Not afraid of Bellini nor Auber, Who, when the priest's hoarse,
Will strike us up something that's brisk For the feast's second course.
And then will the flaxen-wigged Image
Through the plain, while in gallant procession The priests mean to stomp.
And all round the glad church lie old bottles With gunpowder stopped,
Which will be, when the Image reënters,
And at night, from the crest of Calvano Great bonfires will hang,
On the plain will the trumpets join chorus,
And more poppers bang!
At all events, come
As far as the wall,
See me tap with a hoe on the plaster Till out there shall fall
A scorpion with wide angry nippers!
Fortù, in my England at home,
Men meet gravely to-day
And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws Is righteous and wise, -
If 'tis proper, Scirocco should vanish In black from the skies!
Of a land beyond the sea,
Where the waves and mountains meet, Where amid her mulberry trees,
Sits Amalfi in the heat,
Bathing ever her white feet In the tideless summer seas.
In the middle of the town, From its fountain in the hills, Tumbling through the narrow gorge, The Canneto rushes down,
Turns the great wheels of the mills, Lifts the hammers of the forge.
'Tis a stairway, not a street, That ascends the deep ravine, Where the torrent leaps between Rocky walls that almost meet. Toiling up from stair to stair Peasant girls their burdens bear, Sunburnt daughters of the soil, Stately figures tall and straight, What inexorable fate
Dooms them to this life of toil?
Lord of vineyards and of lands, Far above the convent stands.
On its terraced walk aloof
Leans a monk with folded hands, Placid, satisfied, serene,
Looking down upon the scene Over wall and red-tiled roof; Wondering unto what good end All this toil and traffic tend,
And why all men cannot be
Free from care and free from pain, And the sordid love of gain, And as indolent as he.
Where are now the freighted barks From the marts of east and west? Where the knights in iron sarks Journeying to the Holy Land, Glove of steel upon the hand, Cross of crimson on the breast?
Where the pomp of camp and court? Where the pilgrims with their prayers? Where the merchants with their wares, And their gallant brigantines Sailing safely into port
Chased by corsair Algerines?
Vanished like a fleet of cloud, Like a passing trumpet-blast, Are those splendors of the past, And the commerce and the crowd! Fathoms deep beneath the seas
Lie the ancient wharves and quays, Swallowed by the engulfing waves; Silent streets and vacant halls, Ruined roofs and towers and walls; Hidden from all mortal eyes Deep the sunken city lies: Even cities have their graves!
This is an enchanted land! Round the headlands far away Sweeps the blue Salernian bay With its sickle of white sand: Further still and furthermost On the dim discovered coast Paestum with its ruins lies, And its roses all in bloom Seem to tinge the fatal skies Of that lonely land of doom.
On his terrace, high in air, Nothing doth the good monk care For such worldly themes as these. From the garden just below Little puffs of perfume blow, And a sound is in his ears Of the murmur of the bees In the shining chestnut trees: Nothing else he heeds or hears. All the landscape seems to swoon In the happy afternoon;
Slowly o'er his senses creep The encroaching waves of sleep, And he sinks as sank the town, Unresisting, fathoms down, Into caverns cool and deep!
Walled about with drifts of snow, Hearing the fierce north-wind blow, Seeing all the landscape white, And the river cased in ice, Comes this memory of delight, Comes this vision unto me Of a long-lost Paradise
In the land beyond the sea.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
FROM my youth upward have I longed to
This classic ground. And am I here at last? Wandering at will through the long porticoes, And catching, as through some majestic grove, Now the blue ocean, and now, chaos-like, Mountains and mountain-gulfs, and, half-way up, Towns like the living rock from which they grew? Samuel Rogers.
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