 According to critic Alan W. France , the Mediterranean 's religious tradition and culture are contrasted in " Limestone " with the Protestant and rationalistic " Gothic North " . He views the poem as an attempt to " rediscover the sacramental quality of nature , a quality still animate in the ' under @-@ developed ' regions of the Mediterranean South — in particular Italy below Rome , the Mezzogiorno — but thoroughly extirpated in the Germanic North by Protestant asceticism and modern science . " Auden , then , is looking on this landscape from the outside , as a member of the Northern community , yet includes himself as one of the " inconstant ones " : 
