ight in
spring came to her from Greece as it is said among the vineyards, before
the vines had budded. For even as Love came to us from heaven, and was
born in a stable among the careful oxen, where a few poor shepherds
found a Mother with her Child, so Beauty was born in a vineyard in the
earliest dawn, when some young men came upon the hard white precious
body of a goddess, and drew her from the earth, and began to worship
her. Then in their hearts Beauty stirred, as Love did in the hearts of
the shepherds and the kings. Nor was that vision, so full of wisdom (a
vision of birth or resurrection, was it?) less fruitful than that other
so full of Love, when Mary, coming in the twilight of dawn, saw the
angel and heard his voice, and after weeping in the garden, heard Love
Himself call her by name. Well, if the resurrection of God was revealed
in Palestine, it was here among the Tuscan hills that man rose from the
dead and first saw the beauty of the flowers and the mystery of the
hills. Here, too, is holy land if you but knew it, full of old forgotten
gods, out-fashioned deities beside whose shrines, though they be hushed,
you may still hear the prayers of worshippers, the tears of desire, the
laughter of the beloved. For the old gods are not dead. Though they be
forgotten and the voice of Jesus full of sorrowful promises has beguiled
the world, still every morning is Aphrodite new born in the spume of the
sea, and in many an isle forsaken you may catch the notes of Apollo's
lyre, while Dionysus, in the mysterious heat of midday when the
husbandman is sleeping, still steals among the grapes, and Demeter even
yet in the sunset seeks Persephone among the sheaves of corn. If Jesus
wanders in the ways of the city to comfort those who have forgotten the
sun, in the woods the gods are still upon their holy thrones, and their
love constraineth us. Immortal and beloved, how should they pass away,
for, beside their secret places, of old we have hushed our voices, and
children have played with them no less than with Jesus of Nazareth. The
gods pass, only their gifts remain, the sun and the hills and the sea,
but in us they are immortal, not one have we suffered to creep away into
oblivion.

Thus I, thinking of the way, came to Nervi. Now the way from Genoa out
of the Pisan gate to Nervi is none of the pleasantest, being suburb all
the way; but those eight _chilometri_ over and done with, there is
nothing but delight between you an