They are, with a few exceptions, Italian; and they have that grandeur and breadth, that intensity given by blazing colour, that peculiar tint either of labyrinthine or of tragic sentiment which belong to Italy.

I select a few of them: The morn when first it thunders in March The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say; As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch Of the villa gate this warm March day, No flash snapped, no dumb thunder rolled In the valley beneath where, white and wide Washed by the morning water-gold, Florence lay out on the mountain side River and bridge and street and square Lay mine, as much at my beck and call, Through the live translucent bath of air, As the sights in a magic crystal ball.
Here is the Roman Campagna and its very sentiment: The champaign with its endless fleece Of feathery grasses everywhere! Silence and passion, joy and peace, An everlasting wash of air-- Rome's ghost since her decease.
And this might be in the same place: Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles, Miles and miles On the solitary pastures where our sheep Half-asleep Tinkle homeward through the twilight-- This is a crimson sunset over dark and distant woods in autumn: That autumn eve was stilled: A last remains of sunset dimly burned O'er the far forests, like a torch-flame turned By the wind back upon its bearer's hand In one long flare of crimson; as a brand The woods beneath lay black.

A single eye From all Verona cared for the soft sky.
And if we desire a sunrise, there is the triumphant beginning of _Pippa Passes_--a glorious outburst of light, colour and splendour, impassioned and rushing, the very upsoaring of Apollo's head behind his furious steeds.

It begins with one word, like a single stroke on the gong of Nature: it continues till the whole of the overarching vault, and the world below, in vast disclosure, is flooded with an ocean of gold.
Day! Faster and more fast, O'er night's brim, day boils at last; Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim Where spurting and suppressed it lay.
For not a froth-flake touched the rim Of yonder gap in the solid gray Of the eastern cloud, an hour away; But forth one wavelet, then another, curled.
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed, Rose, reddened, and its seething breast Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.
This is chiefly of the sky, but the description in that gipsy-hearted poem, _The Flight of the Duchess_, brings before us, at great length, league after league of wide-spreading landscape.

It is, first, of the great wild country, cornfield, vineyards, sheep-ranges, open chase, till we arrive at last at the mountains; and climbing up among their pines, dip down into a yet vaster and wilder country, a red, drear, burnt-up plain, over which we are carried for miles: Till at the last, for a bounding belt, Comes the salt sand hoar of the great sea-shore.
Or we may read the _Grammarian's Funeral_, where we leave the city walls and climb the peak on whose topmost ledge he is to be buried.