Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79.
A Room in the Villa Taverna
By Frances Anne Kemble (1809–1893)T
One from the east, where o’er the Sabine hills
The sun first rose on the great Roman plain,
And shining o’er the garden, with its fountains,
Vine-trellises, and heaps of rosy bloom,
Struck on the glittering laurel-trees, that shone
With burnished golden leaves against my lattice.
One towards the north, close-screened with a dark wall
Of bay and ilex, with tall cypress-shafts
Piercing with graceful spires the limpid air,
Like delicate shadows in transparent water.
One towards the west,—above a sunny green,
Where merry black-eyed Tusculan maidens laid
The tawny woof to bleach between the rays
Of morning light and the bright morning dew.
There spread the graceful balustrade, and down
Swept the twin nights of steps, with their stone vases,
And thick-leaved aloes, like a growth of bronze,
To the broad court, where from a twilight cell,
A Naiad, crowned with tufts of trembling green
Sang towards the sunny palace all day long.