May 25Th 1837

[Among a thousand delightful feelings connected in my mind with the voice of the cuckoo, there is a personal one which is rather melancholy. I was first convinced that age had rather dulled my hearing, by not being able to catch the sound at the same distance as the younger companions of my walks; and of this failure I had a proof upon the occasion that suggested these verses. I did not hear the sound till Mr. Robinson had twice or thrice directed my attention to it.]

List--’twas the Cuckoo.--O with what delight Heard I that voice! and catch it now, though faint, Far off and faint, and melting into air, Yet not to be mistaken. Hark again! Those louder cries give notice that the Bird, Although invisible as Echo’s self, Is wheeling hitherward. Thanks, happy Creature, For this unthought-of greeting! While allured From vale to hill, from hill to vale led on, We have pursued, through various lands, a long And pleasant course; flower after flower has blown, Embellishing the ground that gave them birth With aspects novel to my sight; but still Most fair, most welcome, when they drank the dew In a sweet fellowship with kinds beloved, For old remembrance sake. And oft--where Spring Display’d her richest blossoms among files Of orange-trees bedecked with glowing fruit Ripe for the hand, or under a thick shade Of Ilex, or, if better suited to the hour, The lightsome Olive’s twinkling canopy-- Oft have I heard the Nightingale and Thrush Blending as in a common English grove Their love-songs; but, where’er my feet might roam, Whate’er assemblages of new and old, Strange and familiar, might beguile the way, A gratulation from that vagrant Voice Was wanting;--and most happily till now.

For see, Laverna! mark the far-famed Pile, High on the brink of that precipitous rock, Implanted like a Fortress, as in truth It is, a Christian Fortress, garrisoned In faith and hope, and dutiful obedience, By a few Monks, a stern society, Dead to the world and scorning earth-born joys. Nay--though the hopes that drew, the fears that drove, St. Francis, far from Man’s resort, to abide Among these sterile heights of Apennine, Bound him, nor, since he raised yon House, have ceased To bind his spiritual Progeny, with rules Stringent as flesh can tolerate and live; His milder Genius (thanks to the good God That made us) over those severe restraints Of mind, that dread heart-freezing discipline, Doth sometimes here predominate, and works By unsought means for gracious purposes; For earth through heaven, for heaven, by changeful earth, Illustrated, and mutually endeared.

Rapt though He were above the power of sense, Familiarly, yet out of the cleansed heart Of that once sinful Being overflowed On sun, moon, stars, the nether elements, And every shape of creature they sustain, Divine affections; and with beast and bird (Stilled from afar--such marvel story tells-- By casual outbreak of his passionate words, And from their own pursuits in field or grove Drawn to his side by look or act of love Humane, and virtue of his innocent life) He wont to hold companionship so free, So pure, so fraught with knowledge and delight, As to be likened in his Followers’ minds To that which our first Parents, ere the fall From their high state darkened the Earth with fear, Held with all Kinds in Eden’s blissful bowers.

Then question not that, ’mid the austere Band, Who breathe the air he breathed, tread where he trod, Some true Partakers of his loving spirit Do still survive, and, with those gentle hearts Consorted, Others, in the power, the faith, Of a baptized imagination, prompt To catch from Nature’s humblest monitors Whate’er they bring of impulses sublime.

Thus sensitive must be the Monk, though pale With fasts, with vigils worn, depressed by years, Whom in a sunny glade I chanced to see, Upon a pine-tree’s storm-uprooted trunk, Seated alone, with forehead sky-ward raised, Hands clasped above the crucifix he wore Appended to his bosom, and lips closed By the joint pressure of his musing mood And habit of his vow. That ancient Man-- Nor haply less the Brother whom I marked, As we approached the Convent gate, aloft Looking far forth from his aerial cell, A young Ascetic--Poet, Hero, Sage, He might have been, Lover belike he was-- If they received into a conscious ear The notes whose first faint greeting startled me, Whose sedulous iteration thrilled with joy My heart--may have been moved like me to think, Ah! not like me who walk in the world’s ways, On the great Prophet, styled the Voice of One Crying amid the wilderness, and given, Now that their snows must melt, their herbs and flowers Revive, their obstinate winter pass away, That awful name to Thee, thee, simple Cuckoo, Wandering in solitude, and evermore Foretelling and proclaiming, ere thou leave This thy last haunt beneath Italian skies To carry thy glad tidings over heights Still loftier, and to climes more near the Pole.

Voice of the Desert, fare-thee-well; sweet Bird! If that substantial title please thee more, Farewell!--but go thy way, no need hast thou Of a good wish sent after thee; from bower To bower as green, from sky to sky as clear, Thee gentle breezes waft--or airs that meet Thy course and sport around thee softly fan-- Till Night, descending upon hill and vale, Grants to thy mission a brief term of silence, And folds thy pinions up in blest repose.

Laverna is a corruption of Alverna (now called Alverniac). It is about five or six hours’ walk from Camaldoli, on a height of the Apennines, not far from the sources of the Anio. To reach it, “the southern height of the Monte Valterona is ascended as far as the chapel of St. Romaiald; then a descent is made to Moggiona, beyond which the path turns to the left, traversing a long and fatiguing succession of gorges and slopes; the path at the base of the mountain is therefore preferable. The market town of Soci in the valley of the Archiano is first reached, then the profound valley of the Corsaline; beyond it rises a blunted cone, on which the path ascends in windings to a stony plain with marshy meadows. Above this rises the abrupt sandstone mass of the Vernia, to the height of 850 feet. On its S.W. slope, one-third of the way up, and 3906 feet above the sea-level, is seen a wall with small windows, the oldest part of the monastery, built in 1218 by St. Francis of Assisi. The church dates from 1284.… One of the grandest points is the Penna della Vernia (4796 feet), the ridge of the Vernia, also known as l’Apennino, the ‘rugged rock between the sources of the Tiber and Anio,’ as it is called by Dante (Paradiso, ii. 106).… Near the monastery are the Luoghi Santi, a number of grottos and rock-hewn chambers in which St. Francis once lived.” (See Baedeker’s Northern Italy, 1886, p. 463.)

“The Monte Alverno, or Monte della Verni is situated on the border of Tuscany, near the sources of the Tiber and Anio, not far from the Castle of Chiusi, where Orlando lived.” (Mrs. Oliphant’s Francis of Assisi, chap. xvi. p. 248.)

See also Herzog’s Real-Encyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, vol. iv. p. 655.--ED.

Compare To the Cuckoo, II. 3, 4 (vol. ii. p. 289)--

… Bird, Or but a wandering Voice?

ED.

Compare To the Cuckoo, l. 15 (vol. ii. p. 290)--

No bird, but an invisible thing.

ED.

From the difference in the colour of each side of the leaf, a grove of olives when wind-tossed is pre-eminently a “twinkling canopy.”--ED.

See note, p. 67.--ED.

St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the order of Friars Minors, after establishing numerous monasteries in Italy, Spain, and France, resigned his office and retired to this, one of the highest of the Apennine heights. See note, p. 67. He was canonised in 1230. Henry Crabb Robinson tells us, “It was at Laverna that he” [W.W.] “led me to expect that he had found a subject on which he could write, and that was the love which birds bore to St. Francis. He repeated to me a short time afterwards a few lines, which I do not recollect amongst those he has written on St. Francis in this poem. On the journey, one night only I heard him in bed composing verses, and on the following day I offered to be his amanuensis; but I was not patient enough, I fear, and he did not employ me a second time. He made inquiries for St. Francis’s biography, as if he would dub him his Leibheiliger (body-saint), as Goethe (saying that every one must have one) declared St. Philip Neri to be his.” (See the Memoirs of William Wordsworth, by his nephew, vol. ii. p. 331)--ED.

The characteristic feature of the Franciscan order was its vow of Poverty, and Francis desired that it should be taken in the most rigorous sense, viz. that no individual member of the fraternity, nor the fraternity itself, should be allowed to possess any property whatsoever, even in things necessary to human use.--ED.

The members of the Franciscan order were the Stoics of Christendom. The order has been powerful, and of great service to the Roman Church--alike in literature, and in practical action and enterprise.--ED.