Alone By Norman Douglas













































































 -  It has often been described, often painted. It is a corner of
Latium in perfect preservation; a glamorous place; in - Page 154
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It Has Often Been Described, Often Painted.

It is a corner of Latium in perfect preservation; a glamorous place; in the warm dusk of southern twilight - when all those tiresome children are at last asleep - it calls up suggestions of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Here is a specimen of the landscape as it used to be. You may encounter during your wanderings similar fragments of woodland, saved by their inaccessibility from the invading axe. "Hands off the Oak!" cries an old Greek poet.

The Germans, realizing its picturesque value, bought this parcel of land and saved the trees from destruction. It was well done. Within, they have cut certain letterings upon the rock which violate the sylvan sanctity of the place - Germans will do these things; there is no stopping them; it is part of their crudely expansive temperament - certain letterings, among other and major horrors, anent the "Law of the Ever-beautiful" (how truly Teutonic!) - lines, that is, signed by the poet Victor von Scheffel, and dated 2 May, 1897. Scheffel was a kindly and erudite old toper, who toped himself into Elysium via countless quarts of Affenthaler. I used to read his things; the far-famed Ekkehardt furnishing an occasion for a visit to the Hohentwiel mountain in search of that golden-tinted natrolite mineral, which was duly found (I specialized in zeolites during that period).

Now what was Scheffel doing at this Serpentaro in 1897? For I attended his funeral, which took place in the 'eighties. Can it be that his son, a scraggy youth in those days, inherited not only the father's name but his poetic mantle?

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