A DAY IN TUSCANY
I
I knew the Rucellai had choice of villas:
This day has proved it, this thrice happy day
Stolen from care, and many a saddened thought.
Have we not seen, we wanderers from afar,
Fountained Caneto, standing watch and ward
Over Bisenzio's lovely, curving vale!—
Caneto, olive-cinctured, cypress-crowned,
And wreathed in vine; Caneto, whose high hall
Bears record of a proud and noble race,
Friendly to art and letters (Cimabue
Be witness paramount; and the brave front
Of Santa Maria Novella; the Academe
That in the Garden of the Rucellai
Relit the Athenian fire!). Yes, Edith dear,
I love Caneto well, but well I love
This “Villa of the Little Fields,” that hides
Embowered among its farms; in rose and lilac
Radiant and scented like an April bride;
'Mid busy sounds secluded and remote.
But most I love this tower you call my own,
This musing tower that wins the soul to song,
From whose four windows, see! the Apennines
Make a walled paradise of Tuscany.
II
Beyond the ilex-dome, against the west,
The sunset sky was crimson: “Then,” you say,
“Fair is to-morrow, if the sky was red.”
“Fair is to-morrow”? O, to-morrow fair
That wakes me from this dream?—Here from my tower
One planet marks where Prato lies below,
And yonder, through the tender gray and green
Of the high-branching plane-tree, shines a light
Betwixt the earth and heaven—a lure that means
Florence, and all its wonder; now, ah, now
The hour draws nigh when Italy once more
To me is of the past, a thought, a passion,
But all ungrasped of sense.
And what is that our Cosimo has said?
“To-day the nightingales have come.”—Have come?
And I, tho' listening long, and with my soul,
I have not heard one tone.
In the Tower at Campi Bisenzio.
