(ON A LANDSCAPE BY MACLISE.) Glorious birth of Mind and Colour! Gazing on thy radiant face The most lorn of Adam's race Might forget all dolour! What divinest light is beaming Over mountain, mead, and grove! That blue noontide sky above Seems asleep and dreaming. Rich Italia's wild-birds warble In the foliage of those trees, I can trace thee, Veronese, In these rocks of marble! Yet no! Mark I not where quiver The sun's rays on yonder stream? Only a Poussin's self could dream Such a sun and river! What bold imagining! Stony valley, And fair bower of eglantine! Here I see the black ravine, There the lilied alley! This is some rare clime so olden, Peopled, not by men, but fays; Some lone land of genii days, Storyful and golden! Oh! for magic power to wander One bright year through such a land! Might I even one hour stand On the blest hills yonder! But what spy I? . . . O, by noonlight! 'Tis the same!-the pillar-tower I have oft passed thrice an hour, Twilight, sunlight, moonlight! Shame to me, my own, my sire-land, Not to know thy soil and skies! Shame, that through Maclise's eyes I first see thee, Ireland! No! no land doth rank above thee Or for loveliness or worth! So shall I, from this day forth, Ever sing and love thee! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE UNDERGRADUATE KILLED IN BATTLE; OXFORD, 1915 by GEORGE SANTAYANA REMEMBER by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI SONNET: 138 by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE O YOU WHOM I OFTEN AND SILENTLY COME by WALT WHITMAN BALLDE DES PENDUS by THEODORE FAULLAIN DE BANVILLE PSALM 81 by OLD TESTAMENT BIBLE |