Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79.
Vallombrosa
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)A
Last June, beloved companion,—where sublime
The mountains live in holy families,
And the slow pine-woods ever climb and climb
Half up their breasts; just stagger as they seize
Some gray crag,—drop back with it many a time,
And straggle blindly down the precipice!
The Vallombrosan brooks were strewn as thick
That June-day, knee-deep, with dead beechen leaves,
As Milton saw them ere his heart grew sick,
And his eyes blind. I think the monks and beeves
Are all the same too: scarce they have changed the wick
On good St. Gualbert’s altar, which receives
The convent’s pilgrims; and the pool in front
Wherein the hill-stream trout are cast, to wait
The beatific vision, and the grunt
Used at refectory, keeps its weedy state,
To baffle saintly abbots, who would count
The fish across their breviary, nor ’bate
The measure of their steps. O waterfalls
And forests! sound and silence! mountains bare,
That leap up, peak by peak, and catch the palls
Of purple and silver mist, to rend and share
With one another, at electric calls
Of life in the sunbeams,—till we cannot dare
Fix your shapes, learn your number! we must think
Your beauty and your glory helped to fill
The cup of Milton’s soul so to the brink,
That he no more was thirsty when God’s will
Had shattered to his sense the last chain-link
By which he drew from Nature’s visible
The fresh well-water. Satisfied by this,
He sang of Adam’s Paradise and smiled,
Remembering Vallombrosa. Therefore is
The place divine to English man and child;—
We all love Italy.