| |
| THE NEXT day we took train to Italy | |
| And fled on southward in the roar of steam. | |
| The marriage-bells of Romney must be loud, | |
| To sound so clear through all: I was not well, | |
| And truly, though the truth is like a jest, | 5 |
| I could not choose but fancy, half the way, | |
| I stood alone i’ the belfry, fifty bells | |
| Of naked iron, mad with merriment, | |
| (As one who laughs and cannot stop himself) | |
| All clanking at me, in me, over me, | 10 |
| Until I shrieked a shriek I could not hear, | |
| And swooned with noise,—but still, along my swoon, | |
| Was ’ware the baffled changes backward rang, | |
| Prepared, at each emerging sense, to beat | |
| And crash it out with clangour. I was weak; | 15 |
| I struggled for the posture of my soul | |
| In upright consciousness of place and time, | |
| But evermore, ’twixt waking and asleep, | |
| Slipped somehow, staggered, caught at Marion’s eyes | |
| A moment, (it is very good for strength | 20 |
| To know that some one needs you to be strong) | |
| And so recovered what I called myself, | |
For that time.
I just knew it when we swept | |
| Above the old roofs of Dijon: Lyons dropped | |
| A spark into the night, half trodden out | 25 |
| Unseen. But presently the winding Rhone | |
| Washed out the moonlight large along his banks | |
| Which strained their yielding curves out clear and clean | |
| To hold it,—shadow of town and castle blurred | |
| Upon the hurrying river. Such an air | 30 |
| Blew thence upon the forehead,—half an air | |
| And half a water,—that I leaned and looked, | |
| Then, turning back on Marion, smiled to mark | |
| That she looked only on her child, who slept, | |
His face toward the moon too.
So we passed | 35 |
| The liberal open country and the close, | |
| And shot through tunnels, like a lightening-wedge | |
| By great Thor-hammers driven through the rock, | |
| Which, quivering through the intestine blackness, splits | |
| And lets it in at once: the train swept in | 40 |
| Athrob with effort, trembling with resolve, | |
| The fierce denouncing whistle wailing on | |
| And dying off smothered in the shuddering dark, | |
| While we, self-awed, drew troubled breath, oppressed | |
| As other Titans underneath the pile | 45 |
| And nightmare of the mountains. Out, at last, | |
| To catch the dawn afloat upon the land! | |
| —Hills, slung forth broadly and gauntly everywhere, | |
| Not crampt in their foundations, pushing wide | |
| Rich outspreads of the vineyards and the corn, | 50 |
| (As if the entertained i’ the name of France) | |
| While, down their straining sides, streamed manifest | |
| A soil as red as Charlemagne’s knightly blood, | |
| To consecrate the verdure. Some one said, | |
| ‘Marseilles!’ And lo, the city of Marseilles, | 55 |
| With all her ships behind her, and beyond, | |
| The scimitar of ever-shining sea | |
| For right-hand use, bared blue against the sky! | |
| |
| That night we spent between the purple heaven | |
| And purple water: I think Marian slept; | 60 |
| But I, as a dog a-watch for his master’s foot, | |
| Who cannot sleep or eat before he hears, | |
| I sate upon the deck and watched the night | |
| And listened through the stars for Italy. | |
| Those marriage-bells I spoke of, sounded far, | 65 |
| As some child’s go-cart in the street beneath | |
| To a dying man who will not pass the day, | |
| And knows it, holding by a hand he loves. | |
| I too sate quiet, satisfied with death, | |
| Sate silent: I could hear my own soul speak, | 70 |
| And had my friend,—for Nature comes sometimes | |
| And says, “I am ambassador for God.” | |
| I felt the wind soft from the land of souls; | |
| The old miraculous mountains heaved in sight, | |
| One straining past another along the shore, | 75 |
| The way of grand dull Odyssean ghosts, | |
| Athirst to drink the cool blue wine of seas | |
| And stare on voyagers. Peak pushing peak | |
| They stood: I watched, beyond that Tyrian belt | |
| Of intense sea betwixt them and the ship, | 80 |
| Down all their sides the misty olive-woods | |
| Dissolving in the weak congenial moon | |
| And still disclosing some brown convent-tower | |
| That seems as if it grew from some brown rock, | |
| Or many a little lighted village, dropt | 85 |
| Like a fallen star upon so high a point, | |
| You wonder what can keep it in its place | |
| From sliding headlong with the waterfalls | |
| Which powder all the myrtle and orange groves | |
| With spray of silver. Thus my Italy | 90 |
| Was stealing on us. Genoa broke with day, | |
| The Doria’s long pale palace striking out, | |
| From green hills in advance of the white town, | |
| A marble finger dominant to ships, | |
| Seen glimmering through the uncertain gray of dawn. * * * * * | 95 |
| Truth, so far, in my book! a truth which draws | |
| From all things upward. I, Aurora, still | |
| Have felt it hound me through the wastes of life | |
| As Jove did Io; and, until that Hand | |
| Shall overtake me wholly and on my head | 100 |
| Lay down its large unfluctuating peace, | |
| The feverish gad-fly pricks me up and down. | |
| It must be. Art’s the witness of what Is | |
| Behind this show. If this world’s show were all, | |
| Then imitation would be all in Art; | 105 |
| There, Jove’s hand gripes us!—For we stand here, we, | |
| If genuine artists, witnessing for God’s | |
| Complete, consummate, undivided work; | |
| —That every natural flower which grows on earth | |
| Implies a flower upon the spiritual side, | 110 |
| Substantial, archetypal, all a-glow | |
| With blossoming causes,—not so far away, | |
| But we, whose spirit-sense is somewhat cleared, | |
| May catch at something of the bloom and breath,— | |
| Too vaguely apprehended, though indeed | 115 |
| Still apprehended, consciously or not, | |
| And still transferred to picture, music, verse, | |
| For thrilling audient and beholding souls | |
| By signs and touches which are known to souls. | |
| How known, they know not,—why, they cannot find, | 120 |
| So straight call out on genius, say, “A man | |
| Produced this,” when much rather they should say, | |
| “’T is insight, and he saw this.”… | |
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