LONGFELLOW'S "MONTE CASINO."

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 147, 25 February 1876, Page 6

LONGFELLOW'S "MONTE CASINO."

The day was dying, and with feeble hands Caressed the mountain tops ; the vales between Darkened ; the river in the meadow lands Sheathed itself as a swovcl and was not seen. The silence of the place was like a sleep, So full of rest it seemed ; each passing tread Was a reverberation from the deep Recesses of the ages that are dead. For more than thirteen centuries ago Benedict, fleeing from the gates of Rome, A youth disgusted -with its vice and woe, Sought in these mountain solitudes a home. He founded here his Convent and his Rule Of prayer and work, and counted work as prayer. His pen became a clarion, and his school Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air. What though Boccaccio, in his reckless w ay Mocking the lazy brotherhood, deplores The illuminated manuscripts that lay Tom and neglected on the dusty floors ? Boccaccio was a novelist, a child Of fancy and of fiction at the best ; This the urbane librarian said, and smiled Incredulous, as at some idle jest. Upon such themes as these with one young friar I sat conversing late into the night, Till in its cavernous chimney the wood fire •Had burnt its heart out like an anchorite, 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 St. Benedict so oft had gazed ; The mountains and the valley in the shi en Of the bright sun, and stood as one f. aicuod. 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 -w the iron horses of the steam Ts o the morning air their plumes of smoke, -A 'id w c as one awakcth from a dream.