Warm vines bloom now along thy rampart steeps
Thy shelves of olives, undercliffs of azure.
And like a lizard of the red rock sleeps
The wrinkled Tuscan sea, panting for pleasure.
Nets, too, festooned about thine elfin port,
Telaro, in the Etrurian mountain's side,
Heavings of golden luggers scarce distort
The image of thy belfry where they ride.
But thee, Telaro, on a night long gone
That grey and holy tower upon the mole
Suddenly summoned, while yet lightnings shone
And hard gale lingered, with a ceaseless toll
That choked, with its disastrous monotone,
All the narrow channels of the hamlet's soul.
2
But the tower proved empty. By the lightning's ray
They found no human ringer in the room. . . .
The bell-rope quivered out in the sea-spume. . . .
3