The Finding of The Book and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Two sunny winter days I sped along
The Riviera's winding mountain way;
Scarcely I caught the blue sea's faint far song,
By terraced hill and olive-shaded bay.

Far off the Alpine snow's eternal line
Stretch'd over hills with wondrous curves cut well,
Against the iridescent dome divine,
The cupola of light ineffable.

They say thought loses 'neath the Italian heaven
The mortal languor of its modern scorn;
That England's passionless pilgrims may be given
An ampler soul beneath an ampler morn.

Would it were thus! In sooth it may be so,
Yet well I ween, my littleness I bore
In sight of the imperishable snow,
In presence of the glory of that shore,—

Selfish before that purity without end,
Faith's eye ungifted with a sight more keen,
What time the outward eye had fullest kenn'd
Those long deep distances of lustrous sheen.

False where our God so many a secret writes
In lovely syllables for souls elect,
Here, where the very winter half his nights
In gardens sleeps of roses not undeck'd.

If he have wrinkles, they are greenly hid;
If murmurings, they are tuned to silver seas;
And any dimness from his brow is chid
By the gold lamps of all the orange-trees.

And so we came to that world-famous sweep
Where, on her amphitheatre of hill,
Old Genoa looks superbly on the deep,
As if she held her own Columbus still;

As if toward Africa, at close of day,
Her galleys headed under press of sail,
And brave old Admiral Doria, grim and gray,
Watch'd from the terraces their golden trail,

And to the gentle girl who paced beside
Told tales of sinking ships and war-clouds dun,
Until he heard again the hurrying tide
And the long growling of the battle-gun.

Yet still, through all the witchery of the clime,
My heart felt burden'd with its former pain;
I asked for something beyond reach of time
To make me for a little young again.

Nor ask'd in vain,—for wandering here and there
To see the pictures with an idle heart,
Above the red Palazzo's marble stair
I own'd the magic of old Vandyck's art.

Be still, and let me gaze—a noble child
Upon the Master's canvas here I see:
Surely two hundred summer suns have smiled
Italian light, young Brignola, on thee.

The light that makes such violets divine,
And hangs such roses on the haunted soil,
And spheres such flashes in the flask of wine,
And fills the olive with such golden oil.

The light, too, that makes hearts with living chords
Too fine for happiness—that never fails
To ripen lives too richly—whence the words
Of all those strange pathetic passion tales.

But thou, immortal child! with those dark eyes,
And that proud brow—I will not call it white,—
A something rather like the snow that lies
Between dark clouds and the unclouded light.

I know not, will not ask what was thy fate—
Whether thou laughedst in this very spot,
Then wentest forth in beauty with thy mate,
A fair adventure and a gentle lot.

Whether with intermingling gleam and gloom
Thy shadows and thy sunshine did rain down,
Like that sweet lady in the other room,
Thy sister with the gold on her green gown.

Whether thou livedst till the winter came,
And the calm with it that life's spring denies,
Retaining only of thy present frame
The unextinguish'd light of those full eyes.

Whether thou lovedst, and the winds of heaven
Blew favourably,—and, thy moon-touch'd sail
Glimm'ring into the dark, to thee was given
The voyage of a little fairy tale.

Whether thou lovedst—after that forlorn
Tasting the bitter out of human sweet,
Thy forehead pierced with some acanthus-thorn,
The cruel thistles stabbing all thy feet,

Till, as befalls in this strange land of thine,
Where prayer and passion, earth and heav'n so mix,
A mournful thing thou fledd'st to love divine,
And found'st a bridegroom in the crucifix.

But as it is, thou standest here for aye,
Type of the gracious childhood of the South,
Thy dark hair never fleck'd with threads of gray,
No channell'd lines under thy perfect mouth.

Thou hast no grief, no selfishness at all.
Possessing all of beauty but its scorn,
Thou floatest smilingly outside the Fall,
Unsuffering, unsinning, unforlorn.

I cannot question thee,—if thou couldst speak,
Thy soft Italian would but touch mine ears
As if a sweet wind beat upon my cheek
Through the dim light a rain of flowers and tears.

Enough that, wrought by Vandyck's master hand,
I see thy beauty by an inward sight,
And in a better language understand
Thy childhood's inextinguishable light.