Monte Cassino, Terra di Lavoro

Beautiful valley! through whose verdant meadsUnheard the Garigliano glides along;--The Liris, nurse of rushes and of reeds,The river taciturn of classic song.

The Land of Labor and the Land of Rest,Where mediaeval towns are white on allThe hillsides, and where every mountain's crestIs an Etrurian or a Roman wall.

There is Alagna, where Pope BonifaceWas dragged with contumely from his throne;Sciarra Colonna, was that day's disgraceThe Pontiff's only, or in part thine own?

There is Ceprano, where a renegadeWas each Apulian, as great Dante saith,When Manfred by his men-at-arms betrayedSpurred on to Benevento and to death.

There is Aquinum, the old Volscian town,Where Juvenal was born, whose lurid lightStill hovers o'er his birthplace like the crownOf splendor seen o'er cities in the night.

Doubled the splendor is, that in its streetsThe Angelic Doctor as a school-boy played,And dreamed perhaps the dreams, that he repeatsIn ponderous folios for scholastics made.

And there, uplifted, like a passing cloudThat pauses on a mountain summit high,Monte Cassino's convent rears its proudAnd venerable walls against the sky.

Well I remember how on foot I climbedThe stony pathway leading to its gate;Above, the convent bells for vespers chimed,Below, the darkening town grew desolate.

Well I remember the low arch and dark,The court-yard with its well, the terrace wide,From which, far down, the valley like a parkVeiled in the evening mists, was dim descried.

The day was dying, and with feeble handsCaressed the mountain-tops; the vales betweenDarkened; the river in the meadowlandsSheathed itself as a sword, and was not seen.

The silence of the place was like a sleep,So full of rest it seemed; each passing treadWas a reverberation from the deepRecesses of the ages that are dead.

For, more than thirteen centuries ago,Benedict fleeing from the gates of Rome,A youth disgusted with its vice and woe,Sought in these mountain solitudes a home.

He founded here his Convent and his RuleOf prayer and work, and counted work as prayer;The pen became a clarion, and his schoolFlamed like a beacon in the midnight air.

What though Boccaccio, in his reckless way,Mocking the lazy brotherhood, deploresThe illuminated manuscripts, that layTorn and neglected on the dusty floors?

Boccaccio was a novelist, a childOf fancy and of fiction at the best!This the urbane librarian said, and smiledIncredulous, as at some idle jest.

Upon such themes as these, with one young friarI sat conversing late into the night,Till in its cavernous chimney the woodfireHad burnt its heart out like an anchorite.

And then translated, in my convent cell,Myself yet not myself, in dreams I lay,And, as a monk who hears the matin bell,Started from sleep; already it was day.

From the high window I beheld the sceneOn which Saint Benedict so oft had gazed,--The mountains and the valley in the sheenOf the bright sun,--and stood as one amazed.

Gray mists were rolling, rising, vanishing;The woodlands glistened with their jewelled crowns;Far off the mellow bells began to ringFor matins in the half-awakened towns.

The conflict of the Present and the Past,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.

For, as the valley from its sleep awoke,I saw the iron horses of the steamToss to the morning air their plumes of smoke,And woke, as one awaketh from a dream.