many a river's bank, and gave
His floating body to the wave,
Full many a time to give them joy.

These and a thousand other tales
The traveller told, and welcome found;
These were the simple tales went round
The happy circles in the vales.

Keeping reserved with conscious pride
His noblest act, his crowning feat,
How he had led even Humboldt's feet
Up Chimborazo's mighty side.

Guiding him through the trackless snow,
By sheltered clefts of living soil,
Sweet'ning the fearless traveller's toil,
With memories of the world below.

Such was the hardy Daisy's tale,
And then the maidens of the group--
Lilies, whose languid heads down droop
Over their pearl-white shoulders pale--

Told, when the genial glow of June
Had passed, they sought still warmer climes
And took beneath the verdurous limes
Their sweet siesta through the noon:

And seeking still, with fond pursuit,
The phantom Health, which lures and wiles
Its followers to the shores and isles
Of amber waves, and golden fruit.

There they had seen the orange grove
Enwreath its gold with buds of white,
As if themselves had taken flight,
And settled on the boughs above.

There kiss'd by every rosy mouth
And press'd to every gentle breast,
These pallid daughters of the West
Reigned in the sunshine of the South.

And thoughtful of the things divine,
Were oft by many an altar found,
Standing like white-robed angels round
The precincts of some sacred shrine.

And Violets, with dark blue eyes,
Told how they spent the winter time,
In Andalusia's Eden clime,
Or 'neath Italia's kindred skies.

Chiefly when evening's golden gloom
Veil'd Rome's serenest ether soft,
Bending in thoughtful musings oft,
Above the lost Alastor's tomb;

Or the twin-poet's; he who sings
"A thing of beauty never dies,"
Paying them back in fragrant sighs,
The love they bore all loveliest things.

The flower[110] whose bronz`ed cheeks recalls
The incessant beat of wind and sun,
Spoke of the lore his search had won
Upon Pompeii's rescued walls.

How, in his antiquarian march,
He crossed the tomb-strewn plain of Rome,
Sat on some prostrate plinth, or clomb
The Coliseum's topmost arch.

And thence beheld in glad amaze
What Nero's guilty eyes, aloof,
Drank in from off his golden roof--
The sun-bright city all ablaze:

Ablaze by day with solar fires--
Ablaze by night with lunar beams,
With lambent lustre on