United States or British Virgin Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Florence and Rome were not included in his scheme; he knew them both too well; but he hankered for Asolo and Venice. He determined, though as usual reluctantly, and not till the last moment, that they should move southwards in the August of 1878.
The procedure of the day at Asolo was almost as regular as that of a London day.
Browning was seeking something more: the remembrance of his own actual and poetic youth. How far he found it in the former place we may infer from a letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald. Sept. 28, 1878. And from 'Asolo', at last, dear friend! So can dreams come false.
"If we were ever late in returning to Asolo," Mrs Bronson writes, "he would say 'Tell Vittorio to drive quickly; we must not lose the sunset from the loggia. ... Often after a storm, the effects of sun breaking through clouds before its setting, combined with the scenery of plain and mountain, were such as to rouse the poet to the greatest enthusiasm.
"Browning and his sister have been here for the last six weeks, and you may fancy how intensely the poet enjoys revisiting after so many years the scenes of his youthful inspirations. He was only twenty-five or six when he first discovered Asolo.... Few young people are so gay and cheerful as he and his dear old sister."....
Some feverish energy must have supported him through this avoidance of every measure which might have afforded even temporary strength or relief. On Friday, the 29th, he wrote to a friend in London that he had waited thus long for the final answer from Asolo, but would wait no longer. He would start for England, if possible, on the Wednesday or Thursday of the following week.
The homecoming of the Daughter of Venice was over. Then, at last, came rest, and the sylvan-shades of Asolo vine-crowned among the hills, with the sea spreading far below blue, shimmering, laughing as if she laved but shores of content, under happy skies.
This state of mind was the more striking, that new symptoms of his physical decline were now becoming apparent, and were in themselves of a depressing kind. He wrote to a friend in England, that the atmosphere of Asolo, far from being oppressive, produced in him all the effects of mountain air, and he was conscious of difficulty of breathing whenever he walked up hill.
Only the other day he wrote "Asolando," and half a century ago we find him writing: "Lo, on a healthy, brown, and nameless hill By sparkling Asolo, in mist and chill, Morning just up, higher and higher runs A child, bare-foot and rosy." Asolo appears again very soon afterward in the lovely opening of the play "Pippa Passes."
The old man could be seen continually in the lanes round Asolo, peering into hedges and whistling for the lizards. This serene and pastoral decline, surely the mildest of slopes into death, was suddenly diversified by a flash of something lying far below.
Word Of The Day