Words for the Hour/Via Felice
VIA FELICE.
'T was in the Via Felice My friend his dwelling made,The Roman Via Felice, Half sunshine, half in shade.
A marble God stands near it That once deserved a shrine,And, veteran of the old world, The Barberini pine.
A very Roman is he Whom Age makes not so wiseBut that each coming winter Is still a new surprise.
But I lodged near the Convent Whose bells did hallow noon,And all the lesser hours With sweet recurrent tune.
They lent their solemn cadence To all the thoughtless day;The heart, so oft it heard them, Was lifted up to pray.
And where the lamp was lighted At twilight, on the wall,Serenely sat Madonna, And smiled to bless us all.
Those voices, illustrating Their bargains, from the street,Shaming Thought's narrow meanness With music infinite.
Those men of stately stature, Those women, fair of shape,That watched the chestnuts roasting, The fig, and clustered grape;
All this, my daily pleasure That made none poor to give,Was near the Via Felice Where Horace loved to live.
I see him from the window That ne'er my heart forgets,He buys from yonder maiden My morning violets.
Not ill he chose those flowers With mild, reproving eyes,Emblems of tender chiding, And love divinely wise.
For his were generous learning, And reconciling Art;Oh! not with fleeting presence My friend and I could part.
His work of consolation Abode when he was gone,A tower of Beauty lifted From ruins widely strewn.
Our own inconstant heavens Were o'er us, when we metBefore a longer parting, Not seen, nor dreamed of, yet.
'T was when the Spring's soft breathing Restores the frozen sense,And Patience, dull with Winter, Is glad in recompense.
There, in our pleasant converse, As by one thought, we said:This is the Via Felice, Where friends together tread.
Again, my friend turned seaward, Again, athwart the waveHe flung the wayward fortune His fiery planet gave.
And, in that heart of Paris That hides distress and wrongSo cold, with show and splendor, So dumb, with dance and song;
Drawn, by some hidden current Of unknown agony,To seek a throb responsive, Our Horace sank to die.
Oh! not where he is lying With dear ancestral dust,Not where his household traces Grow sad and dim with rust;
But in the Ancient City And from the quaint old door,I'm watching, at my window His coming, evermore.
For Death's Eternal city Has yet some happy street,'T is in the Via Felice My friend and I shall meet.