Was nought around but images of rest,
Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between,
And flowery beds that slumbrous influence kept,
From poppies breath'd, and banks of pleasant green,
Where never yet was creeping creature seen.
Meantime unnumbered glittering streamlets play'd,
And hurled every where their water's sheen,
That, as they bicker'd through the sunny glade,
Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made.
THOMSON
When Emily, in the morning, opened her casement, she was surprised
to observe the beauties, that surrounded it. The cottage was nearly
embowered in the woods, which were chiefly of chesnut intermixed
with some cypress, larch and sycamore. Beneath the dark and spreading
branches, appeared, to the north, and to the east, the woody Apennines,
rising in majestic amphitheatre, not black with pines, as she had been
accustomed to see them, but their loftiest summits crowned with antient
forests of chesnut, oak, and oriental plane, now animated with the rich
tints of autumn, and which swept downward to the valley uninterruptedly,
except where some bold rocky promontory looked out from among the
foliage, and caught the passing gleam.
Vineyards stretched along the
feet of the mountains, where the elegant villas of the Tuscan nobility
frequently adorned the scene, and overlooked slopes clothed with
groves of olive, mulberry, orange and lemon. The plain, to which these
declined, was coloured with the riches of cultivation, whose mingled
hues were mellowed into harmony by an Italian sun. Vines, their purple
clusters blushing between the russet foliage, hung in luxuriant festoons
from the branches of standard fig and cherry trees, while pastures of
verdure, such as Emily had seldom seen in Italy, enriched the banks of
a stream that, after descending from the mountains, wound along the
landscape, which it reflected, to a bay of the sea. There, far in the
west, the waters, fading into the sky, assumed a tint of the faintest
purple, and the line of separation between them was, now and then,
discernible only by the progress of a sail, brightened with the sunbeam,
along the horizon.
The cottage, which was shaded by the woods from the intenser rays of the
sun, and was open only to his evening light, was covered entirely with
vines, fig-trees and jessamine, whose flowers surpassed in size and
fragrance any that Emily had seen. These and ripening clusters of grapes
hung round her little casement. The turf, that grew under the woods, was
inlaid with a variety of wild flowers and perfumed herbs, and, on the
opposite margin of the stream, whose current diffused freshness beneath
the shades, rose a grove of lemon and orange trees. This, though nearly
opposite to Emily's window, did not interrupt her prospect, but rather
heightened, by its dark verdure, the effect of the perspective; and
to her this spot was a bower of sweets, whose charms communicated
imperceptibly to her mind somewhat of their own serenity.