Paradise Lost.[146]

“Vallombrosa--I longed in thy shadiest wood To slumber, reclined on the moss-covered floor!” Fond wish that was granted at last, and the Flood, That lulled me asleep, bids me listen once more. Its murmur how soft! as it falls down the steep, Near that Cell--yon sequestered Retreat high in air-- Where our Milton was wont lonely vigils to keep For converse with God, sought through study and prayer. The Monks still repeat the tradition with pride, And its truth who shall doubt? for his Spirit is here; In the cloud-piercing rocks doth her grandeur abide, In the pines pointing heavenward her beauty austere; In the flower-besprent meadows his genius we trace Turned to humbler delights, in which youth might confide, That would yield him fit help while prefiguring that Place Where, if Sin had not entered, Love never had died.

When with life lengthened out came a desolate time, And darkness and danger had compassed him round, With a thought he would flee to these haunts of his prime, And here once again a kind shelter be found. And let me believe that when nightly the Muse Did waft him to Sion, the glorified hill, Here also, on some favoured height, he would choose To wander, and drink inspiration at will.

Vallombrosa! of thee I first heard in the page Of that holiest of Bards, and the name for my mind Had a musical charm, which the winter of age And the changes it brings had no power to unbind. And now, ye Miltonian shades! under you I repose, nor am forced from sweet fancy to part, While your leaves I behold and the brooks they will strew, And the realised vision is clasped to my heart.

Even so, and unblamed, we rejoice as we may In Forms that must perish, frail objects of sense; Unblamed--if the Soul be intent on the day When the Being of Beings shall summon her hence. For he and he only with wisdom is blest Who, gathering true pleasures wherever they grow, Looks up in all places, for joy or for rest, To the Fountain whence Time and Eternity flow.

The name of Milton is pleasingly connected with Vallombrosa in many ways. The pride with which the Monk, without any previous question from me, pointed out his residence, I shall not readily forget. It may be proper here to defend the Poet from a charge which has been brought against him, in respect to the passage in Paradise Lost, where this place is mentioned. It is said, that he has erred in speaking of the trees there being deciduous, whereas they are, in fact, pines. The fault-finders are themselves mistaken; the natural woods of the region of Vallombrosa are deciduous, and spread to a great extent; those near the convent are, indeed, mostly pines; but they are avenues of trees planted within a few steps of each other, and thus composing large tracts of wood; plots of which are periodically cut down. The appearance of those narrow avenues, upon steep slopes open to the sky, on account of the height which the trees attain by being forced to grow upwards, is often very impressive. My guide, a boy of about fourteen years old, pointed this out to me in several places.--W.W. 1842.

Compare Paradise Lost, book i. l. 302. Vallombrosa--the shady valley--is 18 miles distant from Florence. Wordsworth’s quotation from Milton was from memory. It is not quite accurate.--ED.

See for the two first lines, Stanzas composed in the Simplon Pass.--W.W. 1842. (See vol. vi. p. 357.)--ED.

The monastery of Vallombrosa was founded about 1050, by S. Giovanni Gnalberto. It was suppressed in 1869, and is now converted into the R. Instituto Forestale, or forest school. The “cell,” the “sequestered retreat” referred to by Wordsworth, is doubtless Il Paradisino, or Le Celle, a small hermitage 266 feet above the monastery, which is itself 2980 feet above the sea.--ED.

Compare Milton’s letter to Benedetto Bonmattei of Florence, written during his stay in the city, September 10, 1638.--ED.

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Compare Paradise Lost, book iii. l. 29--

… but chief Thee, Sion, and the flourie Brooks beneath, That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow, Nightly I visit.

ED.

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