University of Virginia Library

ITALY.

A CONFERENCE.

A.
Why hast thou such a downward look of care,
As if thine eye refused the sweet communion
Of these enchanted skies? I cannot weary
In gazing on them, there is such a clearness
In the mid-noon; and then the calmer hours
Have such a glory round them, that I grow
Enamored of their clouds. O, they have caught
Their hues in heaven, and they come stealing to us
Like messengers of love, to kindle up
This volatile air. How light and thin it floats!
Methinks I now can pass into the depths
Of yon wide firmament, it lies so open
And shows so fair. The stars are hung below it,
And they are moving in a vacancy,
Like the poised eagle. How the studded moon,
All dropped with glittering points, rolls on its way
Between the pillowy clouds, and that which seems
A crystalline arch,—a dome that rests on air,
Buoyed by its lightness! Can thy heavy eyes
Still pore on the discolored earth, and choose
Their home in darkness? Something weighs upon thee
With no light burden, if thou hast no heart
To mingle with the beautiful world around thee.

B.
Thou talk'st of clouds and skies. Has the sweet face
Of Spring a power to charm away the fiends
That riot on the soul? Will the foul spirit
Go, when the cock crows, like a muttering ghost,
To find his kindred shades, and leave the heart
To gladden through the day? and dares he not
To fill it with his terrors when the sun
Is out in heaven? Is there a sovereign balm
In cloudless skies, and bright and glowing noons,
To make the spirit light, and drive from it
The moody madness and the listless sorrow?
I feel there is not. Something tells me, here,
There may be such a grief, that nothing earthly
Hath power to stay it. I too have a feeling,
How beautiful this clime! and though the native
Looks on it with a blank indifference,
To us who had our birth in clouded skies,
And reckoned it a bright and fortunate day
If the sun gave us but an hour at noon,
It is indeed a luxury to see
Whole days without a cloud, but these light shapes,
That float around us more like heavenly spirits,
They are so bright and wear such glorious hues,
Or hang so quietly, and look so pure,
When all is still at noon. O, I have felt
This luxury of sense, but yet it comes not
So far as here. The heart knows nothing of it;
And now that I have seen so many days,
All of an equal brightness, like the calm
That reigns, they say, perpetually in heaven,
Why, I grow weary of them, and my thoughts
Are on the past. Thou need'st no other answer.

A.
'T is not the barren luxury of sense
That makes me love these skies; but there is in them
A living spirit. I can feel it stealing
Even to my heart of hearts, and waking there
Feelings that never yet have stirred within me,
So blessed, that I almost weep to think
How poor my life without them. I now walk
In a glad company of happy visions,
And all the air seems like a dwelling-place
For glorious creatures. Like the shifting waves,
That toss on the white shore when evening breezes
Steal to the land in summer, they are floating
In airy trains around me. Now they come
Laughing on yonder mountain-side, a troop
Of jovial nymphs; and now they flit away
Round the far islands of the golden sea,
Islands of light that seem to hang in air,
Midway in heaven. No wonder they so love
The song and dance, and walk with such a look
Of thoughtless gayety,—the merry beggars,
Who breed like insects on these sunny shores,
And live as idly. There are glorious faces
Among them,—there are Roman spirits here,
And Grecian eyes that tell a thousand fancies,
Like those that shaped their deities, and wrought
Perfection. True, they have no stirring hopes
To lift them; yet at times they will give vent
To the o'erburdened soul, and then they speak
In oracles, or, like the harp of Memnon,
They utter poetry, as the bright skies
And wandering winds awake it. Who can wonder,
That every voice is bursting out in music,
And every peasant tunes his mandolin
To the delicious airs, that creep so softly
Into the slumbering ear! O, 't is a land
Where life is doubled, and a brighter world
Rolls over this, and there the spirit lives
In a gay paradise, and here we breathe
An atmosphere of roses!

B.
Yes,—but this
Is nothing to the heart. They never felt,
These summer flies, who buzz so gayly round us,
They never felt, one moment, what we feel
With such a silent tenderness, and keep
So closely round our hearts. We do not wake
The echoes with our loud and thoughtless carols,
Nor sit whole days beneath a bowering vine,
Singing its amber juice, and telling too
Of starry eyes, and soft and languishing looks,
And talking of our agonies with smiles,
Making a sport of sorrow. No, our year,
With its long time of gloom, and hurried days
Of warmth, that call for more of toil than pleasure,—
Our pensive year forbids the wandering spirit
To make itself a song-bird. We must keep
Our sorrows and our hopes close cherished by us,
Till the heart softens, and by often musing
Takes a deep, serious tone, and has a feeling
For all that suffer. So we often bear
A grief that is the burden of a life,
And will not leave us. Something that would seem
Too trifling to be laughed at here will weigh
And weigh upon us, till we cannot lift it,
And then we pine and die. Her heart is broken,
And the worm feeds upon her early roses,
And now her lily fades, and all its brightness
Turns to a green and sallow melancholy,
And then we strew her grave; but here the passion
Breaks out in wildness, then is sung away
With a complaining air, and so is ended.
I have no sympathy with such light spirits,
But I can see my sober countrymen
Gather around their winter's hearth, and read
Of no unreal suffering, and then weep
Big tears that ease the heart, and need no words
To make their meaning known. One silent hour
Of deep and thoughtful feeling stands me more
Than a whole age of such a heartless mirth,
As a bright summer wakens.