And it seemed as we steered for the sunset that we passed through a twilight sea, From the gloom of a world forgotten to the light of a world to be. RENNELL RODD. MONTE CASSINO MONTE CASSINO BEAUTIFUL Valley! through whose verdant meads The Liris, nurse of rushes and of reeds, The Land of Labour and the Land of Rest, There is Alagna, where Pope Boniface Was dragged with contumely from his throne; Sciarra Colonna, was that day's disgrace The Pontiff's only, or in part thine own? There is Ceprano, where a renegade Was each Apulian, as great Dante saith, When Manfred by his men-at-arms betrayed Spurred on to Benevento and to death. There is Aquinum, the old Volscian town, Where Juvenal was born, whose lurid light Still hovers o'er his birthplace like the crown Of splendour seen o'er cities in the night. Doubled the splendour is, that in its streets The Angelic Doctor as a school-boy played, And dreamed perhaps the dreams, that he repeats In ponderous folios for scholastics made. And there, uplifted, like a passing cloud That pauses on a mountain summit high, Monte Cassino's convent rears its proud And venerable walls against the sky. Well I remember how on foot I climbed Well I remember the low arch and dark, The courtyard with its well, the terrace wide, From which far down the valley, like a park Veiled in the evening mists, was dim descried. The day was dying, and with feeble hands Caressed the mountains-tops; the vales between Darkened; the river in the meadow-lands Sheathed itself as a sword, and was not seen. The silence of the place was like a sleep, So full of rest it seemed; each passing tread Was a reverberation from the deep Recesses of the ages that are dead. For, more than thirteen centuries ago, He founded here his Convent and his Rule The pen became a clarion, and his school What though Boccaccio, in his reckless way, Boccaccio was a novelist, a child Of fancy and of fiction at the best! Upon such themes as these, with one young friar And then translated, in my convent cell, Started from sleep; already it was day. From the high window I beheld the scene Of the bright sun,-and stood as one amazed. Gray mists were rolling, rising, vanishing; crowns; Far off the mellow bells began to ring For matins in the half-awakened towns. The conflict of the Present and the Past, As on a field of battle held me fast, While this world and the next world were at strife. For, as the valley from its sleep awoke, I saw the iron horses of the steam Toss to the morning air their plumes of smoke, And woke, as one awaketh from a dream. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. |