In that poetic sail along the Italian coast between Naples and Genoa the voyager feels that it is
“On no earthly sea with transient roar”
that his bark is floating; that
“Unto no earthly airs he trims his sail,”
as he flits along this coast when violet waves dash against a brilliant background of sky. Ischia reveals herself through the blue, transparent air, gleaming with opalescent lights, quivering, fading and flaming again as the afterglow in the east rivals in its coloring the sunset splendors of the west. Is there in the air a faint, lingering echo of the chant d’amour of sirens on the rocky shores? Is Parthenope still to be descried? Gazing upon Ischia there is a rush of romantic impressions as if one were transported into ideal regions of song, before this impression begins to resolve itself into definite remembrance of fact and incident. Surely some exquisite associations in the past had enchanted this island in memory and invested it with the magic light that never was on sea or land. Traditions of beauty; of the lives of scholar and savant and princes of the church; of a court of nobility enriched and adorned by prelate and by poet; traditions, too, of a woman’s consecration to an immortal love and the solace of grief by poetic genius and exalted friendships,—all these seem to cling about Ischia in a vague, atmospheric way till memory, still groping backward in the twilight of the richly historic past, suddenly crystallized into recognition that it was Ischia which was the home of Vittoria Colonna, the greatest woman poet of the Italian Renaissance. Lines, long since read, arose like an incantation; and like bars of music, each note of which vibrated in the air, came this fragment of one of her songs:—
“If in these rude and artless songs of mine
I never take the file in hand, nor try
With curious care and nice, fastidious eye
To deck and polish each uncultured line,
’T is that it makes small merit of my name
To merit praise. . . .
*****
But it must be that heaven’s own gracious gift
Which, with its breath, divine, inspires my soul,
Strikes forth these sparks unbidden by my will.”
ISCHIA, FROM THE SEA