Childe Harold.
ASSISI
Almost the first thing we noticed in Assisi was the Biblical simplicity of life. This little city, rose and white, upon the lower slopes of Subasio would be like a picture out of the Bible if it were not so Gothic. Its steep and rough-paved streets have grasses growing in between their stones; its grim and silent houses, built of Subasian rock, are as unresponsive as the East; at their barred gates stand mules and asses tethered, with clumsy wooden saddles on their backs, or sacks of grain thrown pannier-wise. It is not only Francis and his companions that you might see walking in this poor and humble town, but Jesus of Nazareth.
For Assisi still wears the thread-bare garment of her poverty, notwithstanding the great basilica on the hillside, which is rich out of all comparison with the poor little city of St. Francis. Long, long ago in the thirteenth century she dedicated her life to him, giving up her worldly vanities and espousing Lady Poverty, 'that Dame to whom none openeth pleasure's gate.' So that the story of the splendid young men of Assisi, whose magnificent equipages drew the eyes of Rome in the seventeenth century, comes as an echo of another place. I think she loved him from the first, when he was still gay Cecco of the midnight revels, Lord of Love, the boon companion of her merry youths. She listened to his songs—the soft Provençal songs which he had learnt from the lips of Madonna Pica, his mother—and smiled at his caprices, pleading his youth when others shook their heads. Later, when the world made a jest of the penitent, and his friends scorned him, and the hand of the people was against him, she wept for him, and gazed with wistful eyes down to the valleys where he ministered to her outcasts, and garnered in his soul that Peace of the Lord which passeth all understanding. She is like the bride of whom the poet of the Israelites sang, looking and listening for the voice of her beloved.
'The voice of my beloved! Behold he cometh, leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.
My beloved is like the roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, showing himself through the lattice.
My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;