Some distance further, on the verge of the last descent into Val Rendena, we reached, as evening fell, the old church of Charlemagne, and looked down for the first time over the softer landscape and sylvan slopes of the lower valley. The fading light below brought out on the hillsides the delicate shades of green lost in the full blaze of the noonday sun, while high up in air the red cliffs of the Brenta, glowing with the last rays of sunset, seemed unearthly enough to form part of the poet's palace of Hyperion which,
Bastion'd with pyramids of glowing gold
And touch'd with shade of bronzèd obélisques,
Glared a blood red through all its thousand courts,
Arches and domes and fiery galleries.
CHAPTER IX.
THE ADAMELLO AND CARÈ ALTO.
Close to the sun in lonely lands
Ring'd with the azure world he stands.—Tennyson.