The Roman Vase

“From Tuscan Bellosguardo
Where Galileo stood at nights to take
The vision of the stars, we have found it hard,
Gazing upon the earth and heavens, to make
A choice of beauty.”—ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

Bellosguardo is an eminence on a height, crowned with an ancient, castle-like monastery, from which there is a magnificent view of Florence. It is a haunted legendary spot; _fate_ and witches sweep round its walls by night, while the cry of the _civetta_ makes music for their aërial dance, and in the depths of the hill lie buried mystic treasures, or the relics of mysterious beings of the olden time, and the gnome of the rocks there has his dwelling in subterranean caves. Of this place I have the following legend from Maddalena:

IL VASO ROMANO.

“There was, long ago, in the time of Duke Lorenzo di Medici, a young gardener, who was handsome, clever, and learned beyond the other men of his kind, a man given somewhat to witchcraft and mysteries of ancient days, for he had learned Latin of the monks and read books of history.

“And one day when he was working with his companions in the garden of Bellosguardo, taking out stones, they came to an old Roman vase, which the rest would fain have broken to pieces as a heathenish and foul thing, because there was carved on it the figure of a beautiful Pagan goddess, and it was full of the ashes of some dead person. But the young man suddenly felt a great passion, a desire to possess it, and it seemed as if something said to him, ‘_Con questo vaso ciè un mistero_.’

“‘Mine own in truth that vase shall ever be,
For there is in it some strange mystery.’

“So he begged for it, and it was readily granted to him. And looking at it, he perceived that it was carved of fine marble, and that the figure on it was that of a beautiful nymph, or a Bellaria flying in the air, and there came from the ashes which it held a sweet odour of some perfume which was unknown to him. Now as he had, _sentito ragionare tanto di fate_, heard much talk of supernatural beings, so he reflected: ‘Some _fata_ must have dwelt here in days of old, and she was here buried, and this vase is now as a body from which the spirit freely passes, therefore I will show it respect.’

“And so he hung round the neck of the vase a wreath of the most beautiful and fragrant roses, and draped a veil over it to shield it from dust, and set it up under cover in his own garden, and sang to it as follows:

“‘Vaso! o mio bel vaso!
Di rose ti ho contornato.
La rosa e un bel fior,
Più bello e il suo odor.”

“‘Vase, oh lovely vase of mine!
With roses I thy neck entwine;
The rose is beautiful in bloom,
More beautiful its sweet perfume,
The finest rose above I place,
To give the whole a crowning grace,
As thou dost crown my dwelling-place
Another rose I hide within,
As thou so long hast hidden been,
Since Roman life in thee I see,
Rosa Romana thou shalt be!
And ever thus be called by me!
And as the rose in early spring
Rises to re-awakening,
Be it in garden, fair, or plain,
From death to blooming life again,
So rise, oh fairy of the flowers,
And seek again these shady bowers!
Come every morning to command
My flowers, and with thy tiny hand
Curve the green leaf and bend the bough,
And teach the blossoms how to blow;
But while you give them living care,
Do not neglect the gardener;
And as he saved your lovely urn,
I pray protect him too in turn,
Even as I this veil have twined,
To guard thee from the sun and wind:
Oh, Fairy of the Vase—to you,
As Queen of all the Fairies too,
And Goddess of the fairest flowers
In earthly fields or elfin bowers,
To thee with earnest heart I pray,
Grant me such favour as you may.’ {196}

“Then he saw slowly rising from the vase, little by little, a beautiful woman, who sang:

“‘Tell me what is thy desire,
Oh youth, and what dost thou require?
From realms afar I come to thee,
For thou indeed hast summoned me,
With such sweet love and gentleness,
That I in turn thy life would bless,
And aye thy fond protectress be.
What would’st thou, youth, I ask, of me?’

“And the young man replied:

“‘Fair lady, at a glance I knew,
Thy urn and felt thy spirit too,
And straight the yearning through me sped,
To raise thee from the living dead;
I felt thy spell upon my brow,
And loved thee as I love thee now.
Even as I loved unknown before,
And so shall love thee evermore,
And happiness enough ’twould be
If thou would’st ever live with me!’

“Then the spirit replied:

“‘A debt indeed to thee I owe,
And full reward will I bestow;
The roses which thou’st given me
With laurel well repaid shall be;
Without thy rose I had not risen
Again from this my earthly prison,
And as it raised me to the skies,
So by the laurel thou shalt rise!’

“The youth answered:

“‘Every evening at thy shrine
Fresh roses, lady, I will twine;
But tell me next what ’tis for fate
That I must do, or what await?’

“The fairy sang:

“‘A mighty mission, youth, indeed
Hast thou to fill, and that with speed,
Since it depends on thee to save
All Florence from a yawning grave,
From the worst form of blood and fire,
And sword and conflagration dire.
Thou dost the Duke Lorenzo know;
Straight to that mighty leader go!
The Chieftain of the Medici,
And tell him what I tell to thee,
That he is compassed all about
With armed enemies without,
Who soon will bold attack begin,
Linked to conspiracy within;
And bid him ere the two have crossed,
To rise in strength or all is lost,
Ring loud the storm-bell in alarms,
Summon all Florence straight to arms:
Lorenzo knows well what to do.
Take thou thy sword and battle too!
And in the fray I’ll look to thee:
Go forth, my friend, to victory.’

“Then the young man went to the Duke Lorenzo, and told him, with words of fire which bore conviction, of the great peril which threatened him. Then there was indeed alarming and arming, and a terrible battle all night long, in which the young man fought bravely, having been made captain of a company which turned the fight. And the Grand Duke, impressed by his genius and his valour, gave him an immense reward.

“So he rose in life, and became a _gran signore_, and one of the Council in Florence, and lord of Bellosguardo, and never neglected to twine every day a fresh wreath of roses round the Roman vase, and every evening he was visited by the fairy. And so it went on well with him till he died, and after that the spirit was seen no more. The witches say that the vase is, however, somewhere still in Florence, and that while it exists the city will prosper; but to call the fairy again it must be crowned with roses, and he who does so must pronounce with such faith as the gardener had, the same incantation.”

* * * * *

What is remarkable in the original text of this tale is the rudeness and crudeness of the language in which it is written, which is indeed so great that its real spirit or meaning might easily escape any one not familiar with such composition. But I believe that I have rendered it very faithfully.

There seems to be that, however, in Bellosguardo which inspires every poet. Two of the most beautiful passages in English literature, one by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and another by Hawthorne, describe the views seen from it. The castle itself is deeply impressed on my memory, for during the past nine months I have never once raised my eyes from the table where I write without beholding it in full view before me across the Arno, even as I behold it now.

I cannot help observing that the mysterious sentiment which seized on the hero of this tale when he found his virgin relic, was marvellously like that which inspired Keats when he addressed his Ode to a Grecian Urn:

“Thou still unravished bride of quietness!
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape?”

That which I have here given is truly a leaf-fringed legend, for it is bordered with the petals of roses and embalmed with their perfume, and one which in the hands of a great master might have been made into a really beautiful poem. It came near a very gay rhymer at least in the Duke Lorenzo de’ Medici, whose songs, which were a little more than free, and rather more loose than easy, were the delight and disgrace of his time. And yet I cannot help rejoicing to meet this magnificent patron of art and letters at so late a day in a purely popular tale. There are _men_ of beauty who are also a joy for ever, as well as things, and Lorenzo was one of them.

It is worth noting that just as the fairy in this tale reveals to Lorenzo that Florence is threatened by enemies, just so it happened that unto Saint Zenobio, standing rapt in divine contemplation in his cavern, it was announced that the same city was about to be assailed by cruel barbarians, who, as Sigbert relates in his Chronicle of 407 A.D., were the two hundred thousand Goths led by Radagasio into Italy. But they were soon driven away by the Saint’s prayers and penitence. It would be curious if one legend had here passed into another:

“So visions in a vision live again,
And dreams in dreams are wondrously transfused;
Gold turning into grey as clouds do change,
And shifting hues as they assume new forms.”

Apropos of Saint Zenobio of Florence, I will here give something which should have been included with the legend of the Croce al Trebbio, but which I obtained too late for that purpose. It would appear from the _Iscrizioni e Memorie di Firenze_, by F. Bigazzi (1887), that the _pillar_ of the cross was really erected to commemorate a victory over heretics, but that the cross itself was added by the Saints Ambrosio and Zenobio, “on account of a great mystery”—which mystery is, I believe, fully explained by the legend which I have given. The inscription when complete was as follows:

SANCTUS AMBROSIUS CUM SANCTO ZENOBIO PROPTER GRANDE MISTERIUM
HUNC CRUCEM HIC LOCAVERUNT. ET IN MCCCXXXVIII NOVITER DIE
10 AUGUSTI RECONSECRATA EST P. D. M. FRANCISC. FLOR.
EPISCOPUM UNA CUM ALIIS EPISCOPIS M.

A slightly different reading is given by Brocchi (_Vite de’ Santi fiorentini_, 1742).

“Of which saint, be it observed,” writes Flaxius, “that there is in England a very large and widely extended family, or _stirps_, named Snobs, who may claim that by affinity of name to Zenobio they are lineally or collaterally his descendants, even as the Potts profess connection with Pozzo del Borgo. But as it is said of this family or _gens_ that they are famed for laying claim to every shadow of a shade of gentility, it may be that there is truly no Zenobility about them. Truly there are a great many more people in this world who are proud of their ancestors, than there ever were ancestors who would have been proud of them. The number of whom is as the sands of the sea, or as Heine says, ‘more correctly speaking, as the mud on the shore.’

“‘The which, more eath it were for mortall wight,
To sell the sands or count the starres on hye;
Or ought more hard, then thinke to reckon right . . .
Which—for my Muse herselfe now tyred has,
Unto another tale I’ll overpas.’”