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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341297" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A Letter From Italy</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I<br>Lately, when we wished good-bye<br>Underneath a gloomy sky,<br>``Bear,'' you said, ``my love in mind,<br>Leaving me not quite behind;<br>And across the mountains send<br>News and greeting to your friend.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II<br>Swiftly though we did advance<br>Through the rich flat fields of France,<br>Still the eye grew tired to see<br>Patches of equality.<br>Nothing wanton, waste, or wild;<br>Women delving, lonely child<br>Tending cattle lank and lean;<br>Not a hedgerow to be seen,<br>Where the eglantine may ramble,<br>Or the vagrant unkempt bramble<br>Might its flowers upon you press<br>Simple-sweet but profitless:<br>Jealous ditches, straight and square<br>Sordid comfort everywhere.<br>Pollard poplars, stunted vine,<br>Nowhere happy-pasturing kine<br>Wandering in untended groups<br>Through the uncut buttercups.<br>All things pruned to pile the shelf<br>Nothing left to be itself:<br>Neither horn, nor hound, nor stirrup,<br>Not a carol, not a chirrup;<br>Every idle sound repressed,<br>Like a Sabbath without rest.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III<br>O the sense of freedom when<br>Kingly mountains rose again!<br>Congregated, but alone,<br>Each upon his separate throne;<br>Like to mighty minds that dwell,<br>Lonely, inaccessible,<br>High above the human race,<br>Single and supreme in space:<br>Soaring higher, higher, higher,<br>Carrying with them our desire,<br>Irrepressible if fond,<br>To push on to worlds beyond!<br>Many a peak august I saw,<br>Crowned with mist and girt with awe,<br>Fertilising, as is fit,<br>Valleys that look up to it,<br>With the melted snows down-driven,<br>Which itself received from Heaven.<br>Then, to see the torrents flashing,<br>Leaping, twisting, foaming, crashing,<br>Like a youth who feels, at length,<br>Freedom ample as his strength,<br>Hurrying from the home that bore him,<br>With the whole of life before him!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV<br>As, when summer sunshine gleams,<br>Glaciers soften into streams,<br>So to liquid, flowing vowels,<br>As we pierced the mountains' bowels,<br>Teuton consonants did melt<br>When Italian warmth was felt.<br>Gloomy fir and pine austere,<br>Unto precipices sheer<br>Clinging, as one holds one's breath,<br>Half-way betwixt life and death,<br>Changed to gently-shelving slope,<br>Where man tills with faith and hope,<br>And the tenderest-tendrilled tree<br>Prospers in security.<br>Softer outlines, balmier air,<br>Belfries unto evening prayer<br>Calling, as the shadows fade,<br>Halting crone, and hurrying maid,<br>With her bare black tresses twined<br>Into massive coils behind,<br>And her snowy-pleated vest<br>Folded o'er mysterious breast,<br>Like the dove's wings chastely crossed<br>At the Feast of Pentecost.<br>Something, in scent, sight, and sound,<br>Elsewhere craved for, never found,<br>Underneath, around, above,<br>Moves to tenderness and love.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">V<br>But three nights I halted where<br>Stands the temple, vowed to prayer,<br>That surmounts the Lombard plain,<br>Green with strips of grape and grain.<br>There, Spiaggiascura's child,<br>By too hopeful love beguiled,<br>Yet resolved, save faith should flow<br>Through his parched heart, to forego<br>Earthly bliss for heavenly pain,<br>Prayed for Godfrid, prayed in vain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VI<br>How looked Florence? Fair as when<br>Beatrice was nearly ten:<br>Nowise altered, just the same<br>Marble city, mountain frame,<br>Turbid river, cloudless sky,<br>As in days when you and I<br>Roamed its sunny streets, apart,<br>Ignorant of each other's heart,<br>Little knowing that our feet<br>Slow were moving on to meet,<br>And that we should find, at last,<br>Kinship in a common Past.<br>But a shadow falls athwart<br>All her beauty, all her art.<br>For alas! I vainly seek<br>Outstretched hand and kindling cheek,<br>Such as, in the bygone days,<br>Sweetened, sanctified, her ways.<br>When, as evening belfries chime,<br>I to Bellosguardo climb,<br>Vaguely thinking there to find<br>Faces that still haunt my mind,<br>Though the doors stand open wide,<br>No one waits for me inside;<br>Not a voice comes forth to greet,<br>As of old, my nearing feet.<br>So I stand without, and stare,<br>Wishing you were here to share<br>Void too vast alone to bear.<br>To Ricorboli I wend:<br>But where now the dear old friend,<br>Heart as open as his gate,<br>Song, and jest, and simple state?<br>They who loved me all are fled;<br>Some are gone, and some are dead.<br>So, though young and lovely be<br>Florence still, it feels to me,<br>Thinking of the days that were,<br>Like a marble sepulchre.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VII<br>Yet, thank Heaven! he liveth still,<br>Now no more upon the hill<br>Where was perched his Tuscan home,<br>But in liberated Rome:<br>Hale as ever; still his stride<br>Keeps me panting at his side.<br>Would that you were here to stray<br>With me up the Appian Way,<br>Climb with me the Coelian mount,<br>With me find Egeria's fount,<br>See the clear sun sink and set<br>From the Pincian parapet,<br>Or from Sant' Onofrio watch<br>Shaggy Monte Cavo catch<br>Gloomy glory on its face,<br>As the red dawn mounts apace.<br>Twenty years and more have fled<br>Since I first with youthful tread<br>Wandered 'mong these wrecks of Fate,<br>Lonely but not desolate,<br>Proud to ponder and to brood,<br>Satisfied with solitude.<br>But as fruit that, hard in Spring,<br>Tender grows with mellowing,<br>So one's nature, year by year,<br>Softens as it ripens, dear,<br>And youth's selfish strain and stress<br>Sweeten into tenderness.<br>Therefore is it that I pine<br>For a gentle hand in mine,<br>For a voice to murmur clear<br>All I know but love to hear,<br>Crave to feel, think, hear, and see,<br>Through your lucid sympathy.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VIII<br>Shortly, shortly, we shall meet.<br>Southern skies awhile are sweet;<br>But in whatso land I roam,<br>Half my heart remains at home.<br>Tell me, for I long to hear,<br>Tidings of our English year.<br>Was the cuckoo soon or late?<br>Beg the primroses to wait,<br>That their homely smile may greet<br>Faithfully returning feet.<br>Have the apple blossoms burst?<br>Is the oak or ash the first?<br>Are there snowballs on the guelder?<br>Can you scent as yet the elder?<br>On the bankside that we know,<br>Is the golden gorse ablow,<br>Like love's evergreen delight<br>Never out of season quite,<br>But most prodigal in Spring,<br>When the whitethroats pair and sing?<br>Tell me, tell me, most of all,<br>When you hear the thrushes call,<br>When you see soft shadows fleeting<br>O'er the grass where lambs are bleating.<br>When the lyric lark, returning<br>From the mirage of its yearning,-<br>Like a fountain that in vain<br>Rises but to fall again,-<br>Seeks its nest with drooping wing,<br>Do you miss me from the Spring?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IX<br>Quickly then I come. Adieu,<br>Mouldering arch and ether blue!<br>For in you I sure shall find<br>All that here I leave behind:<br>Steadfastness of Roman rays<br>In the candour of your gaze;<br>In your friendship comfort more<br>Than in warmth of Oscan shore;<br>In the smiles that light your mouth,<br>All the sunshine of the South.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Alfred+Austin">Alfred Austin</a><div class=q>
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Lately, when we wished good-bye
Underneath a gloomy sky,
``Bear,'' you said, ``my love in mind,
Leaving me not quite behind;
And across the mountains send
News and greeting to your friend.''

II
Swiftly though we did advance
Through the rich fla..."></div>
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