Italian Scenery

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. Still in 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 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 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; 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, Mingling a silver current with that sea, Whose waters have no 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. 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 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 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 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-- Spearks a mysterious language to mine own, 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 Beneath the mantle of their shadows, rest. My spirit looks on earth. A heavnly voice Comes silently: 'Dreamer, is earth thy dwelling? Lo! Nursed within that fair and fruitful bosom, Which has sustained thy being, and within 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 Thrives in the damp and motionless atmosphere, Shall bring the dire and wasting pestilence, And blight they cheek. Dram thou of higher things: This world is not thy home!' And yet my eye Rests upon earth again. How beautiful, Where wild Velino heaves its sullen aves 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 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 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 luster lights the royal city, Where, with its proud tiara of dark towers, It sleeps upon its own romantic bay.