Monte Cassino

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow * Track #186 On The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Monte Cassino by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Monte Cassino Annotated

Beautiful valley! through whose verdant meads
&nbsp Unheard the Garigliano glides along;—
The Liris, nurse of rushes and of reeds,
&nbsp The river taciturn of classic song.

The Land of Labor and the Land of Rest,
&nbsp Where mediaeval towns are white on all
The hillsides, and where every mountain's crest
&nbsp Is an Etrurian or a Roman wall.

There is Alagna, where Pope Boniface
&nbsp Was dragged with contumely from his throne;
Sciarra Colonna, was that day's disgrace
&nbsp The Pontiff's only, or in part thine own?

There is Ceprano, where a renegade
&nbsp Was each Apulian, as great Dante saith,
When Manfred by his men-at-arms betrayed
&nbsp Spurred on to Benevento and to death.

There is Aquinum, the old Volscian town,
&nbsp Where Juvenal was born, whose lurid light
Still hovers o'er his birthplace like the crown
&nbsp Of splendor seen o'er cities in the night.

Doubled the splendor is, that in its streets
&nbsp The Angelic Doctor as a school-boy played,
And dreamed perhaps the dreams, that he repeats
&nbsp In ponderous folios for scholastics made.

And there, uplifted, like a passing cloud
&nbsp That pauses on a mountain summit high,
Monte Cassino's convent rears its proud
&nbsp And venerable walls against the sky.

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

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

The day was dying, and with feeble hands
&nbsp Caressed the mountain-tops; the vales between
Darkened; the river in the meadowlands
&nbsp Sheathed itself as a sword, and was not seen.

The silence of the place was like a sleep,
&nbsp So full of rest it seemed; each passing tread
Was a reverberation from the deep
&nbsp Recesses of the ages that are dead.

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

He founded here his Convent and his Rule
&nbsp Of prayer and work, and counted work as prayer;
The pen became a clarion, and his school
&nbsp Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air.

What though Boccaccio, in his reckless way,
&nbsp Mocking the lazy brotherhood, deplores
The illuminated manuscripts, that lay
&nbsp Torn and neglected on the dusty floors?

Boccaccio was a novelist, a child
&nbsp Of fancy and of fiction at the best!
This the urbane librarian said, and smiled
&nbsp Incredulous, as at some idle jest.

Upon such themes as these, with one young friar
&nbsp I sat conversing late into the night,
Till in its cavernous chimney the woodfire
&nbsp Had burnt its heart out like an anchorite.

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

From the high window I beheld the scene
&nbsp On which Saint Benedict so oft had gazed,—
The mountains and the valley in the sheen
&nbsp Of the bright sun,—and stood as one amazed.

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

The conflict of the Present and the Past,
&nbsp The ideal and the actual in our life,
As on a field of battle held me fast,
&nbsp Where this world and the next world were at strife.

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

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