LXVII.

   And on thy happy shore a temple still,
   Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,
   Upon a mild declivity of hill,
   Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps
   Thy current’s calmness; oft from out it leaps
   The finny darter with the glittering scales,
   Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;
   While, chance, some scattered water-lily sails
Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales.

LXVIII.

   Pass not unblest the genius of the place! 
   If through the air a zephyr more serene
   Win to the brow, ’tis his; and if ye trace
   Along his margin a more eloquent green,
   If on the heart the freshness of the scene
   Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust
   Of weary life a moment lave it clean
   With Nature’s baptism,—­’tis to him ye must
Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust.

LXIX.

   The roar of waters!—­from the headlong height
   Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;
   The fall of waters! rapid as the light
   The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;
   The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,
   And boil in endless torture; while the sweat
   Of their great agony, wrung out from this
   Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet
That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,

LXX.

   And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again
   Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,
   With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,
   Is an eternal April to the ground,
   Making it all one emerald.  How profound
   The gulf! and how the giant element
   From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,
   Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent
With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent

LXXI.

   To the broad column which rolls on, and shows
   More like the fountain of an infant sea
   Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes
   Of a new world, than only thus to be
   Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,
   With many windings through the vale:  —­Look back! 
   Lo! where it comes like an eternity,
   As if to sweep down all things in its track,
Charming the eye with dread,—­a matchless cataract,

LXXII.

   Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,
   From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,
   An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,
   Like Hope upon a deathbed, and, unworn
   Its steady dyes, while all around is torn
   By the distracted waters, bears serene
   Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn: 
   Resembling, mid the torture of the scene,
Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.