The Portland daily press., 1875-01-22
POETRY.
Monte Casino.
BY HENRY W. LoNGFELLow.

Beautiful valley, through whose verdant meals
Unheard the Garigano glides along
The Iris nurse of rushes and OF reeds,
The river taciturn of classic song!
Tho land of Labor and the Land of Rest,
Where medieval towns are white on all
The hill-sides and where every mountain crest
lis an Etrurian OF Roman wall!
There is Alagna, where Pope Boniface
Was dragged with eontumely from his throne,
Sciarra CoOnna was that days disgrace
The pontiff's only, or in part thine own?
There is Ceprano, where renegade
Was each Apulan, 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 hoyers DER his birthplace like the crown
OF splendor over cities seen at night.
Doubled the splendor is, that in its streets
The angelic doctor as a school 10y played,
And dreamed perhaps the dreams that ne repeats
In ponderous folios for scholastics made.
And there uplifted like passing cloud
That pallses mountain summit high,
Monte Casinos convent rears It's PROUD
And venerable walls against the sky
Well remember how on foot climbed
The stony pathway leading to it's gate;
Above, the convent bells for vespers chimed;
Below, the darkening town grew desolate.
Well remember the low arch and dark,
The courtyard with its well, the terrace wide,
From which, far down, diminished TO park,
The valley yelled in mist was dlm descrleu.
The day was dying, and with feeble hands
Caressed the mountain tops; the wales between
Darkened; the river in the meadow lands
Sheathed itself as a sword and was not seen.
The silence of the place was like sleep,
So full of rest it seemed; each passing tread
Was 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, disguised with its vice and woe,
Sought in these mountain solitudes nome.
He founded here his Convent and his Rule
OF PRAYER and work, and counted work as prayer
His pen became a clarion, and mis- school
Flamed like beacon in the midnight air.
What though Roccaccio, in his reckless way
Mocking the lazy brotherhood, deplores
The illuminated manuscripts that lay
ETorn and neglected on the dusty floors?
Boccaccio was novelist, a child
Or fancy and of fiction at the best;
This the urbane librarian said, and smiled
1ncredulous, as at some idle jest.
Upon such themes as these with one young friar
/ 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 lay;
And as monk who hears the matin bell,
Started from sleep ;-already it was day.
From the high window beheld the scene
On which Saint Benedict SO oft had gazed;
The mountains and the valley in the sheeni
Of the bright sun, and stood as one amazed.
Gray msts were rolling, rising, vanishing;
The woodlands glstened with their jeweled crowns
Far of the mellow bells began to ring
For mathis in the halt-awakened towns.
The conflict of the Present and the Past,
The ideal and the actual in our life,
AS on a field of battle held me fast,
Where this world and the next world were at strife
For as the valley from its sleep awoke,
saw the iron horses of the steam
Toss to the morning air their plumes of smoke,
And woke as one awaketh from dream.
Atlantic MONTHLY.