Monte Cassino - Terra Di Lavoro Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDCD AEAE FGFG HIHI AFAF J KJK LMLN OPOP AQAQ RPRP STST UVUV WAWA PPPP XPXP YWYW QPQP ZAZA PA2PA2 B2C2B2C2Beautiful valley through whose verdant meads | A |
Unheard the Garigliano glides along | B |
The Liris nurse of rushes and of reeds | A |
The river taciturn of classic song | B |
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The Land of Labor and the Land of Rest | C |
Where mediaeval towns are white on all | D |
The hillsides and where every mountain's crest | C |
Is an Etrurian or a Roman wall | D |
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There is Alagna where Pope Boniface | A |
Was dragged with contumely from his throne | E |
Sciarra Colonna was that day's disgrace | A |
The Pontiff's only or in part thine own | E |
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There is Ceprano where a renegade | F |
Was each Apulian as great Dante saith | G |
When Manfred by his men at arms betrayed | F |
Spurred on to Benevento and to death | G |
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There is Aquinum the old Volscian town | H |
Where Juvenal was born whose lurid light | I |
Still hovers o'er his birthplace like the crown | H |
Of splendor seen o'er cities in the night | I |
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Doubled the splendor is that in its streets | A |
The Angelic Doctor as a school boy played | F |
And dreamed perhaps the dreams that he repeats | A |
In ponderous folios for scholastics made | F |
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And there uplifted like a passing cloud | J |
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That pauses on a mountain summit high | K |
Monte Cassino's convent rears its proud | J |
And venerable walls against the sky | K |
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Well I remember how on foot I climbed | L |
The stony pathway leading to its gate | M |
Above the convent bells for vespers chimed | L |
Below the darkening town grew desolate | N |
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Well I remember the low arch and dark | O |
The court yard with its well the terrace wide | P |
From which far down the valley like a park | O |
Veiled in the evening mists was dim descried | P |
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The day was dying and with feeble hands | A |
Caressed the mountain tops the vales between | Q |
Darkened the river in the meadowlands | A |
Sheathed itself as a sword and was not seen | Q |
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The silence of the place was like a sleep | R |
So full of rest it seemed each passing tread | P |
Was a reverberation from the deep | R |
Recesses of the ages that are dead | P |
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For more than thirteen centuries ago | S |
Benedict fleeing from the gates of Rome | T |
A youth disgusted with its vice and woe | S |
Sought in these mountain solitudes a home | T |
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He founded here his Convent and his Rule | U |
Of prayer and work and counted work as prayer | V |
The pen became a clarion and his school | U |
Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air | V |
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What though Boccaccio in his reckless way | W |
Mocking the lazy brotherhood deplores | A |
The illuminated manuscripts that lay | W |
Torn and neglected on the dusty floors | A |
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Boccaccio was a novelist a child | P |
Of fancy and of fiction at the best | P |
This the urbane librarian said and smiled | P |
Incredulous as at some idle jest | P |
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Upon such themes as these with one young friar | X |
I sat conversing late into the night | P |
Till in its cavernous chimney the woodfire | X |
Had burnt its heart out like an anchorite | P |
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And then translated in my convent cell | Y |
Myself yet not myself in dreams I lay | W |
And as a monk who hears the matin bell | Y |
Started from sleep already it was day | W |
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From the high window I beheld the scene | Q |
On which Saint Benedict so oft had gazed | P |
The mountains and the valley in the sheen | Q |
Of the bright sun and stood as one amazed | P |
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Gray mists were rolling rising vanishing | Z |
The woodlands glistened with their jewelled crowns | A |
Far off the mellow bells began to ring | Z |
For matins in the half awakened towns | A |
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The conflict of the Present and the Past | P |
The ideal and the actual in our life | A2 |
As on a field of battle held me fast | P |
Where this world and the next world were at strife | A2 |
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For as the valley from its sleep awoke | B2 |
I saw the iron horses of the steam | C2 |
Toss to the morning air their plumes of smoke | B2 |
And woke as one awaketh from a dream | C2 |
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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