Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/103



F all my dreams by night and day,

One dream will evermore return,

The dream of Italy in May;

The sky a brimming azure urn

Where lights of amber brood and burn;

The doves about San Marco's square,

The swimming Campanile tower,

The giants, hammering out the hour,

The palaces, the bright lagoons,

The gondolas gliding here and there

Upon the tide that sways and swoons.

The domes of San Antonio,

Where Padua 'mid her mulberry-trees

Reclines; Adige's crescent flow

Beneath Verona's balconies;

Rich Florence of the Medicis;

Sienna's starlike streets that climb

From hill to hill; Assisi well

Remembering the holy spell

Of rapt St. Francis; with her crown

Of battlements, embossed by time,

Stern old Perugia looking down.