He wont to hold companionship so free,
So pure, so fraught with knowledge and delight,
As to be likened in his followers' minds
To that which our first parents, ere the fall
From their high state darkened the earth with fear,
Held with all kinds in Eden's blissful bowers.
Then question not that, 'mid the austere band, Who breathe the air he breathed, tread where he trod,
Some true partakers of his loving spirit
Do still survive, and, with those gentle hearts
Consorted, others, in the power, the faith,
Of a baptized imagination, prompt
To catch from Nature's humblest monitors
Whate'er they bring of impulses sublime.
Thus sensitive must be the monk, though pale
With fasts, with vigils worn, depressed by years,
Whom in a sunny glade I chanced to see,
Upon a pine-tree's storm-uprooted trunk,
Seated alone, with forehead skyward-raised,
Hands clasped above the crucifix he wore
Appended to his bosom, and lips closed
By the joint pressure of his musing mood
And habit of his vow. That ancient Man,
Nor haply less the brother whom I marked,
As we approached the convent gate, aloft
Looking far forth from his aërial cell,
A young ascetic, poet, hero, sage,
He might have been, lover belike he was
If they received into a conscious ear
The notes whose first faint greeting startled me,
Whose sedulous iteration thrilled with joy
My heart, may have been moved like me to think,
Ah! not like me who walk in the world's ways,
On the great prophet, styled the voice of one
Crying amid the wilderness, and given,
Now that their snows must melt, their herbs and
Revive, their obstinate winter pass away,
That awful name to thee, thee, simple cuckoo,
Wandering in solitude, and evermore
Foretelling and proclaiming, ere thou leave
This thy last haunt beneath Italian skies
To carry thy glad tidings over heights
Still loftier, and to climes more near the Pole.
Voice of the desert, fare-thee-well; sweet bird!
If that substantial title please thee more,
Farewell! but go thy way, no need hast thou
Of a good wish sent after thee; from bower
To bower as green, from sky to sky as clear,
Thee gentle breezes waft or airs that meet
Thy course and sport around thee softly fan
Till night, descending upon hill and vale,
Grants to thy mission a brief term of silence,
And folds thy pinions up in blest repose.
AT THE CONVENT OF CAMALDOLI
GRIEVE for the man who hither came bereft,
And seeking consolation from above;
Nor grieve the less that skill to him was left
To paint this picture of his lady-love:
Can she, a blessèd saint, the work approve?
And O, good brethren of the cowl, a thing
So fair, to which with peril he must cling,
Destroy in pity, or with care remove.
That bloom, those eyes, can they assist to bind
Thoughts that would stray from Heaven?
To be; by faith, not sight, his soul must live;
Else will the enamoured monk too surely find
How wide a space can part from inward peace
The most profound repose his cell can give.
The world forsaken, all its busy cares
And stirring interests shunned with desperate flight,
All trust abandoned in the healing might
Of virtuous action; all that courage dares,
Labour accomplishes, or patience bears,
Those helps rejected, they, whose minds perceive
How subtly works man's weakness, sighs may heave
For such a one beset with cloistral snares.
Father of mercy! rectify his view,
If with his vows this object ill agree;
Shed over it thy grace, and so subdue
Imperious passion in a heart set free:
That earthly love may to herself be true,
Give him a soul that cleaveth unto thee.
AT THE EREMITE OR UPPER CONVENT OF CAMALDOLI
WHAT aim had they, the pair of monks, in size.
Enormous, dragged, while side by side they sate,
By panting steers up to this convent gate?
How, with empurpled cheeks and pampered eyes
Dare they confront the lean austerities
Of brethren who, here fixed, on Jesu wait
In sackcloth, and God's anger deprecate
Through all that humbles flesh and mortifies?
Strange contrast! verily the world of dreams,
Where mingle, as for mockery combined,
Things in their very essences at strife,
Shows not a sight incongruous as the extremes
That everywhere, before the thoughtful mind,
Meet on the solid ground of waking life.
Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where Etrurian shades
High over-arch'd embower. -Paradise Lost,
“VALLOMBROSA—I longed in thy shadiest wood
To slumber, reclined on the moss-covered floor!"
Fond wish that was granted at last, and the flood,
That lulled me asleep, bids me listen once more.
Its murmur how soft! as it falls down the steep,
Near that cell, yon sequestered retreat high in air,
Where our Milton was wont lonely vigils to keep
For converse with God, sought through study and
prayer.
The monks still repeat the tradition with pride,
And its truth who shall doubt? for his Spirit is here;
In the cloud-piercing rocks doth her grandeur abide,
In the pines pointing heavenward her beauty austere;
In the flower-besprent meadows his genius we trace
Turned to humbler delights, in which youth might
confide,
That would yield him fit help while prefiguring that place
Where, if sin had not entered, love never had died.
When with life lengthened out came a desolate time,
And darkness and danger had compassed him round,
With a thought he would flee to these haunts of his
prime,
And here once again a kind shelter be found.
And let me believe that when nightly the muse
Did waft him to Sion, the glorified hill,
Here also, on some favoured height, he would choose
To wander, and drink inspiration at will.
Vallombrosa! of thee I first heard in the page
Of that holiest of bards, and the name for my
mind
Had a musical charm, which the winter of age
And the changes it brings had no power to unbind.
And now, ye Miltonian shades! under you
I repose, nor am forced from sweet fancy to part, While your leaves I behold and the brooks they will strew,
And the realised vision is clasped to my heart.
Even so, and unblamed, we rejoice as we may
In forms that must perish, frail objects of sense;
Unblamed if the soul be intent on the day
When the Being of Beings shall summon her hence.
For he and he only with wisdom is blest
Who, gathering true pleasures wherever they grow.
Looks up in all places, for joy or for rest,
To the fountain whence time and eternity flow.
UNDER the shadow of a stately pile,
The dome of Florence, pensive and alone,
Nor giving heed to aught that passed the while,
I stood, and gazed upon a marble stone,
The laurelled Dante's favourite seat. A throne,
In just esteem, it rivals; though no style
Be there of decoration to beguile
The mind, depressed by thought of greatness flown.
As a true man, who long had served the lyre,
I gazed with earnestness, and dared no more.
But in his breast the mighty poet bore
A patriot's heart, warm with undying fire.
Bold with the thought, in reverence I sate down,
And, for a moment, filled that empty throne.
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