I LEAVE thee, beauteous Italy! no more <br />From the high terraces, at even-tide, <br />To look supine into thy depths of sky, <br />Thy golden moon between the cliff and me, <br />Or thy dark spires of fretted cypresses <br />Bordering the channel of the milky way. <br />Fiesole and Valdarno must be dreams <br />Hereafter, and my own lost Affrico <br />Murmur to me but in the poet’s song. <br />I did believe (what have I not believ’d?), <br />Weary with age, but unoppress’d by pain, <br />To close in thy soft clime my quiet day <br />And rest my bones in the mimosa’s shade. <br />Hope! Hope! few ever cherish’d thee so little; <br />Few are the heads thou hast so rarely rais’d; <br />But thou didst promise this, and all was well. <br />For we are fond of thinking where to lie <br />When every pulse hath ceas’d, when the lone heart <br />Can lift no aspiration—reasoning <br />As if the sight were unimpair’d by death, <br />Were unobstructed by the coffin-lid, <br />And the sun cheer’d corruption! Over all <br />The smiles of Nature shed a potent charm, <br />And light us to our chamber at the grave.<br /><br />Walter Savage Landor<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/farewell-to-italy-2/
