| |
| WHAT peace and quiet in this villa sleep! | |
| Here let us pause, nor chase for pleasure on; | |
| Nothing can be more exquisite than this,— | |
| Work, for the nonce farewell,—this day we ’ll give | |
| To fallow joys of perfect idleness. | 5 |
| |
| See how the old house lifts its face of light | |
| Against the pallid olives that behind | |
| Throng up the hill. Look down this vista’s shade | |
| Of dark square shaven ilexes, where spurts | |
| The fountain’s thin white thread, and blows away. | 10 |
| And mark! along the terraced balustrade | |
| Two contadine stopping in the shade, | |
| With copper vases poised upon their heads, | |
| How their red jackets tell against the green! | |
| |
| Old, all is old,—what charm there is in age! | 15 |
| Do you believe this villa when ’t was new | |
| Was half so beautiful as now it seems? | |
| Look at these balustrades of travertine, | |
| Had they the charm when fresh and sharply carved | |
| As now that they are stained and grayed with time | 20 |
| And mossed with lichens, every grim old mask | |
| That grins upon their pillars bearded o’er | |
| With waving sprays of slender maiden-hair? | |
| Ah no! I cannot think it. Things of art | |
| Snatch nature’s graces from the hand of Time. | 25 |
| |
| Here will we sit and let the sleeping noon | |
| Doze on and dream into the afternoon, | |
| While all the mountains shake in opal light, | |
| Forever shifting, till the sun’s last glance | |
| Transfigures with its splendor all our world. | 30 |
| |
| Hark! the cicala crackles mid the trees, | |
| How shrilly! and the toppling fountain spills | |
| The music of its silvery rain, how soft! | |
| Into the broad clear basin,—zigzag darts | |
| The sudden dragon-fly across, or hangs | 35 |
| Poised in the sun with shimmer of glazed wings. | |
| |
| And there the exquisite campagna lies | |
| Dreaming what dreams of olden pomp and war, | |
| Of love and pain and joy that it has known! | |
| Sadder, perhaps, but dearer than of yore, | 40 |
| With wild-flowers overstrewn, like some loved grave; | |
| Its silent stretches haunted by vast trains | |
| Of ghostly shapes, where stalks majestical, | |
| Mid visionary pomp of vanished days, | |
| The buried grandeur of imperial Rome; | 45 |
| Moaned over by great winds that from the sea | |
| Sweep inland, and by wandering clouds of tears; | |
| How it lies throbbing there beneath the sun, | |
| So silent with its ruins on its breast! | |
| There, far Soracte on the horizon piles | 50 |
| Its lonely peak, and gazes on the sea; | |
| There Leonessa couches in repose, | |
| And stern Gennaro rears its purple ridge, | |
| And wears its ermine late into the spring. | |
| When all beneath is one vast lush of flowers, | 55 |
| And poppies paint whole acres with one sweep | |
| Of their rich scarlet, and entangling vines | |
| Shroud the low walls, and drop from arch to arch | |
| Of the far-running lessening aqueducts, | |
| On his broad shoulders still the imperial robe | 60 |
| Of winter hangs, and leashed within his caves | |
| The violent Tramontana lies in wait. * * * * * | |
| Hark! from the ilexes the nightingale | |
| Begins its beating prelude, like the throbs | |
| Of some quick heart, then pauses, then again | 65 |
| Bursts into fitful jets of gurgling song, | |
| Then beats again; and listen! rising now | |
| To its full rapture thrills the shadowy wood | |
| With the delirious passion of its voice; | |
| With dizzy trills, and low, deep, tearful notes, | 70 |
| And hurried heaping of voluptuous tones | |
| That, blent together in one intricate maze | |
| Of sweet inextricable melodies, | |
| Whirl on and up, and circling lift and lift, | |
| And burst at last in scattered showers of notes, | 75 |
| And leave us the sweet, silent afternoon. | |
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