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(From Italy)
DARK Vallombrosa! thy Etrurian shade | |
| Is hallowed by a spell that is not thine: | |
| A spirit lingers here that doth pervade | |
| Thy sanctuary: earth is made divine | |
| From human memories, when upon each line | 5 |
| Of her calm brow the signet is confessed; | |
| Memnonian image! as, with touches fine | |
| Morn’s fingers music from its bosom pressed, | |
| So genius kindles life from thy responsive breast. | |
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| Doubt’st thou her inspirations? lo, yon peaks | 10 |
| Titanic, burying their spears in heaven | |
| As if they dared the thunder, or where breaks | |
| Through mist and foam yon torrents headlong driven, | |
| Hurled over trees and precipices riven: | |
| Hark! to their roar in yon Tartarean dell, | 15 |
| Ravings as of the tortured unforgiven; | |
| Type they not elder faiths to us and tell | |
| The strife of powers opposed, the war of heaven and hell? | |
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| Lo! round the mountain’s scathed sides like a wall, | |
| Pines lightning-blasted, wear such forms as wore | 20 |
| The thunder-stricken angels: like a pall | |
| The up-seething mists rise shrouding white and hoar, | |
| Forests all crushed, still raising from the roar | |
| Of waters their wild branches red and sere, | |
| Thick as the weeds on ocean’s surf-heaped shore; | 25 |
| This is the vale of shadow, pause thou here | |
| Where deathless Milton trod, the sacred ground revere. | |
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| O, while these autumn leaves are round me lying, | |
| While thy Etrurian shades o’erarched embower, | |
| While the wind seems thy voice to mine replying, | 30 |
| Bard of lost Paradise, I call thee, power | |
| That liv’st among us, hear! while the clouds lower, | |
| And the leaves mount the whirlwind, I would be | |
| Conscious of thy great presence in this hour: | |
| I would behold thee, like the prophet, flee | 35 |
| Heavenward, but left on earth thy robe of prophecy. | |
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