CHAPTER XLII - THE MAREMMA

Summary

Guarda, mi disse, al mare ; e vidi piana

Cogli altri colli la Marema tutta,

Dilectivole molto, e poco sana.

Ivi è Massa, Grossetto, e la distructa

Civita veehia, e ivi Popolonia,

Che apenna pare tanto è mal conduta.

Ivi è ancor ove fue la Sendonia.

Queste cità e altre chio non dico,

Sono per la Marema en verso Roma,

Famose e grandi per lo tempo antico.

Facoio degli Uberti.

The green Maremma!;—

A sun-bright waste of beauty—yet an air

Of brooding sadness o'er “the scene is shed;

No human footstep tracks the lone domain—

The desert of luxuriance glows in vain.

Hemans

These lines of Mrs. Hemans present a true summer picture of the Tuscan Maremma ; and such is the idea generally conceived of it at all seasons alike by most Englishmen, except as regards its beauty. For few have a notion that it is other than a desert seashore swamp, totally without interest, save as a preserve of wild boars and roe-bucks, without the picturesque, or antiquities, or good accommodation, or anything else to compensate for the dangers of its fever-fraught atmosphere—in short,

“A wild and melancholy waste

Of putrid marshes,”

as desolate and perilous as the Pomptine. They know not that it is full of the picturesque and beautiful; a beauty peculiar and somewhat savage, it is true, like that of an Indian maiden, yet fascinating in its wild unschooled luxuriance, and offering abundant food for the pencil of the artist and the imagination of the poet.