Page:Carducci - Poems of Italy.djvu/35



Still lingering on the mountain heights, the sun Looks o'er the scene; and languidly his smile Falls with suffusing tint of violet

On the grey building stones and on the dark Vermilion brick, and seems to waken there The living soul of vanished centuries;

And wakens in the rigid winter air A melancholy yearning for the glow Of spring-times past, of warm and festal eves,

When here in the piazza used to dance The beauteous women, and in triumph home Returned the Consuls with their captive kings.

Thus in her flight the Muse is laughing back Upon the verse in which vain longing throbs For all the antique beauty that is gone.