The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1875-02-05

Monte Casino.

Beautiful valley, through whose verdant meads
Unheard the Garigliano glides along,
The Liris, nurse of PUSHES and of reeds
The river tacturn of classic song
The Land of Labor, and the Land of Rest,
Where medieval towns are white on all
The hillsdes, and where every mountain crest
liz an Etrurian or u Roman wall
There is Alagna, where Pope Boniface
Was dragged with contumely from his throne,
Sciarra Colonna, was that days disgrace
The Pontifis only, or in part thine own?
There in Ceprano, where a renegade
Was each Apulian, great Dante saith,
When Manfred, by his men-at-arIns betrayed,
Spurrea on TO Beneyento and to death.
There is Aquinuip, the old volscian town
Where Juyenal was born, whose lurid light
still hovers DER his birthplace like the crown
or spendor over cities seen at night.
Doubled the splendor is, that in its streets
The Angelic Doctor a school-boy played,
And dreamed, perhaps, the dream that he repeats
In pOndrous iolios for scholastics MADE.
An there, uplifted like passing cloud
That pauses on a mountain summit high,
Monte Casinos convent rears its proud
And venerable walls against the sky.
Well remember how foot climbed
The stony pathway leading 10 its gate;
Above, the convent bells for vespers chimed;
Below, the darkening town grew desolate.
We'll remember the low arch and dark,
The courtyard with its WELL the terrace wiae,
From which, far down, diminished to park,
The valley yelled in mist was ann descrleo.
Tho day was dying, and, with feeble hands,
Caressed the mountain-tops; the wales Dttween
Darkened; the river in the meadow-anus
Sheathed itself as a sword ana was hol scch'
The silence of the place was like sleep, ..,
SO full of rest il seemed; each passing tread
Mas "A rcyerbcratlOn 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 Disguised with its vice and woe,
Sought in these mountain sohtudes nome.
He founded here his Convent and his rule
OF prayer and work, and counted work as prayer
His pen became clarion, and his school
Planned like a beacon IN the midnight ar
What though Boccacco, in his reckless way
Mocking the lazy brotherhood, deplores
The illuminated manuscript that lay
Torn and neglected on the dusty floors?
Boccacco was a novelist, child
OF fancy and of fiction at the best;
This the urbane librarian said, and smiled
Increduous, as at some idle jest.
Upon such themes as these with one young friar
| sat conyersing late into the night,
Till in its cayernous 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 lay;
And a monk who hears the matin bell,
Started from sleep ALREADY ii was day.
From the high window bohed the scene
On which Saint Benedict so oft had gazed
The mountains and the valley in the sheen
OF the bright sun, and stood Us one amazed.
Gray msts rolling, rising, vanishing;
The woodlands glistened with their ieweled crowns
Far oil the mellow bells began TO ring
For mathis in the half-awakened towns.
The conflict of the Present and the Past,
The ideal and the actual in our life,
As IA field of battle held me fast,
Where this world and the next world were at strife
For, a valley from its sleep awoke,
| saw the iron horses of the steam
Toss to the morning air their plumes of smoke,
And woke one awaketh from "A dream
-iHdHtic Monthly .tOr February.