THE DAWN OF yOUNG SPRING 



Whence are we victors, chanting as we go, 



April and I. 



" Be free, ye tumbling streams, aioake snow 

 Ye silver blooms increase and multiply" 

 What is our spell? The singing heart we bring, 

 And lo ! that song that is the core of earth 

 Leaps in reply, and children of the Spring 

 Into the light come forth. 



Then there was a dawn over the Campagna, seen from 

 the train that was speeding us towards Rome. A ball of 

 red fire hung over the horizon. The sea lay silver and 

 grey / and misty silver the Campagna. ..." God made 

 himself an awful rose of dawn/' as Tennyson sings. He 

 did that morning : awful, yet full of a glorious comfort. 

 The sea just caught the great reflection on its bosom. 

 A little later, when we came to the first ruins that precede 

 the aqueducts, there were the white cattle, stepping about 

 among the broken pillars, with their huge spreading horns 

 all gilded. These had not changed since the days when 

 the sun gleamed on the grandeurs of classic Rome. Only 

 then yonder buildingtemple, or tomb, or villafronted 

 the morning with a forgotten stateliness, a lost grace. 

 Is anything comparable to the scene that meets the traveller 

 on his entry into Rome? Alas! St. John Lateran no 

 longer stands like some titanic splendid ship about to slip 

 her moorings and sail away into the wild, lonely sea of the 

 Campagna. New walls have sprung up without the noble 

 ancient walls/ sordid disjointed lengths of streets, mean 

 houses with blistered, leprous plaster,- and evil-looking 

 little wine-shops. Nevertheless, nothing can spoil ithe 



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