ROM ISCHIA

"Unto my buried lord I give myself."

* * * * *

Michael Angelo!
A man that all men honor, and the model
That all should follow; one who works and prays,
For work is prayer, and consecrates his life
To the sublime ideal of his art
Till art and life are one.

LONGFELLOW, from "_Michael Angelo; A Fragment_."

In that poetic sail along the Italian coast between Naples and Genoa the
voyager feels that it is

"On no earthly sea with transient roar"

that his bark is floating; that

"Unto no earthly airs he trims his sail,"

as he flits along this coast when violet waves dash against a brilliant
background of sky. Ischia reveals herself through the blue, transparent
air, gleaming with opalescent lights, quivering, fading and flaming
again as the afterglow in the east rivals in its coloring the sunset
splendors of the west. Is there in the air a faint, lingering echo of
the _chant d'amour_ of sirens on the rocky shores? Is Parthenope still
to be descried? Gazing upon Ischia there is a rush of romantic
impressions as if one were transported into ideal regions of song,
before this impression begins to resolve itself into definite
remembrance of fact and incident. Surely some exquisite associations in
the past had enchanted this island in memory and invested it with the
magic light that never was on sea or land. Traditions of beauty; of the
lives of scholar and savant and princes of the church; of a court of
nobility enriched and adorned by prelate and by poet; traditions, too,
of a woman's consecration to an immortal love and the solace of grief by
poetic genius and exalted friendships,--all these seem to cling about
Ischia in a vague, atmospheric way till memory, still groping backward
in the twilight of the richly historic past, suddenly crystallized into
recognition that it was Ischia which was the home of Vittoria Colonna,
the greatest woman poet of the Italian Renaissance. Lines, long since
read, arose like an incantation; and like bars of music, each note of
which vibrated in the air, came this fragment of one of her songs:--

"If in these rude and artless songs of mine
I never take the file in hand, nor try
With curious care and nice, fastidious eye
To deck and polish each uncultured line,
'T is that it makes small merit of my name
To merit praise....