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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.