The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1875-02-11
MONTE CASINO.
BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOw,

| BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOw.
Beautiful valley, through whose verdant meads
Unheard the GariglianO glides along
The Liris, nurse OF PUSHES and of reeds,
The river taciturn Of classic song
The Land of Labor, and the Land Of Rest,
Where medieval towns are white on all
The hill-sides, and where every mountain crest
Is an Etrurian or Roman wall!
There is Alagna, where Pope Boniface
Was dragged with contumely from his throne
Sclarra Colonna was that day disgrace
The Pontitf's only, or in part thine own?
There is Ceprano, where renegade
Was each Apullan, as great Dante saith,
When Manfred, by his men, arms betrayed,
Spurred on to Benevento and to death.
| There is Aquinum, the cid Voscian town
Where Juyenal was born, whose urid light
Still hovers DER his birthplace like the crown
OF splendor over cities seen at night.
Doubled the splendor is that in it's streets
The Angelic Doctor as school-boy played,
And dreamed, perhaps, the dreams that h
. repeats
In ponderous folios for scholastics made.
And there, uplfted like passing cloud
That pauses on mountain summit high,
Monte Casinos convent rears its proud
And venerable walls against the sky.
Well remember how ON foot 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, diminished to park
ha val cd mix or
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 sword and was not SEEM
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 it's vice and woe,
Sought in these mountain solitudes home.
He founded here his Convent and his Rule
VI prayer and work, and counted work as
prayer.
His zen became Carton, and his school
Flamed like beacon in the midnight air.
Jpon such themes as these with one young friar
sat conversing late into the night.
III IN its cavernous chimney the wood fire
Had burntits heart out like an anchorite.
md then translated, in my convent cell,
Myself yet not myself, in dreams lay;
Ind, as monk who he ars the matin bell,
Started from sleep-already it was day.
from the high window beheld the scene
On which st. Benedict so oft had gazed.
The mountains and the valley in the sheen
OF the bright sun, and stood as one amazed,
Tray mists were rolling, rising, vanishing;
The woodland glistened with their ieweled
crowns;
ar of the mellow bells began to ring
For mathis in the halfawakened towns.
he conflict of the Present and the Past,
The ideal and the actual life,
s on field of battle held me fast.
Where this world and the next world were at
strife.
or, as the valley from it's sleep awoke,
l saw the iron horses of the steam
oss to the morning air their plumes of smoke.
And woke as one waketh from dream
ANdntic lMonttlu