,Hung on the curling mist, the moonlight bowArches the perilous river! A soft lightSilvers the Albanian mountains, and the hazeThat rests upon their summits mellows downThe austerer features of their beauty. FaintAnd dim-discovered glow, the Sabine hills;And, listening to the seas monotonous shell,High on the cliffs of Terracina standsThe castle of the royal Goth in ruins. But night is in her wane: days early flushGlows like a hectic on her fading cheek,Wasting its beauty. And the opening dawnWith cheerful luster lights the royal city,Where, with its proud tiara of dark towers,It sleeps upon its own romantic bay.