Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA, by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: How gentle here is nature's mood
Last Line: Pledging the land to sorrowing loveliness.
Subject(s): Italy; Rome, Italy; Italians


HOW gentle here is Nature's mood! She lays
A woman-hand upon the troubled heart,
Bidding the world away and time depart,
While the brief minutes swoon to endless days
Filled full of sad, inconstant thoughtfulness.

Behold 't is eventide. Dun cattle stand
Drowsed in the misted grasses. From the hollows deep,
Dim veils, adrift, o'er arch and tower sweep,
Casting a dreary doubt along the land,
Weighting the twilight with some vague distress.

Transient and subtle, not to thought more near
Than spirit is to flesh, about me rise
Dim memories, long lost to love's sad eyes;
Now are they wandering shadows, strange and drear,
That from their natal substance far have strayed.

The witches of the mind possess the time,
And cry, "Behold thy dead!" They come, they pass;
We yearn to give them feature, face. Alas!
Love hath no morn for memory's failing prime;
What once was sweet with truth is but a shade.

The ghosts of nameless sorrow, joy, despair,
Emotions that have no remembered source,
Love-waifs from other worlds, hope, fear, remorse
Born of some vision's crime, wail through the air,
Crying, We were and are not!—that is all.

Yet sweet the indecisive evening hour
That hath of earth the least. Unreal as dreams
Dreamed within dreams, and ever further, seems
The sound of human toil, while grass and flower
Bend where the mercy of the dew doth fall.

Strange mysteries of expectation wait
Above the grave-mounds of the storied space,
Where, buried, lie a nation's strength and grace,
And the sad joys of Rome's imperious state
That perished of its insolent excess.

A dull, gray shroud o'er this vast burial rests,
Is deathly still, or seems to rise and fall,
As on a dear one, dead, the moveless pall
Doth cheat the heart with stir of her white breasts,
Mocking the troubled hour with worse distress.

A deathful languor holds the twilight mist,
Unearthly colors drape the Alban hills,
A dull malaria the spirit fills;
Death and decay all beauty here have kissed,
Pledging the land to sorrowing loveliness.





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