The Marble Faun Volume 1 - Page 42/130

In other portions of the grounds the stone-pines lifted their dense

clump of branches upon a slender length of stem, so high that they

looked like green islands in the air, flinging down a shadow upon the

turf so far off that you hardly knew which tree had made it. Again,

there were avenues of cypress, resembling dark flames of huge funeral

candles, which spread dusk and twilight round about them instead of

cheerful radiance. The more open spots were all abloom, even so early in

the season, with anemones of wondrous size, both white and rose-colored,

and violets that betrayed themselves by their rich fragrance, even if

their blue eyes failed to meet your own. Daisies, too, were abundant,

but larger than the modest little English flower, and therefore of small

account.

These wooded and flowery lawns are more beautiful than the finest

of English park scenery, more touching, more impressive, through the

neglect that leaves Nature so much to her own ways and methods. Since

man seldom interferes with her, she sets to work in her quiet way

and makes herself at home. There is enough of human care, it is true,

bestowed, long ago and still bestowed, to prevent wildness from growing

into deformity; and the result is an ideal landscape, a woodland scene

that seems to have been projected out of the poet's mind. If the ancient

Faun were other than a mere creation of old poetry, and could have

reappeared anywhere, it must have been in such a scene as this.

In the openings of the wood there are fountains plashing into marble

basins, the depths of which are shaggy with water-weeds; or they tumble

like natural cascades from rock to rock, sending their murmur afar, to

make the quiet and silence more appreciable. Scattered here and there

with careless artifice, stand old altars bearing Roman inscriptions.

Statues, gray with the long corrosion of even that soft atmosphere, half

hide and half reveal themselves, high on pedestals, or perhaps fallen

and broken on the turf. Terminal figures, columns of marble or granite

porticos, arches, are seen in the vistas of the wood-paths, either

veritable relics of antiquity, or with so exquisite a touch of artful

ruin on them that they are better than if really antique. At all events,

grass grows on the tops of the shattered pillars, and weeds and flowers

root themselves in the chinks of the massive arches and fronts of

temples, and clamber at large over their pediments, as if this were the

thousandth summer since their winged seeds alighted there.

What a strange idea--what a needless labor--to construct artificial

ruins in Rome, the native soil of ruin! But even these sportive

imitations, wrought by man in emulation of what time has done to temples

and palaces, are perhaps centuries old, and, beginning as illusions,

have grown to be venerable in sober earnest. The result of all is a

scene, pensive, lovely, dreamlike, enjoyable and sad, such as is to

be found nowhere save in these princely villa-residences in the

neighborhood of Rome; a scene that must have required generations and

ages, during which growth, decay, and man's intelligence wrought kindly

together, to render it so gently wild as we behold it now.