C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Farewell to Italy

I LEAVE thee, beauteous Italy! no more

From the high terraces, at even-tide,

To look supine into thy depths of sky,

Thy golden moon between the cliff and me,

Or thy dark spires of fretted cypresses

Bordering the channel of the Milky Way.

Fiesole and Val d’Arno must be dreams

Hereafter, and my own lost Affrico

Murmur to me but in the poet’s song.

I did believe (what have I not believed?)

Weary with age, but unopprest by pain,

To close in thy soft clime my quiet day,

And rest my bones in the mimosa’s shade.

Hope! Hope! few ever cherisht thee so little;

Few are the heads thou hast so rarely raised;

But thou didst promise this, and all was well.