AN ITALIAN SONG.Dear is my little native vale,The ring-dove builds and murmurs there;Close by my cot she tells her taleTo every passing villager.The squirrel leaps from tree to tree,And shells his nuts at liberty.In orange-groves and myrtle-bowers,That breathe a gale of fragrance round,I charm the fairy-footed hoursWith my lov’d lute’s romantic sound;Or crowns of living laurel weave,For those that win the race at eve.The shepherd’s horn at break of day,The ballet danc’d in twilight glade,The canzonet and roundelaySung in the silent green-wood shade;These simple joys, that never fail,Shall bind me to my native vale.
Dear is my little native vale,The ring-dove builds and murmurs there;Close by my cot she tells her taleTo every passing villager.The squirrel leaps from tree to tree,And shells his nuts at liberty.In orange-groves and myrtle-bowers,That breathe a gale of fragrance round,I charm the fairy-footed hoursWith my lov’d lute’s romantic sound;Or crowns of living laurel weave,For those that win the race at eve.The shepherd’s horn at break of day,The ballet danc’d in twilight glade,The canzonet and roundelaySung in the silent green-wood shade;These simple joys, that never fail,Shall bind me to my native vale.