ITALY IN ARMS.

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 78, 1 April 1916, Page 16

ITALY IN ARMS.

Of all my dreams by night ( and day,

One dream will evermore return, The dream of Italy in May; Tho sky_ a brimming azure urn Where lights of amber brood and burn; The doves about San Marco's square,

Tho swimming Campanile tower, The giants, hammering out the hour, The palaces, tho bright lagoons, The gondolas gliding here and there Upon the tide that Bways and swoons. The domes of San Antonio, Where Padua 'mid her mulberry treee Reclines; Adiffa's crescent flow Beneath Verona's balconies; Rich Florence of the Medicia; Siena's stairlike streets that climb From hill to hill; Aeaiesi well Remembering the holy spell Of rapt Saint Francis, with her crown Of battlements, embossed by time, Stern old Perugia looking down.

Then, mother of great empirea. Rome, City of the majestic past. That o'er far leagues of alien foam The shadow of her eagles cast, Imperious still; impending, vast, The Colosseum'B curving line; Pillar and arch and colonnade; Saint Peter's consecrated shade, And Hadrian's tomb where Tiber strays; The ruins on the Palatine With all their memories of dead days.

And Naples, with her sapphire arc Of bay, her perfect sweep of shore; Above her, like a demon stark, The dark ure mountain evermore Looming portentous, as of yore; Fair Capri, with her cliffs and caves; Salerno drowsing 'mid her vines xVnd olives, and the shattered 6hrines Of Paestum where the grey ghosts tread; And where the wilding rose still waves As when by Greek girls garlanded. But hark! What 6ound the ear dismays, Mine Italy, mine Italy ? Thou that wert wrapt in peace, the hazs Of loveliness spread over thee! Yet since the grapple needs must be , I who have wandered in the night With Dante,' Petrach's Laura known, Seen Vallombrosal's groves! breeze blown, / Met Angelo and Raphael, Against iconoclastic might In this grim hour must wisb thee well 1

—Clinton Scollard,