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,t

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,

of Chuisi, 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 (Vol. III. p. 2).—ED. + Compare

"No bird but an invisible thing."

-(Vol. III. p. 2.)-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.

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

* See note, p. 63.-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. 63. He was canonized in 1230. Henry Crabbe 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 1 offered to be his amanuensis; but I was not patient enough, I fear, and he did not employ me a second time. He made enquiries 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 Memoirs of Wordsworth, 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.

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 Follower's 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 baptised imagination, prompt

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

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 skyward 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.

XV.

AT THE CONVENT OF CAMALDOLI.*

GRIEVE for the Man who hither came bereft,
And seeking consolation from above;

Nor grieve the less that skill to him was left
To paint this picture of his lady-love:

* This famous sanctuary was the original establishment of Saint Romualdo (or Rumwald, as our ancestors saxonised the name) in the 11th century, the ground (campo) being given by a Count Maldo. The Camaldolensi, however, have spread wide as a branch of Benedictines, and may therefore be classed among the gentlemen of the monastic orders. The society comprehends two orders, monks and hermits; symbolised by their arms, two doves drinking out of the same cup. The monastery in which the monks here reside is beautifully situated, but a large unattractive edifice, not unlike a factory. The hermitage is placed in a loftier and wilder region of the forest. It comprehends between 20 and 30 distinct residences, each including for its single hermit an inclosed piece of ground and three very small apartments. There are days of indulgence when the hermit may quit his cell, and when old age arrives, he descends from the mountain and takes his abode among the monks.

My companion had, in the year 1831, fallen in with the monk, the subject of these two sonnets, who showed him his abode among the hermits. It is from him that I received the following particulars. He was then about 40 years of age, but his appearance was that of an older man. He had been a painter by profession, but on taking orders changed his name from Santi to Raffaello, perhaps with an unconscious reference as