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 glistened with their jewelled crowns;

Far off the mellow bells began to ring

For matins in the half-awakened 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.

AMALFI.

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.

On its terraced walk aloof

Leans a monk with folded hands,

Placid, satisfied, serene,

Looking down upon the scene
Over wall and red-tiled roof,

. Wondering unto what good end
All this toil and traffic tend,
And why all men cannot be
Free from care, and free from pain

And the sordid love of gain,

And as indolent as he.

Where are now the freighted barks From the marts of east and west? Where the knights in iron sarks Journeying to the Holy Land,

Glove of steel upon the hand,

Cross of crimson on the breast?
Where the pomp of camp and court?
Where the pilgrims with their prayers?
Where the merchants with their wares,
And their gallant brigantines

Sailing safely into port,

Chased by corsair Algerines?

Vanished like a fleet of cloud,
Like a passing trumpet-blast,
Are those splendours of the past,
And the commerce and the crowd!
Fathoms deep beneath the seas
Lie the ancient wharves and quays,
Swallowed by the engulfing waves;
Silent streets, and vacant halls,
Ruined roofs and towers and walls;
Hidden from all mortal eyes

Deep the sunken city lies;
Even cities have their graves!

This is an enchanted land!
Round the headlands far away
Sweeps the blue Salernian bay
With its sickle of white sand;
Further still and furthermost
On the dim-discovered coast
Pæstum with its ruins lies,

And its roses all in bloom

Seem to tinge the fatal skies
Of that lonely land of doom.

On his terrace, high in air,

Nothing doth the good monk care
For such worldly themes as these.
From the garden just below
Little puffs of perfume blow,
And a sound is in his ears
Of the murmur of the bees
In the shining chestnut-trees;
Nothing else he heeds or hears.
All the landscape seems to swoon
In the happy afternoon;

Slowly o'er his senses creep

The encroaching waves of sleep,
And he sinks, as sank the town,
Unresisting, fathoms down

Into caverns cool and deep!

Walled about with drifts of snow,

Hearing the fierce north wind blow,

Seeing all the landscape white,

And the river cased in ice,

Comes this memory of delight,

Comes this vision unto me

Of a long-lost Paradise

In the land beyond the sea.