It Seeks
Shelter From The Wind For Its Frail Stalks And Leaves, That Shrivel
Wondrously When The Plant Is Set In Exposed Situations.
The Sabine mountains are full of elders. They use the berries to colour
the wine. A German writer, R. Voss, wove their fragrance into a kind of
Leit-motif for one of his local novels. I met him once by accident, and
am not anxious to meet him again. A sacerdotal and flabbily pompous old
man - straightway my opinion of his books, never very high, fell to zero,
and has there remained. He knew these regions well, and doubtless
sojourned at one time or another at yonder caravanserai-hotel, abandoned
of late, but then filled with a crowd of noisy enthusiasts who have
since been sacrificed to the war-god. Doubtless he drank wine with them
on that terrace overlooking the brown houses of Olevano, though I
question whether he then paid as much as they are now charging me;
doubtless he rejoiced to see that stately array of white lilies fronting
the landscape, though I question whether he derived more pleasure from
them than I do....
While at Bellegra, this afternoon, I gazed landwards to where, in the
Abruzzi region, the peaks are still shrouded in snow.
How are they doing our there, at Scanno? Is that driving-road at last
finished? Can the "River Danube" still be heard flowing underground in
the little cave of Saint Martin? Are the thistles of violet and red and
blue and gold and silver as gorgeous as ever?
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