Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/211

1866.]

Helmed with snow, the Alpine giants at invaders look defiance,

Gazing over nearer summits, with a fixed, mysterious stare,

Down along the shaded ocean, on whose edge in tremulous motion

Floats an island, half-transparent, woven out of sea and air;—

For such visions, shaped of air, are

Frequent on our Riviera.

He whose mighty earthquake-tread all Europa shook with dread,

Chief whose infancy was cradled in that old Tyrrhenic isle,

Joins the shades of trampling legions, bringing from remotest regions

Gallic fire and Roman valor, Cimbric daring, Moorish guile,

Guests from every age to share a

Portion of this Riviera.

Then the Afric brain, whose story fills the centuries with its glory,

Moulding Gaul and Carthaginian into one all-conquering band,

With his tuskèd monsters grumbling, 'mid the alien snow-drifts stumbling,

Then, an avalanche of ruin, thundering from that frozen land

Into vales their sons declare are

Sunny as our Riviera.

Tired of these, the mighty mother sought among her types another

Stamp of blended saint and hero, only once on earth before,—

In the luminous aureole shining from a maiden's soul

Through four hundred sluggish years; till again on Nizza's shore

Comes the hero of Caprera

Born upon our Riviera.

Thus forever, in our musing, comes man's spirit interfusing

Thought of poet and of hero with the landscape and the sky;

And this shore, no longer lonely, lives the life of romance only:

Gauls and Moors and Northern Sea-Kings, all are gliding, ghost-like, by.

So with Nature man is sharer

Even on the Riviera.

Feeble voice! no longer stammer words which shame the panorama

Seen from all the mountain-passes of this old Aurelian Way,

With the shore below us sleeping, and the distant steamer creeping

From Marseilles to proud Genova, on to Spezzia's famous bay.

So forever, mia cara,

Shall we love this Riviera.