Read "Teatro Bambino. Dublin, N. H" by Amy Lowell online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
How still it is! Sunshine itself here falls / In quiet shafts of light through the high trees / Which, arching, make a roof above the walls / Changing from sun to shadow as each breeze / Lingers a moment, charmed by the strange sight / Of an Italian theatre, storied, seer / Of vague romance, and time's long history; / Where tiers of grass-grown seats sprinkled with white, / Sweet-scented clover, form a broken sphere / Grouped round the stage in hushed expectancy.
What sound is that which echoes through the wood? / Is it the reedy note of an oaten pipe? / Perchance a minute more will see the brood / Of the shaggy forest god, and on his lip / Will rest the rushes he is wont to play.
His train in woven baskets bear ripe fruit / And weave a dance with ropes of gray acorns, / So light their touch the grasses scarcely sway / As they the measure tread to the lilting flute.
Alas! 't is only Fancy thus adorns.
A cloud drifts idly over the shining sun.
How damp it seems, how silent, still, and strange! / Surely 't was here some tragedy was done, / And here the chorus sang each coming change? / Sure this is deep in some sweet, southern wood, / These are not pines, but cypress tall and dark; / That is no thrush which sings so rapturously, / But the nightingale in his most passionate mood / Bursting his little heart with anguish. Hark! / The tread of sandalled feet comes noiselessly.
The silence almost is a sound, and dreams / Take on the semblances of finite things; / So potent is the spell that what but seems / Elsewhere, is lifted here on Fancy's wings.
The little woodland theatre seems to wait, / All tremulous with hope and wistful joy, / For something that is sure to come at last, / Some deep emotion, satisfying, great.
It grows a living presence, bold and shy, / Cradling the future in a glorious past.