LXV.
Far other scene is Thrasimene now;
Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain
Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough;
Her agéd trees rise thick as once the slain
Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta'en—
A little rill of scanty stream and bed—
A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain;
And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead
Made the earth wet, and turned the unwilling waters red.[1]
LXVI.
But thou, Clitumnus![2] in thy sweetest wave
Of the most living crystal that was e'er
The haunt of river-Nymph, to gaze and lave
Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear
Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer[3]
- ↑ Made fat the earth——.—[MS. M. erased.]
- ↑ No book of travels has omitted to expatiate on the temple of the Clitumnus, between Foligno and Spoleto; and no site, or scenery, even in Italy, is more worthy a description. For an account of the dilapidation of this temple, the reader is referred to Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold, p. 35.
- ↑ [Compare Virgil, Georg., ii. 146—
"Hinc albi, Clitumne, greges et maxuma taurus
Victima, sæpe tuo perfusi flumine sacro."The waters of certain rivers were supposed to possess the quality of making the cattle which drank from them white. (See Pliny, Hist. Nat., ii. 103; and compare Silius Italicus, Pun., iv. 545, 546—
