Identifier: spellofitaly00maso (find matches)
Title: The spell of Italy
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Mason, Caroline Atwater, 1853-1939
Subjects: Italy -- Description and travel
Publisher: Boston : L. C. Page & company
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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. Above thetree-tops we see the blue, blue bay and still fartherthe tinted town just showing through the morningmists like a string of jewels. I love Naples still — isit a week since we left it? — but I did not divine Italyeven in Naples. I am afraid I have lost my headentirely with the beauty of Capri and Sorrento. Dopeople ever go beauty-mad here? I wonder. GladlyI would give up all our scheme of travel and spendthree months here in bhss in Sorrento. I neverdreamed that we were coming into such anotherworld, this bewildering yet ordered wilderness offlowers and palms, of pomegranate, fig, aloe andacacia, of tropical luxuriance and odours mostprecious, of sternness and softness, of mountain, seaand sky! Why did no one forewarn me of what itwould mean to strike into Southern Italy in May,into this lavishness of natural beauty with the sug-gestions of art and the whole human story as far backas Ulysses superadded? But at this moment suchsuggestions are superfluous, for just now —
Text Appearing After Image:
Balcony Days 67 the tall rock,The mountain and the deep and gloomy wood,Their colours and their forms are to meAn appetite ; a feeling and a love,That have no need of a remoter charmBy thought supplied, nor any interestUnborrowd from the eye. My Wordsworth was interrupted by the breakfasttray. Even Italian coffee is a joy when tasted onthis balcony. But I return to my reflections. The spell of Italy! In what does it consist? Thusfar, in Southern Italy the appeal is to the Sensesand the Imagination, and it is overpowering. InRome I know full well the appeal will be to the In-tellect through antiquity and the historic sense, andin my present relaxed mood I shrink from the hardwork it must mean to do ones duty by it. Whenwe reach the Hill Towns, Siena, Perugia, Assisi, weshall feel most, no doubt, the power of the ReligiousSense and the love of primitive, dawning ReligiousArt. In Florence we shall find Art at its top andheight of perfection, and I suppose it will be as mad-deningly beaut

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