"I leave thee, beauteous Italy; no more
From thy high terraces at even-tide
To look supine into thy depths of sky,
Thy golden moon between the cliff and me,
On thy dark spires of fretted cypresses,
Bordering the channel of the milky-way.
Fiesole and Valdarno must be dreams
Hereafter, and my own lost Affrico
Murmur to me but in the poet's song.
I did believe,--what have I not believed?--
Weary with age, but unoppressed by pain,
To close in thy soft clime my quiet day,
And rest my bones in the Mimosa shade.
Hope! hope! few ever cherished thee so little;
Few are the heads thou hast so rarely raised;
But thou didst promise this, and all was well.
For we are fond of thinking where to lie
When every pulse hath ceased, when the lone heart
Can lift no aspiration ... reasoning
As if the sight were unimpaired by death,
Were unobstructed by the coffin lid,
And the sun cheered corruption. Over all
The smiles of nature shed a potent charm,
And light us to our chamber at the grave."--Vol. ii. p. 647.
Let us conclude our quotations with one from his Conversations,
equally redolent of Italy. It is in his conversation between himself
and the Marchese Pallavicini. The scene is on the lake of Como, and a
more beautiful tribute was never paid to trees, especially to that
soft, graceful, and fragrant tree, the linden.
"Grumello! Let me enjoy the sight while I can. He appears instinct
with life, nodding the network of vines upon his head, and beckoning,
and inviting us, while the fig-trees, and mulberries, and chestnuts,
and walnuts, and these lofty and eternal cypresses, stand motionless
around. His joyous mates, all different in form and features, push
forward; and, if there is not something in the air, or something in my
eyesight, illusory, they are running a race along the borders. Stop a
moment; how shall we climb over these two enormous pines? Ah, Don
Pepino! old trees in their living state are the only things that money
can not command. Rivers leave their beds, run into cities, and
traverse mountains for it; obelisks and arches, palaces and temples,
amphitheaters and pyramids, rise up like exhalations at its bidding;
even the free spirit of man, the only great thing on earth, crouches
and cowers in its presence. It passes away and vanishes before
venerable trees. What a sweet odor is here! Whence comes it? Sweeter
it appears to me, and stronger than the pine itself."
"I imagine," said he, "from the linden; yes, certainly."
"Is that a linden? It is the largest, and, I should imagine, the
oldest upon earth, if I could perceive that it had lost any of its
branches."
"Pity that it hides half the row of yon houses from the palace! It
will be carried off with the two pines in the autumn."
"O, Don Pepino!" cried I, "the French, who abhor whatever is old, and
whatever is great, have spared it; the Austrians, who sell their
fortresses and their armies, nay, sometimes their daughters, have not
sold it; must it fall? Shall the cypress of Soma be without a rival? I
hope to have left Lombardy before it happens; for events, which you
will tell me ought never to interest me at all, not only do interest
me, but make me--I confess it--sorrowful."
"Who in the world could ever cut down a linden, or dare, in his
senses, to break a twig off one? To a linden was fastened the son of
William Tell, when the apple was cloven on his head. Years afterward,
often did the father look higher and lower, and search laboriously, to
descry if any mark were remaining of the cord upon its bark! Often
must he have inhaled this very odor! What a refreshment was it to a
father's heart! The flowers of the linden should be the only incense
offered up in the churches of God. Happy the man whose aspirations are
pure enough to mingle with it!
"How many fond, and how many lively thoughts have been nurtured under
this very tree! How many kind hearts have beaten here! Its branches
are not so numerous as the couples they have invited to sit beside it,
nor its blossoms and leaves as the expressions of tenderness it has
witnessed! What appeals to the pure all-seeing heavens! What
similitudes to the everlasting mountains! What protestations of
eternal truth and constancy! from those who are now earth, they, and
their shrouds, and their coffins! The caper and fig-tree have split
the monument. Emblems of past loves and future hopes, severed names
which the holiest rites united, broken letters of brief happiness,
bestrew the road, and speak to the passers by in vain. To see this
linden was worth a journey of five hundred miles!"
Walter Savage Landor now resides at Bath. In his modest house in St.
James's-square, he has surrounded himself with one of the most
exquisite miniature collection of paintings in the world. Every thing
is select, from the highest masters, Raphael, Titian, Corregio, and
older and more quaint hands, and every thing perfect of its kind.
These, including some by our own Wilson, he collected in Italy. His
larger collection of larger pictures he gave to his son, on leaving
Italy, and brought these only as more adapted to the house he proposed
to inhabit. Peace, meditation, and the gradual resumption of simple
tasks and habits, seem the leading objects of his present hale old
age. "I have a pleasure," said he, "in renouncing one indulgence after
another; in learning to live without so many wants. Why should I
require so many more comforts than the bulk of my fellow-creatures can
get? We should set an example against the selfish self-indulgence of
the age. We should discountenance its extravagant follies. The pride
and pomp of funerals is monstrous. When I die, I will spend but six
pounds on mine. I have left orders for the very commonest coffin that
is made for the commonest man; and six of the stoutest and very
poorest men to carry me to the grave, for which each shall receive one
sovereign."
"But don't you pine for your beautiful Fiesole and its beautiful
climate; don't you want your children; especially that daughter whose
bust there opposite reminds one so of Queen Victoria?"
"I could wish it, but it is better as it is. _I_ can not live
there. They can, and are happy. I have their society in their letters;
they are well off, and therefore--I am contented."
With this he diverted the conversation to the decease of a mutual
friend. "Ah! what a good, warm-hearted creature that was! There never
was a woman so self-forgetting and full of affection. She lies in the
church-yard just by here. We used to joke merrily on what is now
half-fulfilled. 'I shall be buried in ---- church-yard,' she once
said. 'Why, _I_ mean to be buried there myself. My dear Mrs.
Price, we'll visit! Being such near neighbors, we'll have a chair, and
make calls on one another!'" And at this idea he burst forth into one
of those hearty, resounding laughs, that show in Landor how strangely
fun and feeling can live side by side in the human mind.
Walter Savage Landor is one of those men who are sent into the world
strong to teach. Strong in mind and body, strong in the clear sense of
the right and the true, they walk unencumbered by prejudices,
unshackled by force. They tread over the trim borders of artificial
life, often oversetting its training glasses, and kicking over its
tenderest nurslings. They break down the hedge of selfish monopoly,
and carry along with them a stake from the gap, to have a blow at the
first bull or _bully_ they meet in the field. They stop to gaze
at the idol of the day when they reach the city, and pronounce it but
the scarecrow of last summer new dressed. They enter churches, and are
oftener disgusted with the dreadful religion made for God, than
delighted with the preaching of that divine benevolence sent down by
God for man. They weep at some recollected sorrow, but remembering
that this is but a contagious weakness, they laugh, to make their
neighbors awake from sad thoughts, and are pronounced unfeeling. They
attack old and bloody prejudices, and are asked if they are wiser than
any one else? They know it: the divine instinct, the teaching faculty
within them, replies--"Yes." They go on strong and unmoved, though
fewer perceive their great mission than feel them poking them in the
delicate sides of their interests; fewer sympathize with their
tenderest and purest feelings than are shocked by their ridicule of
old and profitable humbugs. Misunderstood, misrepresented, and
calumniated, they go on--nothing can alter them--for their burden and
command are from above; yet every day the world is selecting some
truth from the truths they have collected, admiring some flower in the
bouquet of beauties they have gathered as they have gone through the
wilderness, picking up some gem that they have let fall for the first
comer after them, till eventually comparing, and placing all side by
side, the world, with a sudden flash of recognition, perceives that
all these truths, beauties, and precious things, belonged to the
strange, rude man, who _was_ actually wiser than any body else.
Long may Savage Landor live to see the fruit of his undaunted mind
gradually absorbed into the substance of society!
[Illustration: Birthplace at Southgate]