To great Augustus, he, whose brow around
    Thrice was the laurel green in triumph bound,
    How Rome was ever lavish of her blood,
    The right to vindicate, the weak redress;
    And now, when gratitude,
    When piety appeal, shall she do less
    To avenge the injury and end the scorn
    By blessed Mary’s glorious offspring borne? 
    What fear we, while the heathen for success
    Confide in human powers,
    If, on the adverse side, be Christ, and his side ours?

      Turn, too, when Xerxes our free shores to tread
    Rush’d in hot haste, and dream’d the perilous main
    With scourge and fetter to chastise and chain,
    —­What see’st?  Wild wailing o’er their husbands dead,
    Persia’s pale matrons wrapt in weeds of woe,
    And red with gore the gulf of Salamis! 
    To prove our triumph certain, to foreshow
    The utter ruin of our Eastern foe,
    No single instance this;
    Miltiades and Marathon recall,
    See, with his patriot few, Leonidas
    Closing, Thermopylae, thy bloody pass! 
    Like them to dare and do, to God let all
    With heart and knee bow down,
    Who for our arms and age has kept this great renown.

      Thou shalt see Italy, that honour’d land,
    Which from my eyes, O Song! nor seas, streams, heights,
    So long have barr’d and bann’d,
    But love alone, who with his haughty lights
    The more allures me as he worse excites,
    Till nature fails against his constant wiles. 
    Go then, and join thy comrades; not alone
    Beneath fair female zone
    Dwells Love, who, at his will, moves us to tears or smiles.

    MACGREGOR.

CANZONE III.

Verdi panni, sanguigni, oscuri o persi.

WHETHER OR NOT HE SHOULD CEASE TO LOVE LAURA.

      Green robes and red, purple, or brown, or gray
    No lady ever wore,
    Nor hair of gold in sunny tresses twined,
    So beautiful as she, who spoils my mind
    Of judgment, and from freedom’s lofty path
    So draws me with her that I may not bear
    Any less heavy yoke.

    And if indeed at times—­for wisdom fails
    Where martyrdom breeds doubt—­
    The soul should ever arm it to complain
    Suddenly from each reinless rude desire
    Her smile recalls, and razes from my heart
    Every rash enterprise, while all disdain
    Is soften’d in her sight.

    For all that I have ever borne for love,
    And still am doom’d to bear,
    Till she who wounded it shall heal my heart,
    Rejecting homage e’en while she invites,
    Be vengeance done! but let not pride nor ire
    ’Gainst my humility the lovely pass
    By which I enter’d bar.