No sound of wheels or hoof-beat breaks
The silence of the summer day,
As by the loveliest of all lakes
I while the idle hours away.
I pace the leafy colonnade,
Where level branches of the plane
Above me weave a roof of shade
Impervious to the sun and rain.
At times a sudden rush of air
Flutters the lazy leaves o'erhead,
And gleams of sunlight toss and flare
Like torches down the path I tread.
By Somariva's garden gate
I make the marble stairs my seat;
And hear the water, as I wait,
Lapping the steps beneath my feet.
The undulation sinks and swells
Along the stony parapets;
And far away the floating bells
Tinkle upon the fisher's nets.
Silent and slow, by tower and town,
The freighted barges come and go;
Their pendent shadows gliding down,
By town and tower submerged below.
The hills sweep upward from the shore,
With villas scatter'd one by one
Upon their wooded spurs, and lower
Bellaggio blazing in the sun.
And dimly seen, a tangled mass
Of walls and woods, of light and shade, Stands beck'ning up the Stelvio pass Varenna with its wide cascade.
I ask myself, Is this a dream?
Will it all vanish into air?
Is there a land of such supreme
And perfect beauty anywhere?
Sweet vision! Do not fade away;
Linger until my heart shall take
Into itself the summer day
And all the beauty of the lake.
Linger until upon my brain
Is stamp'd an image of the scene;
Then fade into the air again
And be as if thou hadst not been.
THE OLD BRIDGE AT FLORENCE.
TADDEO Gaddi built me. I am old;
Five centuries old. I plant my foot of stone
Upon the Arno, as St. Michael's own
Was planted on the dragon. Fold by fold
Beneath me, as it struggles, I behold
Its glistening scales. Twice hath it overthrown
My kindred and companions. Me alone
It moveth not, but is by me controll❜d.
I can remember when the Medici
Were driven from Florence; longer still ago
The final wars of Ghibelline and Guelf.
Horence adorns me with her jewelry;
And when I think that Michael Angelo
Hath lean'd on me, I glory in myself.
CHARLES SUMNER.
GARLANDS upon his grave,
And flowers upon his hearse;
And to thy tender heart and brave,
The tribute of this verse.
His was the troubled life,
The conflict and the pain;
The griefs, the bitterness of strife,
The honour without stain.
Like Winkelried, he took
Into his manly breast
The sheaf of hostile spears, and br ke
A path for the oppress'd ;
Then from the fatal field,
Upon a nation's heart,
Borne like a warrior on his shield-
So should the brave depart.
Death takes us by surprise,
And stays our hurrying feet;
The great design unfinish'd lies
Our lives are incomplete.
But in the dark unknown,
Perfect their circles seem,
Even as a bridge's arch of stone
Is rounded in the stream.
Alike are life and death
When life in death survives,
And the interrupted breath
Inspires a thousand lives.
Were a star quench'd on high,
For ages would its light,
Still travelling downward from the sky,
Shine on our mortal sight.
So when a great man dies,
For years beyond our ken,
The light he leaves behind him lies
Upon the paths of men.
BEAUTIFUL valley, through whose verdant meade
Unheard the Garigliano glides along,-
The Liris, nurse of rushes and of reeds,
The river taciturn of classic song!
The Land of Labour and the Land of Rest,
Where medieval towns are white on all
The hill sides, and where every mountain crest
Is an Etrurian or a Roman wall!
There is Alagna, there Pope Boniface
Was dragg'd with contumely from his throne; Sciarra Colonna, was that day's disgrace
The Pontiff's only, or in part thine own?
There is Ceprano, where a renegade
Was each Apulian as great Dante saith,
When Manfred, by his men-at-arms betray'd,
Spurr'd on to Benevento and to death.
There is Aquinum, the old Volscian town,
Where Juvenal was born, whose lurid light
Still hovers o'er his birthplace, like the crown
Of splendour over cities seen at night.
Doubled the splendour is, that in its streets
The angelic Doctor as a schoolboy play'd,
And dream'd perhaps the dreams that he repeats
In ponderous folios for scholastics made.
And there, uplifted like a passing cloud,
That pauses on a mountain summit high,
Monte Cassino's convent rears its proud
And venerable walls against the sky.
Well I remember how on foot I climb'd
The stony pathway leading to its gate:
Above, the convent bells for vespers chimed;
Below, the dark'ning town grew desolate.
Well I remember the low arch and dark,
The court-yard with its well, the terrace wide,
From which, far down, diminish'd to a park,
The valley veil'd in mist was dim descried.
The day was dying, and with feeble hands
Caress'd the mountain tops; the vales between
Darken'd; the river in the meadow-lands
Sheath'd itself as a sword and was not seen.
The silence of the place was like a sleep,
So full of rest it seem'd; each passing tread Was a reverberation from the deep
Recesses of the ages that are dead.
For more than thirteen centuries ago
Benedict, fleeing from the gates of Rome,
A youth disgusted with its vice and woe,
Sought in these mountain solitudes a home.
He founded here his Convent and his Rule
Of prayer and work, and counted work as prayer. His pen became a clarion, and his school
Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air.
What though Boccaccio, in his reckless way
Mocking the lazy brotherhood, deplores
The illuminated manuscripts that lay
Torn and neglected on the dusty floors?
Boccaccio was a novelist, a child
Of fancy and of fiction at the best ;
This the urbane librarian said and smiled,
Incredulous as at some idle jest.
Upon such themes as these with one young friar
I sat conversing late into the night,
Till in its cavernous chimney the wood fire
Had burnt its heart out like an anchorite.
And then translated in my convent cell,
Myself yet not myself in dreams I lay;
And, as a monk who hears the matin bell,
Started from sleep; already it was day.
From the high window I beheld the scene
On which Saint Benedict so oft had gazed;
The mountains and the valley in the sheen
Of the bright sun, and stood as one amazed.
Gray mists were rolling, rising, vanishing;
The woodlands glisten'd with their jewell'd crowns,
Far off the mellow bells began to ring
For matins in the half-awaken'd towns.
The conflict of the Present and the Past,
The ideal and the actual in our life,
As on a field of battle held me fast,
Where this world and the next world were at strife.
For, as the valley from its sleep awoke,
I saw the iron horses of the steam
Toss to the morning air their plumes of smoke,
And woke as one awaketh from a dream.
SWEET the memory is to me
Of a land beyond the sea,
Where the waves and mountains meet;
Where amid her mulberry-trees
Sits Amalfi in the heat,
Bathing ever her white feet
In the tideless, summer seas.
In the middle of the town,
From its fountains in the hills,
Tumbling through the narrow gorge,
The Canneto rushes down,
Turns the great wheels of the mills,
Lifts the hammers of the forge.
'Tis a stairway, not a street,
That ascends the deep ravine,
Where the torrent leaps between
Rocky walls that almost meet.
Toiling up from stair to stair
Peasant girls their burdens bear;
Sunburnt daughters of the soil,
Stately figures tall and straight;
What inexorable fate
Dooms them to this life of toil ?
Lord of vineyards and of lands,
Far above the convent stands,
|