Catherine, borne by angels!
PRINCE HENRY.
Thou art St. Catherine, and invisible angels
Bear thee across these chasms and precipices,
Lest thou shouldst dash thy feet against a stone!
ELSIE.
Would I were borne unto my grave, as she was,
Upon angelic shoulders! Even now
I seem uplifted by them, light as air!
What sound is that?
PRINCE HENRY.
The tumbling avalanches!
ELSIE.
How awful, yet how beautiful!
PRINCE HENRY.
These are
The voices of the mountains! Thus they ope
Their snowy lips, and speak unto each other,
In the primeval language, lost to man.
ELSIE.
What land is this that spreads itself beneath us?
PRINCE HENRY.
Italy! Italy!
ELSIE.
Land of the Madonna!
How beautiful it is! It seems a garden
Of Paradise!
PRINCE HENRY.
Nay, of Gethsemane
To thee and me, of passion and of prayer!
Yet once of Paradise. Long years ago
I wandered as a youth among its bowers,
And never from my heart has faded quite
Its memory, that, like a summer sunset,
Encircles with a ring of purple light
All the horizon of my youth.
GUIDE.
O friends!
The days are short, the way before us long:
We must not linger, if we think to reach
The inn at Belinzona before vespers!
They pass on.
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