cing, and I will carve new statues and rebuild the temples every
day. For I have loved you, O Gods, in the forests and on the mountains
and by the seashore. I, too, am fashioned out of the red earth, and all
the sea is in my heart, and my lover is the wind. As the rivers sing of
the sea, so will I sing till I find you. As the mountains wait for the
sun, so will I wait in the night of the city.

For my joy, and my lord the sun, I give you thanks, that he is splendid
and strong and beautiful beyond beauty. For the sea and all mysterious
things I give you thanks, that I have understood and am reconciled with
them. For the earth when the sun is set, for the earth when the sun is
risen, for the valleys and the hills, for the flowers and the trees, I
give you thanks, that I am one with them always and out of them was I
made. For the wind of morning, for the wind of evening, for the tender
night, for the growing day, take, then, my thanks, O Gods, for the
cypress, for the ilex, for the olive on the road to Italy in the sunset
and the summer.

IV. SARZANA AND LUNA

It was very early in the morning when I came into Tuscany. Leaving
Spezia overnight, I had slept at Lerici, and, waking in the earliest
still dawn, I had set out over the hills, hoping to cross the Macra
before breakfast.

In this tremulous and joyful hour, full of the profound gravity of youth
hesitating on the threshold of life, the day rose out of the sea; so, a
lily opening in a garden while we sleep transfigures it with its joy.

As I climbed the winding hill among the olives, while still a cool
twilight hung about the streets of Lerici, the sun stood up over the
sea, awakening it to the whole long day of love to come. Far away in the
early light, over a sea mysterious of blue and silver and full of
ecstasy, the coast curved with infinite beauty into the golden crest of
Porto Venere. Spezia, like a broken flower, seemed deserted on the
seashore, and Lerici itself, far below me, waking at morning, watched
the sleeping ships, the deep breathing of the sea, the shy and yet proud
gesture of the day.

Then as I crossed the ridge of the hill and began to follow the road
downward towards Tuscany between the still olives, where as yet the
world had not seen the sun, suddenly all that beautiful world, about to
be so splendid, was hidden from me, and instead I saw the delta of a
great river, the uplifted peaks of the marble mountains, and there was
Tuscany.