AN ITALIAN NOON.
LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS, OCTOBER, 1818.
* * * * *
Noon descends around me now;
’Tis the noon of autumn’s glow,
When a soft and purple mist,
Lake a vaporous amethyst,
Or an air-dissolved star,
Mingling light and fragrance, far
From the curved horizon’s bound,
To the point of heaven’s profound,
Fills the overflowing sky,
And the plains that silent lie
Underneath, the leaves unsodden
Where the infant frost has trodden
With his morning-winged feet,
Whose bright print is gleaming yet;
And the red and golden vines,
Piercing with their trellis’d lines
The rough, dark-skirted wilderness;
The dim and bladed grass no less
Pointing from this hoary tower
In the windless air; the flower
Glimmering at my feet; the line
Of the olive-sandaled Apennine,
In the south dimly islanded;
And the Alps, whose snows are spread
High between the clouds and sun;
And of living things each one;
And my spirit, which so long
Darken’d this swift stream of song,
Interpenetrated lie
By the glory of the sky;
Be it love, light, harmony,
Odor, or the soul of all
Which from Heaven like dew doth fall,
Or the mind which feeds this verse,
Peopling the lone universe.
P. B. Shelley.