Italy from the Alps to Mount Etna . and yielded the generous wine which enlivened the bacchanalian processions ofthe antique peoples, even as it enlivens to this day the uproarious autumn festival! The opening of the huge cavern yawns darkly in the bright daylight, like the gatesof Orcus, the very jaws of the all-devouring under-world. The vaulting of the broadtunnel looks like the lid of a coffin, and is tapestried with secular spiders-webs, andblackened with secular smoke and dust. The finger of history may be traced here , Romans, Spaniards, and Frenchmen have laboured at it. But
Italy from the Alps to Mount Etna . and yielded the generous wine which enlivened the bacchanalian processions ofthe antique peoples, even as it enlivens to this day the uproarious autumn festival! The opening of the huge cavern yawns darkly in the bright daylight, like the gatesof Orcus, the very jaws of the all-devouring under-world. The vaulting of the broadtunnel looks like the lid of a coffin, and is tapestried with secular spiders-webs, andblackened with secular smoke and dust. The finger of history may be traced here , Romans, Spaniards, and Frenchmen have laboured at it. But according to thelegend current among the people it is the work of the great enchanter Virgil! This great enchanter of Antiquity, the Latin Homer, has found a grave among thevines and flowers that grow above the grotto :—a true poets grave, unmatched elsewherein the world. He himself desired that his ashes might be carried to Naples, because inthat city his most beautiful poems had been brought to maturity, and his Emperor himself. ANCIENT AND MODERN CAMPANIANS. 369 took care that the poets wish should be worthily fulfilled. What a glorious life it musthave been on these shores whilst Virgil, surrounded by a circle of enthusiastic comrades inart and noble friends, passed full seven years of the prime of his manhood in composinghis eternal songs! Illo Virgilium me tempore dulcis alebat Parthenope. And Strabo, Horace, and Ovid, joined him in praising the charms of this GrecianMuse. Eighteen hundred years have passed over the sepulchre, the urn has long beenbroken, and the ashes it contained are scattered to the winds ; many a laurel has sproutedon that sacred soil, and has withered and perished; many a one has stood full of enthusiasmbeside this grave who was doomed to descend unknown to Orcus ; but even as the seabeneath us eternally sounds its majestic music on the shore,—imperishable as the Springwhich lingers for ever beneath this sky—so sing and bloom throughout the cen
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Keywords: ., bookauthorcavagnasangiulianidig, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870
