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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79.

Introductory

To Italy

By Anonymous

O LAND of beauty, garlanded with pine

And luscious grape-vines, ’neath whose vaulted skies

Of blue eternal, marble mansions rise,

And roseate flowers from every lattice shine!

Still have the nations striven from of yore

For thy fair fields, lovely as Eden’s plain;

Thy temples, and thy cities by the main

Throned hoar and gray upon the rocky shore.

Who hath seen thee, O, never in his breast

The heart grows wholly old! Some youthful zest

Of life still lingers; some bright memory!

And when the nightingales in autumn chill

Fly forth, a yearning stirs his spirit still

To fly with them toward sunny Italy!