This is the chord of Lombard colouring in May. Lowest in the scale:
bright green of varied tints, the meadow-grasses mingling with willows
and acacias, harmonised by air and distance. Next, opaque blue--the
blue of something between amethyst and lapis-lazuli--that belongs
alone to the basements of Italian mountains. Higher, the roseate
whiteness of ridged snow on Alps or Apennines. Highest, the blue of
the sky, ascending from pale turquoise to transparent sapphire filled
with light. A mediæval mystic might have likened this chord to the
spiritual world. For the lowest region is that of natural life, of
plant and bird and beast, and unregenerate man; it is the place of
faun and nymph and satyr, the plain where wars are fought and cities
built, and work is done. Thence we climb to purified humanity, the
mountains of purgation, the solitude and simplicity of contemplative
life not yet made perfect by freedom from the flesh. Higher comes that
thin white belt, where are the resting places of angelic feet, the
points whence purged souls take their flight toward infinity. Above
all is heaven, the hierarchies ascending row on row to reach the light
of God.
This fancy occurred to me as I climbed the slope of the Superga,
gazing over acacia hedges and poplars to the mountains bare in morning
light. The occasional occurrence of bars across this chord--poplars
shivering in sun and breeze, stationary cypresses as black as night,
and tall campanili with the hot red shafts of glowing brick--adds just
enough of composition to the landscape. Without too much straining of
the allegory, the mystic might have recognised in these aspiring bars
the upward effort of souls rooted in the common life of earth.
The panorama, unrolling as we ascend, is enough to overpower a lover
of beauty. There is nothing equal to it for space and breadth and
majesty. Monte Rosa, the masses of Mont Blanc blent with the Grand
Paradis, the airy pyramid of Monte Viso, these are the battlements of
that vast Alpine rampart, in which the vale of Susa opens like a gate.
To west and south sweep the Maritime Alps and the Apennines. Beneath,
glides the infant Po; and where he leads our eyes, the plain is only
limited by pearly mist.