worthy of such effort?—­and for the time I quite forgot to connect this man, ill in my father’s house, with the Herbert whose far-out-at-sea voice I had heard winding up at me through the very death-darkness of the tower.  Suddenly the consciousness scintillated in my soul, and wonderful it was; but the picture of my dream came in with it, and I said again, “I am ready for the work which is given me to do,” and I waited for its coming till I grew very weary, holding this fragment of envelope fast, as a ship clings to its anchor in mild seas.  I ventured to knock at the entrance of my own room.  All was silent within.  I tried the second time.  There came no answer.  I dared not venture on the conquering third.

* * * * *

AT SYRACUSE.

  All day my mule with patient tread
  Had moved along the plain,
  Now o’er the lava’s ashen bed,
  Now through the sprouting grain,
  Across the torrent’s rocky lair,
  Beneath the aloe-hedge,
  Where yellow broom makes sweet the air,
  And waves the purple sedge.

  Lone were the hills, save where supine
  The dozing goatherd lay,
  Or, at a rude and broken shrine,
  The peasant knelt to pray;
  Or where athwart the distant blue
  Thin saffron clouds ascend,
  As Carbonari, hid from view,
  Their smouldering embers tend.

  Luxuriant vale or sterile reach,
  A mountain temple-crowned
  Or inland curve of glistening beach,
  The changeful scene surround;
  While scarlet poppies burning near,
  And citrons’ emerald gleam,
  Make barren intervals appear
  Dim lapses of a dream.

  How meekly o’er the meadows gay
  The azure flax-blooms spread! 
  What fragrance on the breeze of May
  The almond-blossoms shed! 
  Wide-branching fig-trees deck the fields
  Or round the quarries cling,
  And cactus-stalks, with thorny shields,
  In wild contortions spring.

  Here groves of cork dusk shadows throw,
  There vine-leaves lightsome sway,
  While chestnut-plumes serenely glow
  Above the olives gray;
  Tall pines upon the sloping meads
  Their sylvan domes uprear,
  And rankly the papyrus-reeds
  Low cluster in the mere.

  And Syracuse with pensive mien,
  In solitary pride,
  Like an untamed, but throneless queen,
  Crouched by the lucent tide;
  With honeyed thyme still Hybla teemed,
  Its scent each zephyr bore,
  And Arethusa’s fountain gleamed
  Pellucid as of yore.

  Methought, upstarting from his bath,
  Old Archimedes cried,
  “Eureka!” in my silent path,
  Whose echoes long replied;
  That Pythias, in the sunset-glow,
  Rushed by to Damon’s arms,
  While from the Tyrant’s Cave below
  Moaned impotent alarms.

  And where upon a sculptured stone
  The ruined arch beside,
  A hoary, bronzed, and wrinkled crone
  The twirling distaff plied,—­
  Love with exalted Reason fraught
  In Plato’s accents came,
  And Truth by Paul sublimely taught
  Relumed her virgin flame.