"E vedo e vedo e non vedo chi voglio,
Vedo le foglie di lontan tremare.
E vedo lo mio amore in su quel poggio,
E al piano mai lo vedo calare.
O poggio traditor, che ne farete?
O vivo o morto me lo renderete.
O poggio traditor, che ne farai?
O vivo o morto me lo renderai."
Then she dreams of sending a letter in verses, which recall, how
closely, the Swallow song of "The Princess"--
"O Rondinella che passi monti e colli,
Se trovi l'amor mio, digli che venga;
E digli: son rimasta in questi poggi
Come rimane la smarrita agnella.
E digli: son rimasta senza nimo
Come l'albero secco senza 'l cimo.
E digli: son rimasta senza damo,
Come l'albero secco senza il ramo.
E digli: son rimasta abbandonata
Come l'erbetta secca in sulle prata."
At length she sends a letter with the help of the village scrivener, and
in time gets an answer--
"Salutatemi, bella, lo scrivano;
Non lo conosco e non so chi si sia.
A me mi pare un poeta sovrano
Tanto gli è sperto nella poesia ..."
Signor Tigri in his excellent collection of _Canti Toscani_, from which
I have quoted, gives some examples too of these letters and their
replies, but they are too long to set down here.
With spring the lover returns. You may see the girls watching for the
lads any day of spring in those high far woods through which the roads
wind down to the plains.
"Eccomi, bella, che son già venuto
Che li sospiri tuoi m'hanno chiamato,
E tu credevi d'avermi perduto,
Dal ben che ti volevo son tornato.
Quando son morto, mi farai un gran pianto;
Dirai: è morto chi mi amava tanto!
Quando son morto, un gran pianto farai,
Padrona del mio cor sempre sarai."
Then in the early summer days the promises are given, and long and long
before autumn the good priest marries Beppino to his Annuziatina, and
doubtless they live happy ever after in those quiet and holy places.
It is into this country of happiness you come, a happiness so vaguely
musical, when, leaving Lucca in the summer heat, you climb into the
Garfagnana. For to your right Bagni di Lucca lies under Barga, with its
church and great pulpit; and indeed, the first town you enter is Borgo a
Mozzano by Serchio; then, following still the river, you come to
Gallicano, and then by a short steep road to Castelnuovo di Garfagnana
at the foot of the great pass. The mountains have clustered round you,
bare and threatening, and though you be still in the woods it is their
tragic nudity you see all day long, full of the disastrous gestures of
death, that can never change or be modified or recalled. It is under
these lonely and desolate peaks that the road winds to Piazza al
Serchio.
Castelnuovo is a little city caught in a bend of Serchio, which it spans
by a fantastic high bridge that leaps across the shrunken torrent. A
mere huddle of mediaeval streets and piazzas in an amphitheatre of
mountains, its one claim on our notice is that here is a good inn, kept
by a strange tragical sort of man with a beautiful wife, the only
sunshine in that forbidding place. She lies there like a jewel among the
inhuman rocks, and Serchio for ever whispers her name. Here too,
doubtless, came Ariosto, most serene of poets, when in 1522 he was sent
to suppress an insurrection in the Garfagnana. But even Ariosto will not
keep you long in Castelnuovo, since she whom he would certainly have
sung, and whose name you will find in his poem, cannot hold you there.
So you follow the country road up stream, a laughing, leaping torrent in
September, full of stones longing for rain, towards Camporgiano.
It is very early in the morning maybe, as you climb out of the shadow
and receive suddenly the kiss of the morning sun over a shoulder of the
great mountains, a kiss like the kiss of the beloved. From the village
of Piazza al Serchio, where the inn is rough truly but _pulito_, it is a
climb of some six chilometri into the pass, where you leave the river,
then the road, always winding about the hills, runs level for four
miles, and at last drops for five miles into Fivizzano. All the way the
mountains stand over you frighteningly motionless and threatening, till
the woods of Fivizzano, that magical town, hide you in their shadow, and
evening comes as you climb the last hill that ends in the Piazza before
the door of the inn.
Here are hospitality, kindness, and a welcome; you will get a great room
for your rest, and the salone of the palace, for palace it is, for your
sojourn, and an old-fashioned host whose pleasure is your comfort, who
is, as it were, a daily miracle. He it will be who will make your bed in
the chamber where Grand Duke Leopold slept, he will wait upon you at
dinner as though you were the Duke's Grace herself, and if your sojourn
be long he will make you happy, and if your stay be short you will go
with regret. For his pride is your delight, and he, unlike too many more
famous Tuscans, has not forgotten the past. Certainly he thinks it not
altogether without glory, for he has carved in marble over your bed one
of those things which befell in his father's time. Here it is--
"Qui stette per tre giorni
Nel Settembre del MDCCCXXXII
Leopoldo Il Granduca di Toscana
E i fratelli Cojari da Fivizzano
L'imagine dell' Ottimo Principi vi possero
Perchè rimanesse ai posteri memoria
Che la loro casa fu nobilitata
Dalle presenza dell' ospite augusto."
But nature had ennobled the House of Cojari already. There all day long
in the pleasant heat the fountain of Cosimo in plays in the Piazza
outside your window, cooling your room with its song. And, indeed, in
all Tuscany it would be hard to find a place more delightful or more
lovely in which to spend the long summer that is so loath to go here in
the south. Too soon, too soon the road called me from those meadows and
shadowy ways, the never-ending whisper of the woods, the sound of
streams, the song of the mountain shepherd girls, the quiet ways of the
hills.
It was an hour after sunrise when I set out for Fosdinovo of the
Malaspina, for Sarzana, for Spezia, for England. The way lies over the
rivers Aulella and Bardine, through Soliero in the valley, through
Ceserano of the hills. Thence by a way steep and dangerous I came into
the valley of Bardine, only to mount again to Tendola and at last to
Foce Cuccù, where on all sides the valleys filled with woods fell away
from me, and suddenly at a turning of the way I spied out Fosdinovo,
lordly still on its bastion of rock, guarding Val di Magra, looking
towards Luna and the sea.
Little more than an eyrie for eagles, Fosdinovo is an almost perfect
fortress of the Middle Age. It glowers in the sun like a threat over the
ways that now are so quiet, where only the bullocks dragging the marble
from Carrara pass all day long from Massa to Spezia, from the valley to
the sea.
It was thence for the first time for many months I looked on a land that
was not Tuscany. Already autumn was come in that high place; a flutter
of leaves and the wind of the mountains made a sad music round about the
old walls, which had heard the voice of Castruccio Castracani, whose
gates he had opened by force. And then, as I sat there above the woods
towards evening, from some bird passing overhead there fell a tiny
feather, whiter than snow, that came straight into my hand. Was it a
bird, or my angel, whose beautiful, anxious wings trembled lest I should
fall in a land less simple than this?