Who will come with me to Italy in April?
Italy in April! The cherries on the hill!
The sudden gush of rivers where the valleys rib the mountains;
The blue green mists, the silence which the mountain valleys fill!
Is that Alba Longa? Yes; and there's Soracte.
Soracte? Yes; in Horace: don't you " vides ut, " you fool?
No! She's not a model ... you will have her husband on us. . . .!
Though her buttocks are far better than the Seven Hills of Rome!
Cherries ripe and mountains! Young wives with the gait of
Goddesses; and feelings which you try in vain to say
To the gay vivacious calculating native;
If you knew Italian you would give the show away.
What is the attraction? Why are we delighted
When we meet the natives of a race that's not our own?
Is that which we like in them our ignorance about them;
And we feel so much the better where we know we are not known?
Well, it does not matter. I am thinking of a stone-pine
Where an Empress had her villa on the great Flaminian Way;
And the blond Teutonic students who have come so far for knowledge,
And the fräuleins who come with them on a reading holiday.
If I met a tall fair student girl from Dresden,
Whiter than a cream cheese, credulous, and O
Earnest, and so grateful for the things that I might teach her,
And I took her touring, would she have the sense to go?
I would through a ringlet, whisper ... " This is Virgil's
Confiscated farmstead which his friend in Rome restored.
The Mastersinging races from the North came down here merging;
And your hair was heir to colour that great Titian preferred.
How my pulses leap up! I can hardly curb them,
Visiting the places which a poet loved ... Ah, well!
Never fear the nightfall. . . . Veniemus urbem!
My friend can take our taxi and go look for an hotel. "
Here between the last wave of the hills subsiding
And the river-beeches which are growing bald with age,
Gentle as the land's rise, lofty and abiding,
Rhythm's mountain ranges rose to sunshine from his page.
" " Is this Virgil's birthplace?" " Scholars are uncertain —
You cannot be a scholar if a thing is too well known —
There's the Idylls " ilex: if we use it for a curtain,
You can sit on half my raincoat and my half will be a throne.
Virgil was Menalcas: let me call you Phyllis.
Now look up the Idyll where they tried what each could do:
There! " Vis ergo inter nos," and " turn about's," " vicissim";
My pipe though not wax-jointed yet can play a tune or two. "
Friends, you must forgive me for this utter nonsense.
To-day I saw an ilex where the Dodder streels along;
And that togaed exile made me so despondent
That I called the light and glory which it shadows into song.
Thwart in the world I control are many seasons,
Many climes and characters obedient to a spell;
I turn to human grandeur's most exalted voice for reasons,
And not the least, that Virgil led a soul estranged from Hell.
Italy in April! The cherries on the hill!
The sudden gush of rivers where the valleys rib the mountains;
The blue green mists, the silence which the mountain valleys fill!
Is that Alba Longa? Yes; and there's Soracte.
Soracte? Yes; in Horace: don't you " vides ut, " you fool?
No! She's not a model ... you will have her husband on us. . . .!
Though her buttocks are far better than the Seven Hills of Rome!
Cherries ripe and mountains! Young wives with the gait of
Goddesses; and feelings which you try in vain to say
To the gay vivacious calculating native;
If you knew Italian you would give the show away.
What is the attraction? Why are we delighted
When we meet the natives of a race that's not our own?
Is that which we like in them our ignorance about them;
And we feel so much the better where we know we are not known?
Well, it does not matter. I am thinking of a stone-pine
Where an Empress had her villa on the great Flaminian Way;
And the blond Teutonic students who have come so far for knowledge,
And the fräuleins who come with them on a reading holiday.
If I met a tall fair student girl from Dresden,
Whiter than a cream cheese, credulous, and O
Earnest, and so grateful for the things that I might teach her,
And I took her touring, would she have the sense to go?
I would through a ringlet, whisper ... " This is Virgil's
Confiscated farmstead which his friend in Rome restored.
The Mastersinging races from the North came down here merging;
And your hair was heir to colour that great Titian preferred.
How my pulses leap up! I can hardly curb them,
Visiting the places which a poet loved ... Ah, well!
Never fear the nightfall. . . . Veniemus urbem!
My friend can take our taxi and go look for an hotel. "
Here between the last wave of the hills subsiding
And the river-beeches which are growing bald with age,
Gentle as the land's rise, lofty and abiding,
Rhythm's mountain ranges rose to sunshine from his page.
" " Is this Virgil's birthplace?" " Scholars are uncertain —
You cannot be a scholar if a thing is too well known —
There's the Idylls " ilex: if we use it for a curtain,
You can sit on half my raincoat and my half will be a throne.
Virgil was Menalcas: let me call you Phyllis.
Now look up the Idyll where they tried what each could do:
There! " Vis ergo inter nos," and " turn about's," " vicissim";
My pipe though not wax-jointed yet can play a tune or two. "
Friends, you must forgive me for this utter nonsense.
To-day I saw an ilex where the Dodder streels along;
And that togaed exile made me so despondent
That I called the light and glory which it shadows into song.
Thwart in the world I control are many seasons,
Many climes and characters obedient to a spell;
I turn to human grandeur's most exalted voice for reasons,
And not the least, that Virgil led a soul estranged from Hell.