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Terra di Lavoro
BEAUTIFUL valley! through whose verdant meads | |
| Unheard the Garigliano glides along;— | |
| The Liris, nurse of rushes and of reeds, | |
| The river taciturn of classic song. | |
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| The Land of Labor and the Land of Rest, | 5 |
| Where mediæval towns are white on all | |
| The hillsides, and where every mountain’s crest | |
| Is an Etrurian or a Roman wall. | |
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| There is Alagna, where Pope Boniface | |
| Was dragged with contumely from his throne; | 10 |
| Sciarra Colonna, was that day’s disgrace | |
| The Pontiff’s only, or in part thine own? | |
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| There is Ceprano, where a renegade | |
| Was each Apulian, as great Dante saith, | |
| When Manfred by his men-at-arms betrayed | 15 |
| Spurred on to Benevento and to death. | |
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| There is Aquinum, the old Volscian town, | |
| Where Juvenal was born, whose lurid light | |
| Still hovers o’er his birthplace like the crown | |
| Of splendor seen o’er cities in the night. | 20 |
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| Doubled the splendor is, that in its streets | |
| The Angelic Doctor as a school-boy played, | |
| And dreamed perhaps the dreams, that he repeats | |
| In ponderous folios for scholastics made. | |
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| And there, uplifted, like a passing cloud | 25 |
| That pauses on a mountain summit high, | |
| Monte Cassino’s convent rears its proud | |
| And venerable walls against the sky. | |
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| Well I remember how on foot I climbed | |
| The stony pathway leading to its gate; | 30 |
| Above, the convent bells for vespers chimed, | |
| Below, the darkening town grew desolate. | |
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| Well I remember the low arch and dark, | |
| The courtyard with its well, the terrace wide, | |
| From which far down the valley, like a park | 35 |
| Veiled in the evening mists, was dim descried. | |
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| 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. | 40 |
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| The silence of the place was like a sleep, | |
| So full of rest it seemed; each passing tread | |
| Was a reverberation from the deep | |
| Recesses of the ages that are dead. | |
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| For, more than thirteen centuries ago, | 45 |
| Benedict fleeing from the gates of Rome, | |
| A youth disgusted with its vice and woe, | |
| Sought in these mountain solitudes a home. | |
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| He founded here his Convent and his Rule | |
| Of prayer and work, and counted work as prayer; | 50 |
| The pen became a clarion, and his school | |
| Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air. | |
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| What though Boccaccio, in his reckless way, | |
| Mocking the lazy brotherhood, deplores | |
| The illuminated manuscripts, that lay | 55 |
| Torn and neglected on the dusty floors? | |
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| 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. | 60 |
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| 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. | |
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| And then translated, in my convent cell, | 65 |
| Myself yet not myself, in dreams I lay; | |
| And, as a monk who hears the matin bell, | |
| Started from sleep; already it was day. | |
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| From the high window I beheld the scene | |
| On which Saint Benedict so oft had gazed,— | 70 |
| The mountains and the valley in the sheen | |
| Of the bright sun,—and stood as one amazed. | |
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| Gray mists were rolling, rising, vanishing; | |
| The woodlands glistened with their jewelled crowns; | |
| Far off the mellow bells began to ring | 75 |
| For matins in the half-awakened towns. | |
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| 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, | |
| While this world and the next world were at strife. | 80 |
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| 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. | |
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