| |
| NIGHT rests in beauty on Mont Alto. | |
| Beneath its shade the beauteous Arno sleeps | |
| In Vallombrosa’s bosom, and dark trees | |
| Bend with a calm and quiet shadow down | |
| Upon the beauty of that silent river. | 5 |
| |
| Still the west a melancholy smile | |
| Mantles the lips of day, and twilight pale | |
| Moves like a spectre in the dusky sky, | |
| While eve’s sweet star on the fast-fading year | |
| Smiles calmly. Music steals at intervals | 10 |
| Across the water, with a tremulous swell, | |
| From out the upland dingle of tall firs; | |
| And a faint footfall sounds, where, dim and dark, | |
| Hangs the gray willow from the river’s brink, | |
| O’ershadowing its current. Slowly there | 15 |
| The lover’s gondola drops down the stream, | |
| Silent, save when its dipping oar is heard, | |
| Or in its eddy sighs the rippling wave. | |
| Mouldering and moss-grown through the lapse of years | |
| In motionless beauty stands the giant oak; | 20 |
| Whilst those that saw its green and flourishing youth | |
| Are gone and are forgotten. Soft the fount, | |
| Whose secret springs the star-light pale discloses, | |
| Gushes in hollow music; and beyond | |
| The broader river sweeps its silent way, | 25 |
| Mingling a silver current with that sea, | |
| Whose waters have not tides, coming nor going. | |
| On noiseless wing along that fair blue sea | |
| The halcyon flits; and, where the wearied storm | |
| Left a loud moaning, all is peace again. | 30 |
| |
| A calm is on the deep. The winds that came | |
| O’er the dark sea-surge with a tremulous breathing, | |
| And mourned on the dark cliff where weeds grew rank, | |
| And to the autumnal death-dirge the deep sea | |
| Heaved its long billows, with a cheerless song | 35 |
| Have passed away to the cold earth again, | |
| Like a wayfaring mourner. Silently | |
| Up from the calm sea’s dim and distant verge, | |
| Full and unveiled, the moon’s broad disk emerges. | |
| On Tivoli, and where the fairy hues | 40 |
| Of autumn glow upon Abruzzi’s woods, | |
| The silver light is spreading. Far above, | |
| Encompassed with their thin, cold atmosphere, | |
| The Apennines uplift their snowy brows, | |
| Glowing with colder beauty, where unheard | 45 |
| The eagle screams in the fathomless ether, | |
| And stays his wearied wing. Here let us pause. | |
| The spirit of these solitudes—the soul | |
| That dwells within these steep and difficult places— | |
| Speaks a mysterious language to mine own, | 50 |
| And brings unutterable musings. Earth | |
| Sleeps in the shades of nightfall, and the sea | |
| Spreads like a thin blue haze beneath my feet; | |
| Whilst the gray columns and the mouldering tombs | |
| Of the Imperial City, hidden deep | 55 |
| Beneath the mantle of their shadows, rest. | |
| |
| My spirit looks on earth. A heavenly voice | |
| Comes silently: “Dreamer, is earth thy dwelling? | |
| Lo! nursed within that fair and fruitful bosom, | |
| Which has sustained thy being, and within | 60 |
| The colder breast of Ocean, lie the germs | |
| Of thine own dissolution! E’en the air, | |
| That fans the clear blue sky, and gives thee strength, | |
| Up from the sullen lake of mouldering reeds, | |
| And the wide waste of forest, where the osier | 65 |
| Thrives in the damp and motionless atmosphere, | |
| Shall bring the dire and wasting pestilence, | |
| And blight thy cheek. Dream thou of higher things: | |
| This world is not thy home!” And yet my eye | |
| Rests upon earth again. How beautiful, | 70 |
| Where wild Velino heaves its sullen waves | |
| Down the high cliff of gray and shapeless granite, | |
| Hung on the curling mist, the moonlight bow | |
| Arches the perilous river! A soft light | |
| Silvers the Albanian mountains, and the haze | 75 |
| That rests upon their summits mellows down | |
| The austerer features of their beauty. Faint | |
| And dim-discovered glow the Sabine hills; | |
| And, listening to the sea’s monotonous shell, | |
| High on the cliffs of Terracina stands | 80 |
| The castle of the royal Goth in ruins. | |
| |
| But night is in her wane: day’s early flush | |
| Glows like a hectic on her fading cheek, | |
| Wasting its beauty. And the opening dawn | |
| With cheerful lustre lights the royal city, | 85 |
| Where, with its proud tiara of dark towers, | |
| It sleeps upon its own romantic bay. | |
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