Far up from their wave home yonder the sea-winds

murmuring pass,

The branches quiver and creak and the lizard starts in the grass.

And we lay in the untrod moss and pillowed our cheeks with flowers,

While the sun went over our heads, and we took no count of the hours;

From the end of the waving branches and under the cloudless blue

Like sunbeams chained for a banner the threadlike gossamers flew.

And the joy of the woods came o'er us, and we felt that our world was young

With the gladness of years unspent and the sorrow of life unsung.

So we passed with a sound of singing along to the seaward way,

Where the sails of the fishermen folk came homeward over the bay;

For a cloud grew over the forest and darkened the sea-god's shrine,

And the hills of the silent city were only a ruby

line.

But the sun stood still on the waves as we passed from the fading shores,

And shone on our boat's red bulwarks and the

golden blades of the oars,

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
Unheard the Garigliano glides along;—

The Liris, nurse of rushes and of reeds,
The river taciturn of classic song.

The Land of Labour and the Land of Rest,
Where medieval towns are white on all
The hillsides, and where every mountain's crest
Is an Etrurian or a Roman wall.

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

The stony pathway leading to its gate; Above, the convent bells for vespers chimed,

Below, the darkening town grew desolate.

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,
Benedict fleeing from the gates of Rome,
A youth disgusted with its vice and woe,
Sought in these mountain solitudes a home.

He founded here his Convent and his Rule

Of prayer and work, and counted work as

prayer;

The pen became a clarion, and his school
Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air.

What though Boccaccio, in his reckless way,
Mocking the lazy brotherhood, deplores
The illuminated manuscripts, that lay
Torn and neglected on the dusty floors?

Boccaccio was a novelist, a child

Of fancy and of fiction at the best!
This the urbane librarian said, and smiled
Incredulous, as at some idle jest.

Upon such themes as these, with one young friar
I sat conversing late into the night,
Till in its cavernous chimney the wood-fire
Had burnt its heart out like an anchorite.

And then translated, in my convent cell,
Myself yet not myself, in dreams I lay;
And, as a monk who hears the matin bell,

Started from sleep; already it was day.