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 stamped an image of the scene, Then fade into the air again, And be as if thou hadst not been. B MONTE CASSINO. TERRA DI LAVORO. EAUTIFUL valley! through whose ver dant meads Unheard the Garigliano glides along :The Liris, nurse of rushes and of reeds, The river taciturn of classic scng. The Land of Labour and the Land of Rest, There is Alagna, where Pope Boniface Was dragged with contumely from his throne Sciara Colonna, was that day's disgrace There is Ceprano, where a renegade Was each Apulian, as great Dante saith, When Manfred, by his men-at-arms betrayed, Spurred on to Benevento and to death. ; There is Aquinum, the old Volscian town, Doubled the splendour is, that in its streets And there, uplifted, like a passing cloud And venerable walls against the sky. Well I remember how on foot I climbed Well I remember the low arch and dark, Veiled in the evening mists, was dim descried The day was dying, and with feeble hands Caressed the mountain tops; the vales between Darkened; the river in the meadow-lands Sheathed itself as a sword, and was not seen. The silence of the place was like a sleep, Recesses of the ages that are dead. For, more than thirteen centuries ago, He founded here his Convent and his Rule prayer; The pen became a clarion, and his school Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air. What though Boccaccio, in his reckless way, 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 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 Gray mists were rolling, rising, vanishing; The woodlands glistened with their jewelled crowns; Far off the mellow bells began to ring For matins in the half-awakened towns. |