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(From Marcian Colonna)
THERE is a lofty spot | |
| Visible amongst the mountains Apennine, | |
| Where once a hermit dwelt, not yet forgot | |
| He or his famous miracles divine; | |
| And there the convent of Laverna stands | 5 |
| In solitude, built up by saintly hands, | |
| And deemed a wonder in the elder time. | |
| Chasms of the early world are yawning there, | |
| And rocks are seen, craggy and vast and bare, | |
| And many a dizzy precipice sublime, | 10 |
| And caverns dark as death, where the wild air | |
| Rushes from all the quarters of the sky: | |
| Above, in all his old regality, | |
| The monarch eagle sits upon his throne, | |
| Or floats upon the desert winds, alone. | 15 |
| There, belted round and round by forests drear, | |
| Black pine, and giant beech, and oaks that rear | |
| Their brown diminished heads like shrubs between, | |
| And guarded by a river that is seen | |
| Flashing and wandering through the dell below, | 20 |
| Laverna stands. It is a place of woe, | |
| And midst its cold dim aisles and cells of gloom | |
| The pale Franciscan meditates his doom; | |
| An exile from his kind, save some sad few | |
| (Like him imprisoned and devoted), who, | 25 |
| Deserting their high natures for the creed | |
| A bigot fashioned in his weaker dreams, | |
| Left love and life (yet love is life, indeed), | |
| And all the wonders of the world,—its gleams | |
| Of joy, of sunshine, fair as those which spring | 30 |
| From the great poet’s high imagining, | |
| Sounds, and gay sights, and woman’s words which bless | |
| And carry on their echoes happiness,— | |
| Left all that man inherits, and fell down | |
| To worship in the dust a demon’s crown: | 35 |
| For there a phantom of a fearful size, | |
| Shaped out of shadow and cloud, and nursed in pain, | |
| And born of doubt and sorrow, and of the brain | |
| The ever evil spirit mocks man’s eyes; | |
| And they who worship it are cold and wan, | 40 |
| Timid and proud, envying while they despise, | |
| The wealth and wishes of their fellow-man. | |
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