Such A Cataclysm As
Ours May Account For The Extinction Of The Great Cro-Magnon
Civilization - As Fine A Race,
Physically, as has yet appeared on earth;
they too may have been afflicted with the plague of nationalism, unless,
as
Is quite likely, that horrid work was accomplished by a microbe of
some kind....
In the hour of evening, under a wintry sky amid whose darkly massed
vapours a young moon is peering down upon this maddened world, I wander
alone through deserted roadways towards that old solitary brick-tower.
Here I stand, and watch the Arno rolling its sullen waves. In Pisa, at
such an hour, the Arno is the emblem of Despair. Swollen with melted
snow from the mountains, it has gnawed its miserable clay banks and now
creeps along, leaden and inert, half solid, like a torrent of liquid
mud - irresolute whether to be earth or water; whether to stagnate here
for ever at my feet, or crawl onward yet another sluggish league into
the sea. So may Lethe look, or Styx: the nightmare of a flood.
There is dreary monotony in all Italian rivers, once they have reached
the plain. They are livelier in their upper reaches. At Florence - where
those citron-tinted houses are mirrored in the stream - you may study the
Arno in all its ever-changing moods. Seldom is its colour quite the
same. The hue of cafe-au-lait in full spate, it shifts at other times
between apple-green and jade, between celadon and chrysolite and
eau-de-Nil.
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