University of Virginia Library

SOLVILLE.

Spring, light-footed and young, has stolen a march on old Winter;
See here he comes on his way, scattering blossoms and buds.
Soft is the kiss of the sun; and the breeze which is laden with perfumes,
Stolen from meadows and woods, daintily kisses the cheek.
Such were the mornings of Solville, where spring was for ever the master;
Often I think of them now, under a different sky.
Often I think of them now, when old Winter bends over his embers,
Bloodless and shrunken and sad, warming his tremulous hands.
There, when in lands of the North, the dull leaden clouds lower heavy
Over the desolate plains, leafless and hard with the frost,
Softly the sun, all unclouded, looks down on an Eden of flowers,
Softly the calm tepid sea breaks on the sweet-scented shore.
There be the home of the greyish-green olive; the orange and citron,
Heavily weighted with gold, fill all the gardens around.
Aloes gigantic and fleshy, or hedges untrimmed of geranium,
Border the mountainous paths, where in the shade of a pine,
Reddish and scaly of trunk, or in that of a feathery date-palm,
Taking your seat on a stone, you can look down on the town
And on the placid blue sea, as it lies in its sunniness lake-like;
Over it swiftly, at times, hurries a ripple immense.
Yes, I think often of Solville, reviewing its numberless beauties,
Musing on years that are gone, calling old faces to mind.
Who has not got, at a distance, a world he no longer belongs to,
Doing without him, alas! only too easily now;
Some little world often thought of, but which now has forgotten him wholly,
Where, once for ever interred, lie the best years of his life?
If the occasion should happen to come, perhaps it is wiser
Not to revisit the place: let it belong to the past.
Sadness sufficient the echoes possess, which at intervals reach us,
When we expect it the least, waking up memories dead.
If from that world long forsaken, somebody suddenly dropping,
With the same face as of old, says to us, “What, is it you?”
Then there comes over us straightway a strange undefinable feeling,
Something which jars and is wrong, breaking the current of time,
Which every one of us feels, when, close by the side of the Present,
Sits uninvited the Past, old and familiar of face.
If he should mention some change, that new houses, for instance, are building,
Or that the trees have been felled, and that the aspect is changed,
Something like anger we feel, that strangers should venture to alter
That which is memory's own, taking its beauty away.
If he should tell us, by chance, that the children are children no longer,
Or that the elders are dead, or that new faces are there,
Quickly a sadness comes over the heart, and a sense that the river,
Which we call Time, has flowed on; none on its bosom can moor.