Athwart the vapours, dense and dun,
Long shafts of silvery light arise,

Like rafters that support the skies!

ELSIE. See! from its summit the lurid levin Flashes downward without warning,

As Lucifer, son of the morning,

Fell from the battlements of heaven!

IL PAD. I must entreat you, friends, below.
The angry storm begins to blow,

For the weather changes with the moon.
All this morning, until noon,

We had baffling winds, and sudden flaws
Struck the sea with their cat's-paws.
Only a little hour ago

I was whistling to Saint Antonio
For a capful of wind to fill our sail,

And instead of a breeze he has sent a gale.
Last night I saw Saint Elmo's stars,

With their glimmering lanterns, all at play

On the tops of the masts and the tips of the spars,
And I knew we should have foul weather to-day.
Cheerly, my hearties! yo heave ho!
Brail up the mainsail, and let her go
As the winds will and Saint Antonio !
Do you see that Livornese felucca,
That vessel to the windward yonder,
Running with her gunwale under?

I was looking when the wind o'ertook her.
She had all sail set, and the only wonder
Is, that at once the strength of the blast
Did not carry away her mast.

She is a galley of the Gran Duca,
That through the fear of the Algerines,
Convoys those lazy brigantines,
Laden with wine and oil from Lucca.
Now all is ready, high and low;

Blow, blow, good saint Antonio.

Ha that is the first dash of the rain,
With a sprinkle of spray above the rails,
Just enough to moisten our sails,

And make them ready for the strain.

See how she leaps, as the blasts o'ertake her,
And speeds away with a bone in her mouth!
Now keep her head toward the south,

And there is no danger of bank or breaker.
With the breeze behind us, on we go;
Not too much, good St. Antonio!

VI.

SCENE-THE SCHOOL OF SALERNO.

A travelling Scholastic affixing his Theses to the gate of the College. SCHOL. There, that is my gauntlet, my banner, my shield, Hung up as a challenge to all the field!

One hundred and twenty-five propositions,

Which I will maintain with the sword of the tongue
Against all disputants, old and young.
Let us see if doctors or dialecticians
Will dare to dispute my definitions,

Or attack any one of my learned theses.

Here stand I; the end shall be as God pleases.
I think I have proved, by profound researches,
The error of all those doctrines so vicious

Of the old Areopagite Dionysius,

That are making such terrible work in the churches,
By Michael the Stammerer sent from the East,
And done into Latin by that Scottish beast,
Erigena Johannes, who dares to maintain,
In the face of the truth, the error infernal,
That the universe is and must be eternal;
At first laying down, as a fact fundamental,
That nothing with God can be accidental;
Then asserting that God before the creation
Could not have existed, because it is plain
That, had He existed, He would have created;
Which is begging the question that should be debated,
And moveth me less to anger than laughter.

All nature, he holds, is a respiration

Of the Spirit of God, who, in breathing hereafter

Will inhale it into His bosom again,

So that nothing but God alone will remain.

And therein he contradicteth himself;

For he opens the whole discussion by stating,

That God can only exist in creating.

That question I think I have laid on the shelf!

[He goes out. Two Doctors come in disputing, and followed by Pupils.

DR. SERAFINO. I, with the Doctor Seraphic, maintain, That a word which is only conceived in the brain

Is a type of eternal Generation;

The spoken word is the Incarnation.

DR. CHERUBINO. What do I care for the Doctor Seraphic, With all his wordy chaffer and traffic?

DR. SERAF. You make but a paltry show of resistance; Universals have no real existence !

DR. CHERUB. Your words are but idle and empty chatter! Ideas are eternally joined to matter!

DR. SERAF. May the Lord have mercy on your position, You wretched, wrangling culler of herbs!

DR. CHERUB. May He send your soul to eternal perdition, For your Treatise on the Irregular Verbs!

[They rush out fighting. Two Scholars come in. FIRST SCHOLAR. Monte Cassino, then, is your College. What think you of ours here at Salern?

SECOND SCHO. To tell the truth I arrived so lately,

I hardly yet have had time to discern.

So much, at least, I am bound to acknowledge:

The air seems healthy, the buildings stately,

And on the whole I like it greatly.

FIRST SCHO. Yes, the air is sweet; the Calabrian hills

Send us down puffs of mountain air;

And in summer-time the sea-breeze fills

With its coolness cloister, and court, and square.

Then at every season of the year

There are crowds of guests and travellers here ;
Pilgrims, and mendicant friars, and traders

From the Levant, with figs and wine,

And bands of wounded and sick Crusaders,

Coming back from Palestine.

SECOND SCHO. And what are the studies you pursue? What is the course you here go through?

FIRST SCHO. The first three years of the college course

Are given to logic alone, as the source

Of all that is noble, and wise, and true.

SECOND SCHO. That seems rather strange, I must confess, In a Medical School; yet, nevertheless,

You doubtless have reasons for that.

FIRST SCHO.

For none but a clever dialectician

O, yes!

Can hope to become a great physician;
That has been settled long ago.

Logic makes an important part

Of the mystery of the healing_art;

For without it how could you hope to show
That nobody knows so much as you know?

After this there are five years more

Devoted wholly to medicine,

With lectures on chirurgical lore,

And dissections of the bodies of swine,

As likest the human form divine.

SECOND SCHO. What are the books now most in vogue?

FIRST SCHO. Quite an extensive catalogue;

Mostly, however, books of our own;
As Gariopontus' Passionarius,

And the writings of Matthew Platearius;
And a volume universally known

As the Regimen of the School of Salern,
For Robert of Normandy written in terse
And very elegant Latin verse.

Each of these writings has its turn.
And when at length we have finished these,
Then comes the struggle for degrees,
With all the oldest and ablest critics;
The public thesis and disputation,
Question, and answer, and explanation
Of a passage out of Hippocrates,
Or Aristotle's Analytics.

There the triumphant Magister stands!
A book is solemnly placed in his hands,
On which he swears to follow the rule
And ancient forms of the good old School;
To report if any confectionarius

Mingles his drugs with matters various,
And to visit his patients twice a-day,
And once in the night, if they live in town,
And if they are poor, to take no pay.
Having faithfully promised these,

His head is crowned with a laurel crown;
A kiss on his cheek, a ring on his hand,

The Magister Artium et Physices

Goes forth from the school like a lord from the land.
And now, as we have the whole morning before us,

Let us go in, if you make no objection,

And listen awhile to a learned prelection

On Marcus Aurelius Cassiodorus.

[They go in. Enter LUCIFER as a Doctor. LUCIF. This is the great School of Salern! A land of wrangling and of quarrels,

Of brains that seethe, and hearts that burn,
Where every emulous scholar hears,
In every breath that comes to his ears,
The rustling of another's laurels !

The air of the place is called salubrious;
The neighbourhood of Vesuvius lends it'
An odour volcanic, that rather mends it.
And the buildings have an aspect lugubrious,
That inspires a feeling of awe and terror
Into the heart of the beholder,

And befits such an ancient homestead of error,

Where the old falsehoods moulder and smoulder,
And yearly by many hundred hands
Are carried away, in the zeal of youth,
And sown like tares in the field of truth,
To blossom and ripen in other lands.
What have we here, affixed to the gate?
The challenge of some scholastic wight,
Who wishes to hold a public debate
On sundry questions wrong or right!
Ah, now this is my great delight!
For I have often observed of late
That such discussions end in a fight.
Let us see what the learned wag maintains
With such a prodigal waste of brains.

"Whether angels in moving from place to place
Pass through the intermediate space.
Whether God Himself is the author of evil,
Or whether that is the work of the Devil.
When, where, and wherefore Lucifer fell,
And whether he now is chained in hell."
I think I can answer that question well!
So long as the boastful human mind
Consents in such mills as this to grind,
I sit very firmly upon my throne!
Of a truth it almost makes me laugh,
To see men leaving the golden grain
To gather in piles the pitiful chaff

That old Peter Lombard thrashed with his brain,
To have it caught up and tossed again
On the horns of the Dumb Ox of Cologne !
But my guests approach! There is in the air
A fragrance, like that of the Beautiful Garden
Of Paradise, in the days that were!
An odour of innocence, and of prayer,
And of love, and faith that never fails,
Such as the fresh young heart exhales
Before it begins to wither and harden!
I cannot breathe such an atmosphere!
My soul is filled with a nameless fear,
That, after all my trouble and pain,
After all my restless endeavour,
The youngest, fairest soul of the twain,
The most ethereal, most divine,

Will escape from my hands for ever and ever.

But the other is already mine!

Let him live to corrupt his race,

[Reads.