On the Sacro Monte at Varallo

On Varallo’s Sacro Monte, ‘neath the chestnuts’ balmy shade,

There I lay and dreamed at leisure, let the world around me fade.

I bethought me of the legend, how of old the chapels grew,

How the spirit of the ages lived in faithful hearts and true;

Of the story of the founder ~ how he roamed from sea to sea,

Forsaking friends and fortune, through the vales of Lombardy.

For once, when he was sleeping, god’s own angel came to him,

What time o’er Monte Rosa’s snows the dawn flushed faint and dim;

And told him of a chosen mount whereon to build a shrine,

That pilgrims might assemble there, to praise the light divine.

For years and years he wandered, till his hair was streaked with grey;

But the sign was long in coming, and the mountain far away.

Yet all his toil and trouble, and his closely-garnered hoard,

He gave them, nothing doubting, for the love he bare his lord.

And at last in one bright summer-time, he stayed his weary feet

On the spot in Sesia’s valley where the branching torrents meet ~

Where the mountain air comes fragrant from the mastalone glen,

And the rocky boulders tufted with the scented cyclamen:-

(It may have been the Christ Himself who led him by the hand),

For he saw the green hills circling, and he knew the chosen land.

And they say a bird’s sweet singing called him up the mountain stair,

Till lie stood upon a terrace-lawn with prospect wide and fair;

"’Tis here, the place I dreamed of ! here hat touched his garment’s hem !

This shall be my sacred mountain ! this my New Jerusalem!"

And he sent for many painters, and for noted men of lore,

For a nobler shrine should stand there than was ever built before;

And the sculptors all flocked round him; not for glory or for gold,

But for life and love and duty, worked those artist-folk of old.

So, crowned by many chapels, builded there by faithful hands,

Above the Sesia Valley still the Sacro Monte stands.

"Art is long, but time is fleeting:" those who moulded them are dust,

But the silent figures still withstand the mildew and the rust.

As sweet Ferrari painted and great Tabachetti planned,

To the living faith that raised them constant witnesses they stand.

Now sometimes at the grating prays a pilgrim ‘mid the weeds,

Or a little black-eyed peasant-girl who kneels there with her beads;

But the Sacro Monte to our days seems Bernardino’s whim,

Though ‘twas said in those dark ages that the lord had called him

To a work of His own choosing; but the years since then have rolled;

Gone are now the childlike spirit, and the simple faith of old.

E. C. C.

* The Sacro Monte, or " New Jerusalem," at Varallo, in the Val Sesia, one of the most remarkable remains extant of mediaeval Art, was founded in the end of the fifteenth century by Bernardino Caimi, who came of a noble and illustrious Milanese family. The hill is covered with a series of fifty chapels, containing groups of painted figures modelled in terra-cotta, and placed behind iron gratings ; the best of these were designed by Tabachetti, whilst the walls and ceilings of many of the chapels are painted by Gaudenzio Ferrari.