TRANSLATION FROM VITTORELLI.

ON A NUN.

Sonnet composed in the name of a father, whose daughter had recently died shortly after her marriage; and addressed to the father of her who had lately taken the

veil.

Or two fair virgins, modest, though admired,

Heaven made us happy; and now, wretched sires,
Heaven for a nobler doom their worth desires,
And gazing upon either, both required.

Mine, while the torch of Hymen newly fired
Becomes extinguish'd, soon

too soon

But thine, within the closing grate retired,
Eternal captive, to her God aspires.

But thou at least from out the jealous door,

expires ;

Which shuts between your never-meeting eyes,
May'st hear her sweet and pious voice once more:

I to the marble, where my daughter lies,

Rush,

-the swoln flood of bitterness I pour,

And knock, and knock, and knock- but none replies.

ODE ON VENICE

ODE ON VENICE.

I.

A

weep:

OH Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls
Are level with the waters, there shall be
cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls,
A loud lament along the sweeping sea!
If I, a northern wanderer, weep for thee,
What should thy sons do?
any thing but
And yet they only murmur in their sleep.
In contrast with their fathers - as the slime,
The dull green ooze of the receding deep,
Is with the dashing of the spring-tide foam
That drives the sailor shipless to his home.
Are they to those that were; and thus they creep,
Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping streets.
Oh! agony that centuries should reap

No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years,
Of wealth and glory turn'd to dust and tears;
And every monument the stranger meets,
Church, palace, pillar, as a mourner greets ;·
And even the Lion all subdued appears,
And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum,
With dull and daily dissonance, repeats
The echo of thy tyrant's voice along
The soft waves, once all musical to song,
That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng
Of gondolas - and to the busy hum

Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds
Were but the overbeating of the heart,
And flow of too much happiness, which needs
The aid of age to turn its course apart
From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood
Of sweet sensations, battling with the blood.
But these are better than the gloomy errors,
The weeds of nations in their last decay,
When Vice walks forth with her unsoften'd terrors,
And Mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay;
And Hope is nothing but a false delay,