A Vision of Italy

Wisdom set apart from all desire,A hoary Nestor with youth's own glad eyes,Him met I at the style, and all benignHe greeted me an equal and I knew,By this his lack of pomp, he was himself.

Slow-Smiling is companion unto him,And Mellow-Laughter serves, his trencherman.And I a thousand beauties there beheld.And he and they made merry endlessly.And love was rayed between them as a mist,And yet so fine and delicate a hazeIt did impede the eyes no whit,Unless it were to make the halo round each oneAppear more myriad-jewelled marvellous,Than any pearled and ruby diadem the courts o' earthha' known.Slender as mist-wrought maids and hamadryadsDid meseem these shapes that ministered,These formed harmonies with lake-deep eyes,And first the cities of north ItalyI did behold,Each as a woman wonder-fair,And svelte Verona first I met at eve;And in the dark we kissed and then the wayBore us somewhile apart.And yet my heart keeps tryst with her,So every year our thoughts are interwoveAs fingers were, such times as eyes see much, and tell.And she that loved the master years agone,That bears his signet in her "Signor Square,""Che lo glorifico."She spread her arms,And in that deep embraceAll thoughts of woe were perishedAnd of pain and weariness and all the wrackOf light-contending thoughts and battled-gleams,(That our intelligence doth gain by strife against itself)Of things we have not yet the earnèd right to clearly see.And all, yea all that dust doth symbolizeWas there forgot, and my enfranchised soulGrew as the liquid elements, and was infusedWith joy that is not light, nor might nor harmony,And yet hath part and quality of all these three,Whereto is added calm past earthly peace.

Thus with Verona's spirit, and all timeSwept on beyond my ken, and as the seaHath in no wise a form within itself,Cioè, as liquid hath no form save where it bounden isBy some enshrouding chalice of hard things--As wine its graven goblet, and the seaIts wave-hewn basalt for a bordering,So had my thought and now my thought's remembranceNo "information" of whatso there passedFor this long space the dream-king's horny gate.

And when that age was done and the transfusionOf all my self through her and she through me,I did perceive that she enthroned two things:Verona, and a maid I knew on earth;And dulled some while from dream, and then becomeThat lower thing, deductive intellect, I sawHow all things are but symbols of all things,And each of many, do we knowBut the equation governing.And in my rapture at this vision's scopeI saw no end or bourn to what things mean,So praised Pythagoras and once more raisedBy this said rapture to the house of Dream,Beheld Fenicè as a lotus-flowerDrift through the purple of the wedded seaAnd grow a wraith and then a dark-eyed she,And knew her name was "All-forgetfulness,"And hailed her: "Princess of the Opiates,"And guessed her evil and her good thereby.

And then a maid of nine "Pavia" hight,Passed with a laugh that was all mystery,And when I turned to herShe reached me one clear chalice of white wine,Pressed from the recent grapes that yet were hungAdown her shoulders, and were boundRight cunningly about her elfish brows;So hale a draught, the life of every grapeLurked without ferment in the amber cloud.And memory, this wine was, of all good.

And more I might have seen: Firenza, Goito,Or that proudest gate, Ligurian Genoa,Cornelia of Colombo of far sight,That, man and seer in one, had well been twain,And each a glory to his hills and sea;And past her a great bandBright garlanded or rich with purple skeins,And crimson mantles and queynt fineriesThat tarnished held but so the moreOf dim allurement in their half-shown folds:So swept my vision o'er their filmy ranks,Then rose some opaque cloud,Whose name I have not yet discerned,And music as I heard it one clear nightWithin our earthly night's own mirroring,Cioè,--San Pietro by Adige,Where altar candles blazed out as dim stars,And all the gloom was soft, and shadowy formsMade and sang God, within the far-off choir.And in a clear space high behindThem and the tabernacle of that place,Two tapers shew the master of the keysAs some white power pouring forth itself.

And all the church rang low and murmuredThus in my dream of forms the music swayed.And I was lost in it and only wokeWhen something like a mass bell rang, and thenThat white-foot wind, pale Dawn's annunciatrice.Me bore to earth again, but some strange peaceI had not known so well before this swevynClung round my head and made me hate earth less.