C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Italy

Italia! O Italia! thou who hast
The fatal gift of beauty, which became
A funeral dower of present woes and past,
On thy sweet brow is sorrow plough’d by shame,
And annals graved in characters of flame.

Byron.

Italy, my Italy!
Queen Mary’s saying serves for me—
(When fortune’s malice
Lost her Calais)—
Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it, “Italy.”

Robert Browning.

Fair Italy!
Thou art the garden of the world, the home
Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree,
Even in thy desert, what is like to thee?
Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste
More rich than other climes’ fertility;
Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced
With an immaculate charm which cannot be defac’d.

Byron.

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