reeds in sportive rivalry," as comrades used in the old Sicilian
days; and the land was an ordinary land enough, and bare, too, when
one thought of Italy, and how the oleanders were robing the
hillsides by Genoa in scarlet, and the cyclamen filling with its
purple every valley from Florence to Rome; for there was not much
real beauty, perhaps, in it, only long, white dusty roads and
straight rows of formal poplars; but, now and then, some little
breaking gleam of broken light would lend to the grey field and the
silent barn a secret and a mystery that were hardly their own,
would transfigure for one exquisite moment the peasants passing
down through the vineyard, or the shepherd watching on the hill,
would tip the willows with silver and touch the river into gold;
and the wonder of the effect, with the strange simplicity of the
material, always seemed to me to be a little like the quality of
these the verses of my friend.