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(Excerpt)
ERE from thy calm seclusion parted, | |
| O fairest village of the plain! | |
| The thoughts that here to life have started | |
| Draw me to Nature’s heart again. | |
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| The tasselled maize, full grain or clover, | 5 |
| Far o’er the level meadow grows, | |
| And through it, like a wayward rover, | |
| The noble river gently flows. | |
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| Majestic elms, with trunks unshaken | |
| By all the storms an age can bring, | 10 |
| Trail sprays whose rest the zephyrs waken, | |
| Yet lithesome with the juice of spring. | |
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| By sportive airs the foliage lifted, | |
| Each green leaf shows its white below, | |
| As foam on emerald waves is drifted, | 15 |
| Their tints alternate come and go. * * * * * | |
| And when the distant mountain ranges | |
| In moonlight or blue mist are clad, | |
| Oft memory all the landscape changes, | |
| And pensive thoughts are blent with glad. | 20 |
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| For then, as in a dream Elysian, | |
| Val d’Arno’s fair and loved domain | |
| Seems, to my rapt yet waking vision, | |
| To yield familiar charms again. | |
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| Save that for dome and turret hoary, | 25 |
| Amid the central valley lies | |
| A white church-spire unknown to story, | |
| And smoke-wreaths from a cottage rise. | |
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| On Holyoke’s summit woods are frowning, | |
| No line of cypresses we see, | 30 |
| Nor convent old with beauty crowning | |
| The heights of sweet Fiesole. * * * * * | |
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