In “Spuma dal Mare” I have attempted to give something of the many-coloured aspects of the sea. It is absurd to keep on always speaking of it as blue, or green, or even grey. The following portion is as true as practicable, whatever other merits they may have:
Here the low breakers are rolling thro’ shallows,
Yellow and muddied, the line of topaz
Ere cut from the boulder:
Save when the sunlight swims through them slantwise,
When inward they roll,
Long billows of amber,
Crown’d with pale yellow
And gray-green spume.
Here wan gray their slopes
Where the broken lights reach them,
Dull gray of pearl, and dappled and darkling,
As when, ‘mid the high
Northward drift of the clouds,
Sirocco bloweth
With soft fanning breath.
20th. In morning wrote out Dedicatory and other Preliminary Pages, etc., etc., for my “Sospiri di Roma” and after lunch took the complete MS. to Prof. Garlanda of the Societa Laziale, who will take them out to the Establishment at Tivoli to-day. Holroyd came with final proof of his etching of me.
24th. Wrote “The Shepherd in Rome” (66 lines).
25th. Wrote “Sorgendo La Luna” (47 ll.).
27th. Wrote poem “In July: on the Campagna” (26 ll.). Wrote poem “August Afternoon in Rome” (59 ll.).
Charles M. Ross (Norwegian painter), and Julian Corbett (author of “The Life of Drake”) called on me today. Mr. Ross wants to paint me in pastel and has asked me to go to-morrow for that purpose.”
In mid-March I went to Florence in advance of my husband; and he and Mr. Corbett spent a few days together at the Albergo Sybilla Tivoli—where their sitting-room faced the Temple of Vesta—so that he could superintend there the printing of his “Sospiri.” The two authors worked in the morning, and took walks in the afternoon. The Diary records one expedition:
March 23. After lunch J. C. and I caught the train for Palombaria Marcellina meaning to ascend to Palombara: but we mistook the highest and most isolated mountain town, in the Sabines and after two hours of an exceedingly wild and rugged and sometimes almost impossible mule-path, etc., we reached the wonderfully picturesque and interesting San Polo dei Cavalieri. Bought a reed pipe from a shepherd who was playing a Ranz des Vaches among the slopes just below San Polo. The mediæval castle in the middle of the narrow crooked picturesque streets very fine. Had some wine from a comely woman who lived in the lower part of the castle. Then we made our way into the Sabines by Vicovaro, and Castel Madama, and home late to Tivoli, very tired.