When the Being of Beings shall summon her hence.
For he and he only with wisdom is blest
Who, gathering true pleasures wherever they grow,
Looks up in all places, for joy or for rest,
To the Fountain whence Time and Eternity flow. 40
[145] The name of Milton is pleasingly connected with Vallombrosa in many ways. The pride with which the Monk, without any previous question from me, pointed out his residence, I shall not readily forget. It may be proper here to defend the Poet from a charge which has been brought against him, in respect to the passage in Paradise Lost, where this place is mentioned. It is said, that he has erred in speaking of the trees there being deciduous, whereas they are, in fact, pines. The fault-finders are themselves mistaken; the natural woods of the region of Vallombrosa are deciduous, and spread to a great extent; those near the convent are, indeed, mostly pines; but they are avenues of trees planted within a few steps of each other, and thus composing large tracts of wood; plots of which are periodically cut down. The appearance of those narrow avenues, upon steep slopes open to the sky, on account of the height which the trees attain by being forced to grow upwards, is often very impressive. My guide, a boy of about fourteen years old, pointed this out to me in several places.—W.W. 1842.
[146] Compare Paradise Lost, book i. l. 302. Vallombrosa—the shady valley—is 18 miles distant from Florence. Wordsworth’s quotation from Milton was from memory. It is not quite accurate.—Ed.
[147] See for the two first lines, Stanzas composed in the Simplon Pass.—W.W. 1842. (See vol. vi. p. 357.)—Ed.
[148] The monastery of Vallombrosa was founded about 1050, by S. Giovanni Gnalberto. It was suppressed in 1869, and is now converted into the R. Instituto Forestale, or forest school. The “cell,” the “sequestered retreat” referred to by Wordsworth, is doubtless Il Paradisino, or Le Celle, a small hermitage 266 feet above the monastery, which is itself 2980 feet above the sea.—Ed.
[149] Compare Milton’s letter to Benedetto Bonmattei of Florence, written during his stay in the city, September 10, 1638.—Ed.