And then translated, in my convent cell,
Myself yet not myself, in dreams I lay,
And, as a monk who hears the matin bell,
Started from sleep; already it was day.
From the high window I beheld the scene
On which Saint Benedict so oft had gazed,—
The mountains and the valley in the sheen
Of the bright sun,—and stood as one amazed.
Gray mists were rolling, rising, vanishing;
The woodlands glistened with their jewelled crowns;
Far off the mellow bells began to ring
For matins in the half-awakened towns.
The conflict of the Present and the Past,
The ideal and the actual in our life,
As on a field of battle held me fast,
Where this world and the next world were at strife.
For, as the valley from its sleep awoke,
I saw the iron horses of the steam
Toss to the morning air their plumes of smoke,
And woke, as one awaketh from a dream.
AMALFI
Sweet the memory is to me Of a land beyond the sea, Where the waves and mountains meet, Where, amid her mulberry-trees Sits Amalfi in the heat, Bathing ever her white feet In the tideless summer seas.
In the middle of the town, From its fountains in the hills, Tumbling through the narrow gorge, The Canneto rushes down, Turns the great wheels of the mills, Lifts the hammers of the forge.
'T is a stairway, not a street, That ascends the deep ravine, Where the torrent leaps between Rocky walls that almost meet. Toiling up from stair to stair Peasant girls their burdens bear; Sunburnt daughters of the soil, Stately figures tall and straight, What inexorable fate Dooms them to this life of toil?