Yes, Laura! draw the shade aside
And let me gaze--while yet I may,
Upon that gently heaving tide,
Upon that glorious sun-lit bay.
Land of Romance! enchanting shore!
Fair scenes, near which I linger yet!
Never shall I behold ye more,
Never this last--last look forget!
What though the clouds that o'er me lour
Have tinged ye with a mournful hue,
Deep in my heart I felt your power,
And bless ye, while I sigh--Adieu!
_Velletri, March 13._--It is now a week since I opened my little book.
Ever since the 9th I have been seriously ill: and yesterday morning I
left Naples still low and much indisposed, but glad of a change which
should substitute any external excitement, however painful, to that
unutterable dying away of the heart and paralysis of the mind which I
have suffered for some days past. When we turned into the Strada
Chiaja, and I gave a last glance at the magnificent bay and the shores
all resplendent with golden light, I could almost have exclaimed like
Eve, "must I then leave thee, Paradise!" and dropped a few natural
tears--tears of weakness, rather than of grief: for what do I leave
behind me worthy one emotion of regret? Even at Naples, even in this
all-lovely land, "fit haunt for gods," has it not been with me as it
has been elsewhere? as long as the excitement of change and novelty
lasts, my heart can turn from itself "to luxuriate with indifferent
things:" but it cannot last long; and when it is over, I suffer, I am
ill: the past returns with tenfold gloom; interposing like a dark
shade between me and every object: an evil power seems to reside in
every thing I see, to torment me with painful associations, to perplex
my faculties, to irritate and mock me with the perception of what is
lost to me: the very sunshine sickens me, and I am forced to confess
myself weak and miserable as ever. O time! how slowly you move! how
little you can do for me! and how bitter is that sorrow which has no
relief to hope but from time alone!
Last night we reached Mola di Gaëta, which looked even more beautiful
than before, in the eyes of all but _one_, whose senses were blinded
and dulled by dejection, lassitude, and sickness. When I felt myself
passively led along the shore, placed where the eye might range at
freedom over the living and rejoicing landscape--when I heard myself
repeating mechanically the exclamations of others, and felt no ray of
beauty, no sense of pleasure penetrate to my heart--shall I own, even
to myself, the mixture of anguish and terror with which I shrunk back,
conscious of the waste within me? The conviction that now it was all
over, that the last and only pleasures hitherto left to me had
perished, that my mind was contracted by the selfishness of
despondency, and my quick spirit of enjoyment utterly subdued into
apathy, gave me for a moment a pang sharper than if a keen knife had
cut me to the quick; and then I relapsed into a kind of torpid languor
of mind and frame, which I thought was resignation, and as such
indulged it.
From my bed this morning I stepped out upon my balcony just as the sun
was rising. I wished to convince myself whether the beauty on which I
had lately looked with such admiration and delight, had indeed lost
all power to touch my heart. The impression made upon my mind at that
instant I can only compare to the rolling away of a palpable and
suffocating cloud: every thing on which I looked had the freshness and
brightness of novelty: a glory beyond its own was again diffused over
the enchanting scene from the stores of my own imagination: the sea
breeze which blew against my temples new-strung every nerve; and I
left Mola with a heart so lightened and so grateful, that not for
hours afterwards, not till fatigue and hurry had again wearied down my
spirits, did that impression of happy thankfulness pass away.
I am sensible I owed this sudden renovation of health solely to the
contemplation of Nature; and a true feeling for all the "maggior
pompa" she has poured forth over this glorious region. The shores of
Terracina, the azure sea, dancing in the breeze, the waves rolling to
our feet, the sublime cliffs, the fleet of forty sail stretching away
till lost in the blaze of the horizon, the Circean promontory, even
the picturesque fisherman, whom we saw throwing his nets from an
insulated rock at some distance from the shore, and whom a very
trifling exertion of fancy might have converted into some sea
divinity, a Glaucus, or a Proteus, formed altogether a picture of the
most wonderful and luxuriant beauty. In England there is a peculiar
charm in the soft aërial perspective, which even in the broadest glare
of noonday, blends and masses the forms of the distant landscape; and
in that mingling of colours into a cool neutral gray tint so grateful
to the eye. Hence it has happened that in some of the Italian pictures
I have seen in England, I have often been struck by what appeared to
me a violence in the colouring, and a sharp decision in the outline,
o'erstepping the modesty of nature--that is, of _English nature_: but
there is in this climate a prismatic splendour of tint, a glorious
all-embracing light, a vivid distinctness of outline, something in the
reality more gorgeous, glowing, and luxuriant, than poetry could dare
to express, or painting imitate.
"Ah that such beauty, varying in the light
Of living nature, cannot be portrayed
By words, nor by the pencil's silent skill;
But is the property of those alone
Who have beheld it, noted it with care,
And in their minds recorded it with love."