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(From Casa Guidi Windows)
AND Vallombrosa, we two went to see | |
| Last June, beloved companion,—where sublime | |
| The mountains live in holy families, | |
| And the slow pine-woods ever climb and climb | |
| Half up their breasts; just stagger as they seize | 5 |
| Some gray crag,—drop back with it many a time, | |
| And straggle blindly down the precipice! | |
| The Vallombrosan brooks were strewn as thick | |
| That June-day, knee-deep, with dead beechen leaves, | |
| As Milton saw them ere his heart grew sick, | 10 |
| And his eyes blind. I think the monks and beeves | |
| Are all the same too: scarce they have changed the wick | |
| On good St. Gualbert’s altar, which receives | |
| The convent’s pilgrims; and the pool in front | |
| Wherein the hill-stream trout are cast, to wait | 15 |
| The beatific vision, and the grunt | |
| Used at refectory, keeps its weedy state, | |
| To baffle saintly abbots, who would count | |
| The fish across their breviary, nor ’bate | |
| The measure of their steps. O waterfalls | 20 |
| And forests! sound and silence! mountains bare, | |
| That leap up, peak by peak, and catch the palls | |
| Of purple and silver mist, to rend and share | |
| With one another, at electric calls | |
| Of life in the sunbeams,—till we cannot dare | 25 |
| Fix your shapes, learn your number! we must think | |
| Your beauty and your glory helped to fill | |
| The cup of Milton’s soul so to the brink, | |
| That he no more was thirsty when God’s will | |
| Had shattered to his sense the last chain-link | 30 |
| By which he drew from Nature’s visible | |
| The fresh well-water. Satisfied by this, | |
| He sang of Adam’s Paradise and smiled, | |
| Remembering Vallombrosa. Therefore is | |
| The place divine to English man and child;— | 35 |
| We all love Italy. | |
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