Page:Tales and Historic Scenes.pdf/160

156

To share beneath more genial skies Each joy their own rude clime denies.

Ye who on bright Campania's shore Bade your fair villas rise of yore, With all their graceful colonnades, And crystal baths, and myrtle shades, Along the blue Hesperian deep, Whose glassy waves in sunshine sleep; Beneath your olive and your vine Far other inmates now recline, And the tall plane, whose roots ye fed With rich libations duly shed,3 O'er guests, unlike your vanish'd friends, Its bowery canopy extends: For them the southern heaven is glowing, The bright Falernian nectar flowing; For them the marble halls unfold, Where nobler beings dwelt of old, Whose children for barbarian lords Touch the sweet lyre's resounding chords, Or wreaths of Pæstan roses twine, To crown the sons of Elbe and Rhine.