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| OUR villa, perhaps, you never have seen; | |
| It lies on the slope of the Alban hill; | |
| Lifting its white face, sunny and still, | |
| Out of the olives’ pale gray green, | |
| That, far away as the eye can go, | 5 |
| Stretch up behind it, row upon row. | |
| There, in the garden, the cypresses, stirred | |
| By the sifting winds, half musing talk, | |
| And the cool, fresh, constant voice is heard | |
| Of the fountains spilling in every walk. | 10 |
| There stately the oleanders grow, | |
| And one long gray wall is aglow | |
| With golden oranges burning between | |
| Their dark stiff leaves of sombre green, | |
| And there are hedges all clipped and square, | 15 |
| As carven from blocks of malachite, | |
| Where fountains keep spinning their threads of light, | |
| And statues whiten the shadow there. | |
| And, if the sun too fiercely shine, | |
| And one would creep from its noonday glare, | 20 |
| There are galleries dark, where ilexes twine | |
| Their branchy roofs above the head. | |
| Or when at twilight the heats decline, | |
| If one but cross the terraces, | |
| And lean o’er the marble balustrade, | 25 |
| Between the vases whose aloes high | |
| Show their sharp pike-heads against the sky, | |
| What a sight—Madonna mia—he sees! | |
| There stretches our great campagna beneath, | |
| And seems to breathe a rosy breath | 30 |
| Of light and mist, as in peace it sleeps,— | |
| And summery thunder-clouds of rain, | |
| With their slanting spears, rim over the plain, | |
| And rush at the ruins, or, routed, fly | |
| To the mountains that lift their barriers high, | 35 |
| And stand with their purple pits of shades | |
| Split by the sharp-edged limestone blades, | |
| With opaline lights and tender grades | |
| Of color, that flicker and swoon and die, | |
| Built up like a wall against the sky. | 40 |
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