This page has been validated.
Still lingering on the mountain heights, the sun
Looks o'er the scene; and languidly his smile
Falls with suffusing tint of violet
On the grey building stones and on the dark
Vermilion brick, and seems to waken there
The living soul of vanished centuries;
And wakens in the rigid winter air
A melancholy yearning for the glow
Of spring-times past, of warm and festal eves,
When here in the piazza used to dance
The beauteous women, and in triumph home
Returned the Consuls with their captive kings.
Thus in her flight the Muse is laughing back
Upon the verse in which vain longing throbs
For all the antique beauty that is gone.
29
