Thou art my tropics and mine Italy;
  To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;
      The eyes thou givest me
  Are in the heart, and heed not space or time: 
    Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee
  Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment
  In the white lily’s breezy tent,
    His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first
    From the dark green thy yellow circles burst.

    Then think I of deep shadows on the grass,
  Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze,
      Where, as the breezes pass,
  The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways,
    Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass,
  Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue
  That from the distance sparkle through
    Some woodland gap, and of a sky above,
    Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.

    My childhood’s earliest thoughts are linked with thee;
  The sight of thee calls back the robin’s song,
      Who, from the dark old tree
  Beside the door, sang clearly all day long,
    And I, secure in childish piety,
  Listened as if I heard an angel sing
  With news from heaven, which he could bring
    Fresh every day to my untainted ears
    When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.

    How like a prodigal doth Nature seem,
  When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! 
      Thou teachest me to deem
  More sacredly of every human heart,
    Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam
  Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show,
  Did we but pay the love we owe,
    And with a child’s undoubting wisdom look
    On all these living pages of God’s book.

J.R.  LOWELL.

The Chambered Nautilus.

  This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
       Sails the unshadowed main,—­
       The venturous bark that flings
  On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
  In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
       And coral reefs lie bare,
  Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

  Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
       Wrecked is the ship of pearl! 
       And every chambered cell,
  Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
  As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
       Before thee lies revealed,—­
  Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

  Year after year beheld the silent toil
       That spread his lustrous coil;
       Still, as the spiral grew,
  He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,
  Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
      Built up its idle door,
  Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

  Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
      Child of the wandering sea,
      Cast from her lap, forlorn! 
  From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
  Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn! 
      While on mine ear it rings,
  Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings: