Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). Complete Poetical Works. 1893.
Birds of PassageFlight the Fourth. Monte Cassino
B
Unheard the Garigliano glides along;—
The Liris, nurse of rushes and of reeds,
The river taciturn of classic song.
Where mediæval towns are white on all
The hillsides, and where every mountain’s crest
Is an Etrurian or a Roman wall.
Was dragged with contumely from his throne;
Sciarra Colonna, was that day’s disgrace
The Pontiff’s only, or in part thine own?
Was each Apulian, as great Dante saith,
When Manfred by his men-at-arms betrayed
Spurred on to Benevento and to death.
Where Juvenal was born, whose lurid light
Still hovers o’er his birthplace like the crown
Of splendor seen o’er cities in the night.
The Angelic Doctor as a school-boy played,
And dreamed perhaps the dreams, that he repeats
In ponderous folios for scholastics made.
That pauses on a mountain summit high,
Monte Cassino’s convent rears its proud
And venerable walls against the sky.
The stony pathway leading to its gate;
Above, the convent bells for vespers chimed,
Below, the darkening town grew desolate.
The courtyard with its well, the terrace wide,
From which, far down, the valley like a park,
Veiled in the evening mists, was dim descried.
Caressed the mountain-tops; the vales between
Darkened; the river in the meadow-lands
Sheathed itself as a sword, and was not seen.
So full of rest it seemed; each passing tread
Was a reverberation from the deep
Recesses of the ages that are dead.
Benedict fleeing from the gates of Rome,
A youth disgusted with its vice and woe,
Sought in these mountain solitudes a home.
Of prayer and work, and counted work as prayer;
The pen became a clarion, and his school
Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air.
Mocking the lazy brotherhood, deplores
The illuminated manuscripts, that lay
Torn and neglected on the dusty floors?
Of fancy and of fiction at the best!
This the urbane librarian said, and smiled
Incredulous, as at some idle jest.
I sat conversing late into the night,
Till in its cavernous chimney the wood-fire
Had burnt its heart out like an anchorite.
Myself yet not myself, in dreams I lay,
And, as a monk who hears the matin bell,
Started from sleep;—already it was day.
On which Saint Benedict so oft had gazed,—
The mountains and the valley in the sheen
Of the bright sun,—and stood as one amazed.
The woodlands glistened with their jewelled crowns;
Far off the mellow bells began to ring
For matins in the half-awakened towns.
The ideal and the actual in our life,
As on a field of battle held me fast,
Where this world and the next world were at strife.
I saw the iron horses of the steam
Toss to the morning air their plumes of smoke,
And woke, as one awaketh from a dream.