and for this the tears
And blood of earth flow on as they have flowed,
An universal Deluge, which appears
Without an Ark for wretched Man's abode,
And ebbs but to reflow!
And blood of earth flow on as they have flowed,
An universal Deluge, which appears
Without an Ark for wretched Man's abode,
And ebbs but to reflow!
Byron
H.
]
The iron crown of laurel's mimicked leaves;
Nor was the ominous element unjust,
For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves[12. H. ]
Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves,
And the false semblance but disgraced his brow;
Yet still, if fondly Superstition grieves,
Know, that the lightning sanctifies below[13. H. ]
Whate'er it strikes;--yon head is doubly sacred now.
XLII.
Italia! oh, Italia! thou who hast[421]
The fatal gift of Beauty, which became
A funeral dower of present woes and past--
On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame,[mn]
And annals graved in characters of flame.
Oh, God! that thou wert in thy nakedness
Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim
Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press
To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress;
XLIII.
Then might'st thou more appal--or, less desired,
Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored[mo]
For thy destructive charms; then, still untired,
Would not be seen the armed torrents poured
Down the deep Alps; nor would the hostile horde
Of many-nationed spoilers from the Po
Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger's sword
Be thy sad weapon of defence--and so,
Victor or vanquished, thou the slave of friend or foe.
XLIV.
Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him,
The Roman friend of Rome's least-mortal mind,[422]
The friend of Tully: as my bark did skim
The bright blue waters with a fanning wind,
Came Megara before me, and behind
AEgina lay--Piraeus on the right,
And Corinth on the left; I lay reclined
Along the prow, and saw all these unite
In ruin--even as he had seen the desolate sight;
XLV.
For Time hath not rebuilt them, but upreared
Barbaric dwellings on their shattered site,
Which only make more mourned and more endeared
The few last rays of their far-scattered light,
And the crashed relics of their vanished might.
The Roman saw these tombs in his own age,
These sepulchres of cities, which excite[mp]
Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page
The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage.
XLVI.
That page is now before me, and on mine
_His_ Country's ruin added to the mass
Of perished states he mourned in their decline,
And I in desolation: all that _was_
Of then destruction _is_; and now, alas!
Rome--Rome imperial, bows her to the storm,[423]
In the same dust and blackness, and we pass
The skeleton of her Titanic form,[424]
Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm.
XLVII.
Yet, Italy! through every other land
Thy wrongs should ring--and shall--from side to side;[425]
Mother of Arts! as once of Arms! thy hand
Was then our Guardian, and is still our Guide;
Parent of our Religion! whom the wide
Nations have knelt to for the keys of Heaven!
Europe, repentant of her parricide,
Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven,
Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven.
XLVIII.
But Arno wins us to the fair white walls,
Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps
A softer feeling for her fairy halls:
Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps
Her corn, and wine, and oil--and Plenty leaps
To laughing life, with her redundant Horn.
Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps
Was modern Luxury of Commerce born,[mq][426]
And buried Learning rose, redeemed to a new Morn.
XLIX.
There, too, the Goddess loves in stone, and fills[mr][427][14. H. ]
The air around with Beauty--we inhale[ms]
The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils
Part of its immortality--the veil
Of heaven is half undrawn--within the pale
We stand, and in that form and face behold
What Mind can make, when Nature's self would fail;
And to the fond Idolaters of old
Envy the innate flash which such a Soul could mould:
L.
We gaze and turn away, and know not where,
Dazzled and drunk with Beauty,[428] till the heart
Reels with its fulness; there--for ever there--
Chained to the chariot of triumphal Art,
We stand as captives, and would not depart.
Away! --there need no words, nor terms precise,
The paltry jargon of the marble mart,
Where Pedantry gulls Folly--we have eyes:
Blood--pulse--and breast confirm the Dardan Shepherd's prize.
LI.
Appear'dst thou not to Paris in this guise?
Or to more deeply blest Anchises? or,
In all thy perfect Goddess-ship, when lies
Before thee thy own vanquished Lord of War?
And gazing in thy face as toward a star,
Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn,
Feeding on thy sweet cheek! [429] while thy lips are
With lava kisses melting while they burn,
Showered on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn!
LII.
Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love--[mt][430]
Their full divinity inadequate
That feeling to express, or to improve--
The Gods become as mortals--and man's fate[mu]
Has moments like their brightest; but the weight
Of earth recoils upon us;--let it go!
We can recall such visions, and create,
From what has been, or might be, things which grow
Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below.
LIII.
I leave to learned fingers, and wise hands,
The Artist and his Ape, to teach and tell
How well his Connoisseurship understands
The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell:
Let these describe the undescribable:
I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream
Wherein that Image shall for ever dwell--
The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream
That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam.
LIV.
In Santa Croce's[431] holy precincts lie[15. H. ]
Ashes which make it holier, dust which is
Even in itself an immortality,
Though there were nothing save the past, and this,
The particle of those sublimities
Which have relapsed to chaos:--here repose
Angelo's--Alfieri's[432] bones--and his,[16. H. ]
The starry Galileo, with his woes;
Here Machiavelli's earth returned to whence it rose. [17. H. ]
LV.
These are four minds, which, like the elements,
Might furnish forth creation:--Italy! [mv]
Time, which hath wronged thee with ten thousand rents
Of thine imperial garment, shall deny[mw]
And hath denied, to every other sky,
Spirits which soar from ruin:--thy Decay
Is still impregnate with divinity,
Which gilds it with revivifying ray;
Such as the great of yore, Canova[433] is to-day.
LVI.
But where repose the all Etruscan three--
Dante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they,
The Bard of Prose, creative Spirit! he[mx]
Of the Hundred Tales of Love--where did they lay
Their bones, distinguished from our common clay
In death as life? Are they resolved to dust,
And have their Country's Marbles nought to say?
Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust?
Did they not to her breast their filial earth entrust?
LVII.
Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,[434][18. H. ]
Like Scipio buried by the upbraiding shore:[435][19. H. ]
Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,[436]
Proscribed the Bard whose name for evermore
Their children's children would in vain adore
With the remorse of ages; and the crown[437][20. H. ]
Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore,
Upon a far and foreign soil had grown,
His Life, his Fame, his Grave, though rifled--not thine own. [438]
LVIII.
Boccaccio[439] to his parent earth bequeathed[my][21. H. ]
His dust,--and lies it not her Great among,
With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed
O'er him who formed the Tuscan's siren tongue? [440]
That music in itself, whose sounds are song,
The poetry of speech? No;--even his tomb
Uptorn, must bear the hyaena bigot's wrong,
No more amidst the meaner dead find room,
Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for _whom! _
LIX.
And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust;
Yet for this want more noted, as of yore
The Caesar's pageant,[441] shorn of Brutus' bust,
Did but of Rome's best Son remind her more:
Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore,
Fortress of falling Empire! honoured sleeps[mz]
The immortal Exile;--Arqua, too, her store
Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps,
While Florence vainly begs her banished dead and weeps. [442]
LX.
What is her Pyramid of precious stones? [22. H. ]
Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues
Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones
Of merchant-dukes? [443] the momentary dews
Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse
Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead,
Whose names are Mausoleums of the Muse,
Are gently prest with far more reverent tread
Than ever paced the slab which paves the princely head.
LXI.
There be more things to greet the heart and eyes
In Arno's dome of Art's most princely shrine,
Where Sculpture with her rainbow Sister vies;[444]
There be more marvels yet--but not for mine;
For I have been accustomed to entwine
My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields,
Than Art in galleries: though a work divine
Calls for my Spirit's homage, yet it yields
Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields
LXII.
Is of another temper, and I roam
By Thrasimene's lake,[445] in the defiles
Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home;
For there the Carthaginian's warlike wiles
Come back before me, as his skill beguiles
The host between the mountains and the shore,
Where Courage falls in her despairing files,[na]
And torrents, swoll'n to rivers with their gore,
Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scattered o'er.
LXIII.
Like to a forest felled by mountain winds;
And such the storm of battle on this day,
And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds
To all save Carnage, that, beneath the fray,
An Earthquake[446] reeled unheededly away! [23. H. ]
None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet,
And yawning forth a grave for those who lay
Upon their bucklers for a winding sheet--
Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet!
LXIV.
The Earth to them was as a rolling bark
Which bore them to Eternity--they saw
The Ocean round, but had no time to mark
The motions of their vessel; Nature's law,
In them suspended, recked not of the awe
Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds
Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdraw[nb]
From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds
Stumble o'er heaving plains--and Man's dread hath no words.
LXV.
Far other scene is Thrasimene now;
Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain
Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough;
Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain
Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta'en--
A little rill of scanty stream and bed--
A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain;
And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead
Made the earth wet, and turned the unwilling waters red. [nc]
LXVI.
But thou, Clitumnus[447]! in thy sweetest wave
Of the most living crystal that was e'er
The haunt of river-Nymph, to gaze and lave
Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear
Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer[448]
Grazes--the purest God of gentle waters!
And most serene of aspect, and most clear;
Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters--
A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters!
LXVII.
And on thy happy shore a Temple[449] still,
Of small and delicate proportion, keeps
Upon a mild declivity of hill,[nd]
Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps
Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps
The finny darter with the glittering scales,[450]
Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;
While, chance, some scattered water-lily sails[ne]
Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales.
LXVIII.
Pass not unblest the Genius of the place!
If through the air a Zephyr more serene
Win to the brow, 'tis his; and if ye trace
Along his margin a more eloquent green,
If on the heart the freshness of the scene
Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust
Of weary life a moment lave it clean
With Nature's baptism,--'tis to him ye must
Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust. [451]
LXIX.
The roar of waters! --from the headlong height
Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;
The fall of waters! rapid as the light
The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;
The Hell of Waters! where they howl and hiss,
And boil in endless torture; while the sweat
Of their great agony, wrung out from this
Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet
That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,
LXX.
And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again
Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,
With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,
Is an eternal April to the ground,
Making it all one emerald:--how profound[nf]
The gulf! and how the Giant Element
From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,[ng]
Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent
With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent
LXXI.
To the broad column which rolls on, and shows
More like the fountain of an infant sea
Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes
Of a new world, than only thus to be
Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,
With many windings, through the vale:--Look back!
Lo! where it comes like an Eternity,
As if to sweep down all things in its track,
Charming the eye with dread,--a matchless cataract,[452]
LXXII.
Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,
From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,
An Iris[453] sits, amidst the infernal surge,
Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn
Its steady dyes, while all around is torn
By the distracted waters, bears serene
Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn:
Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene,
Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.
LXXIII.
Once more upon the woody Apennine--
The infant Alps, which--had I not before
Gazed on their mightier Parents, where the pine
Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar[nh]
The thundering Lauwine[454]--might be worshipped more;
But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear[ni]
Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar
Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near--
And in Chimari heard the Thunder-Hills of fear,
LXXIV.
Th' Acroceraunian mountains of old name;
And on Parnassus seen the Eagles fly
Like Spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame.
For still they soared unutterably high:
I've looked on Ida with a Trojan's eye;
Athos--Olympus--AEtna. --Atlas--made
These hills seem things of lesser dignity;
All, save the lone Soracte's height, displayed
Not _now_ in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid
LXXV.
For our remembrance, and from out the plain
Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,
And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain
May he, who will, his recollections rake,
And quote in classic raptures, and awake
The hills with Latian echoes--I abhorred
Too much, to conquer for the Poet's sake,[455]
The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word
In my repugnant youth,[456] with pleasure to record
LXXVI.
Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned
My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught
My mind to meditate what then it learned,[nj]
Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought[nk]
By the impatience of my early thought,
That, with the freshness wearing out before
My mind could relish what it might have sought,
If free to choose, I cannot now restore
Its health--but what it then detested, still abhor. [nl]
LXXVII.
Then farewell, Horace--whom I hated so,
Not for thy faults, but mine: it is a curse
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,
To comprehend, but never love thy verse;
Although no deeper Moralist rehearse
Our little life, nor Bard prescribe his art,
Nor livelier Satirist the conscience pierce,
Awakening without wounding the touched heart,
Yet fare thee well--upon Soracte's ridge we part.
LXXVIII.
Oh, Rome! my Country! City of the Soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone Mother of dead Empires! and control
In their shut breasts their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see
The cypress--hear the owl--and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples--Ye!
Whose agonies are evils of a day--
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.
LXXIX.
The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;[nm]
empty urn within her withered hands,
Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;[457]
The very sepulchres lie tenantless[458]
Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,
Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?
Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress. [459]
LXXX.
The Goth, the Christian--Time--War--Flood, and Fire,[460]
Have dealt upon the seven-hilled City's pride;
She saw her glories star by star expire,[nn]
And up the steep barbarian Monarchs ride,
Where the car climbed the Capitol;[461] far and wide
Temple and tower went down, nor left a site:
Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void,
O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,
And say, "here was, or is," where all is doubly night?
LXXXI.
The double night of ages, and of her,[no]
Night's daughter, Ignorance,[462] hath wrapt and wrap
All round us; we but feel our way to err:
The Ocean hath his chart, the Stars their map,
And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap;
But Rome is as the desert--where we steer
Stumbling o'er recollections; now we clap
Our hands, and cry "Eureka! " "it is clear"--
When but some false Mirage of ruin rises near.
LXXXII.
Alas! the lofty city! and alas!
The trebly hundred triumphs! [463] and the day
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass
The Conqueror's sword in bearing fame away!
Alas, for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay,[np]
And Livy's pictured page! --but these shall be
Her resurrection; all beside--decay.
Alas, for Earth, for never shall we see
That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free!
LXXXIII.
Oh, thou, whose chariot rolled on Fortune's wheel,
Triumphant Sylla! [464] Thou, who didst subdue
Thy country's foes ere thou wouldst pause to feel
The wrath of thy own wrongs, or reap the due
Of hoarded vengeance till thine Eagles flew
O'er prostrate Asia;--thou, who with thy frown
Annihilated senates;--Roman, too,
With all thy vices--for thou didst lay down
With an atoning smile a more than earthly crown,
LXXXIV.
Thy dictatorial wreath--couldst thou divine
To what would one day dwindle that which made
Thee more than mortal? and that so supine
By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid? [nq]
She who was named Eternal, and arrayed
Her warriors but to conquer--she who veiled
Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed,[nr]
Until the o'er-canopied horizon failed,
Her rushing wings--Oh! she who was Almighty hailed!
LXXXV.
Sylla was first of victors; but our own,[ns]
The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell! --he
Too swept off senates while he hewed the throne
Down to a block--immortal rebel! See
What crimes it costs to be a moment free,
And famous through all ages! but beneath
His fate the moral lurks of destiny;
His day of double victory and death
Beheld him win two realms, and, happier, yield his breath. [465]
LXXXVI.
The third of the same Moon whose former course
Had all but crowned him, on the selfsame day
Deposed him gently from his throne of force,
And laid him with the Earth's preceding clay.
And showed not Fortune thus how fame and sway,
And all we deem delightful, and consume
Our souls to compass through each arduous way,
Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb?
Were they but so in Man's, how different were his doom!
LXXXVII.
And thou, dread Statue! [466] yet existent in[24. H. ]
The austerest form of naked majesty--
Thou who beheldest, 'mid the assassins' din,
At thy bathed base the bloody Caesar lie,
Folding his robe in dying dignity--
An offering to thine altar from the Queen
Of gods and men, great Nemesis! did he die,
And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been
Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene?
LXXXVIII.
And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome! [467][25. H. ]
She-wolf! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart
The milk of conquest yet within the dome
Where, as a monument of antique art,
Thou standest:--Mother of the mighty heart,
Which the great Founder sucked from thy wild teat,
Scorched by the Roman Jove's ethereal dart,
And thy limbs black with lightning--dost thou yet
Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget?
LXXXIX.
Thou dost;--but all thy foster-babes are dead--
The men of iron; and the World hath reared
Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled
In imitation of the things[468] they feared,
And fought and conquered, and the same course steered,
At apish distance; but as yet none have,
Nor could, the same supremacy have neared,
Save one vain Man, who is not in the grave--
But, vanquished by himself, to his own slaves a slave--[469]
XC.
The fool of false dominion--and a kind
Of bastard Caesar, following him of old
With steps unequal; for the Roman's mind
Was modelled in a less terrestrial mould,[26. H. ]
With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold,[470]
And an immortal instinct which redeemed
The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold--
Alcides with the distaff now he seemed
At Cleopatra's feet,--and now himself he beamed,
XCI.
And came--and saw--and conquered! [471] But the man
Who would have tamed his Eagles down to flee,
Like a trained falcon, in the Gallic van,[472]
Which he, in sooth, long led to Victory,
With a deaf heart which never seemed to be
A listener to itself, was strangely framed;
With but one weakest weakness--Vanity--[nt]
Coquettish in ambition--still he aimed--
And what? can he avouch, or answer what he claimed? [nu]
XCII.
And would be all or nothing--nor could wait
For the sure grave to level him; few years
Had fixed him with the Caesars in his fate
On whom we tread: For _this_ the conqueror rears
The Arch of Triumph!
and for this the tears
And blood of earth flow on as they have flowed,
An universal Deluge, which appears
Without an Ark for wretched Man's abode,
And ebbs but to reflow! --Renew thy rainbow, God! [nv]
XCIII.
What from this barren being do we reap? [473]
Our senses narrow, and our reason frail,
Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep,
And all things weighed in Custom's falsest scale;[474]
Opinion an Omnipotence,--whose veil
Mantles the earth with darkness, until right
And wrong are accidents, and Men grow pale
Lest their own judgments should become too bright,
And their free thoughts be crimes, and Earth have too much light.
XCIV.
And thus they plod in sluggish misery,[nw]
Rotting from sire to son, and age to age,[475]
Proud of their trampled nature, and so die,[nx]
Bequeathing their hereditary rage
To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage
War for their chains, and rather than be free,
Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage
Within the same Arena where they see
Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree.
XCV.
I speak not of men's creeds--they rest between
Man and his Maker--but of things allowed,
Averred, and known, and daily, hourly seen--
The yoke that is upon us doubly bowed,
And the intent of Tyranny avowed,
The edict of Earth's rulers, who are grown
The apes of him who humbled once the proud,
And shook them from their slumbers on the throne;
Too glorious, were this all his mighty arm had done.
XCVI.
Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be,
And Freedom find no Champion and no Child[476]
Such as Columbia saw arise when she
Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefined?
Or must such minds be nourished in the wild,
Deep in the unpruned forest, 'midst the roar[ny]
Of cataracts, where nursing Nature smiled
On infant Washington? Has Earth no more
Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore?
XCVII.
But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime;[nz]
And fatal have her Saturnalia been[oa]
To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime;
Because the deadly days which we have seen,
And vile Ambition, that built up between
Man and his hopes an adamantine wall,
And the base pageant[477] last upon the scene,
Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall
Which nips Life's tree, and dooms Man's worst--his second fall. [478]
XCVIII.
Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying,
Streams like the thunder-storm _against_ the wind;[479]
Thy trumpet voice, though broken now and dying,
The loudest still the Tempest leaves behind;
Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind,
Chopped by the axe, looks rough and little worth,
But the sap lasts,--and still the seed we find
Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North;
So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth.
XCIX.
There is a stern round tower of other days[480]
Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone,
Such as an army's baffled strength delays,
Standing with half its battlements alone,
And with two thousand years of ivy grown,
The garland of Eternity, where wave
The green leaves over all by Time o'erthrown;--
What was this tower of strength? within its cave
What treasure lay so locked, so hid? --A woman's grave. [ob]
C.
But who was she, the Lady of the dead,
Tombed in a palace? Was she chaste and fair?
Worthy a king's--or more--a Roman's bed?
What race of Chiefs and Heroes did she bear?
What daughter of her beauties was the heir?
How lived--how loved--how died she? Was she not
So honoured--and conspicuously there,
Where meaner relics must not dare to rot,
Placed to commemorate a more than mortal lot?
CI.
Was she as those who love their lords, or they
Who love the lords of others? such have been
Even in the olden time, Rome's annals say.
Was she a matron of Cornelia's mien,
Or the light air of Egypt's graceful Queen,
Profuse of joy--or 'gainst it did she war,
Inveterate in virtue? Did she lean
To the soft side of the heart, or wisely bar
Love from amongst her griefs? --for such the affections are. [oc]
CII.
Perchance she died in youth--it may be, bowed
With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb
That weighed upon her gentle dust: a cloud
Might gather o'er her beauty, and a gloom
In her dark eye, prophetic of the doom
Heaven gives its favourites[481]--early death--yet shed
A sunset charm around her, and illume
With hectic light, the Hesperus of the dead,
Of her consuming cheek the autumnal leaf-like red.
CIII.
Perchance she died in age--surviving all,
Charms--kindred--children--with the silver gray
On her long tresses, which might yet recall,
It may be, still a something of the day
When they were braided, and her proud array
And lovely form were envied, praised, and eyed
By Rome--But whither would Conjecture stray? [482]
Thus much alone we know--Metella died,
The wealthiest Roman's wife: Behold his love or pride!
CIV.
I know not why--but standing thus by thee
It seems as if I had thine inmate known,
Thou Tomb! and other days come back on me
With recollected music, though the tone
Is changed and solemn, like the cloudy groan
Of dying thunder on the distant wind;
Yet could I seat me by this ivied stone
Till I had bodied forth the heated mind[od]
Forms from the floating wreck which Ruin leaves behind:
CV.
And from the planks, far shattered o'er the rocks,
Built me a little bark of hope, once more
To battle with the Ocean and the shocks
Of the loud breakers, and the ceaseless roar
Which rushes on the solitary shore
Where all lies foundered that was ever dear:
But could I gather from the wave-worn store
Enough for my rude boat, where should I steer?
There woos no home, nor hope, nor life, save what is here. [oe]
CVI.
Then let the Winds howl on! their harmony
Shall henceforth be my music, and the Night
The sound shall temper with the owlets' cry,
As I now hear them, in the fading light
Dim o'er the bird of darkness' native site,
Answering each other on the Palatine,
With their large eyes, all glistening gray and bright,
And sailing pinions. --Upon such a shrine
What are our petty griefs? --let me not number mine.
CVII.
Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower grown[483]
Matted and massed together--hillocks heaped
On what were chambers--arch crushed, column strown
In fragments--choked up vaults, and frescos steeped
In subterranean damps, where the owl peeped,[of]
Deeming it midnight:--Temples--Baths--or Halls?
Pronounce who can: for all that Learning reaped
From her research hath been, that these are walls--
Behold the Imperial Mount! 'tis thus the Mighty falls. [484]
CVIII.
There is the moral of all human tales;[485]
'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,
First Freedom, and then Glory--when that fails,
Wealth--Vice--Corruption,--Barbarism at last.
And History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but _one_ page,--'tis better written here,
Where gorgeous Tyranny hath thus amassed
All treasures, all delights, that Eye or Ear,
Heart, Soul could seek--Tongue ask--Away with words! draw near,
CIX.
Admire--exult--despise--laugh--weep,--for here
There is such matter for all feeling:--Man! [og]
Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear,
Ages and Realms are crowded in this span,
This mountain, whose obliterated plan
The pyramid of Empires pinnacled,
Of Glory's gewgaws shining in the van[oh]
Till the Sun's rays with added flame were filled!
Where are its golden roofs? [486] where those who dared to build?
CX.
Tully was not so eloquent as thou,
Thou nameless column[487] with the buried base!
What are the laurels of the Caesar's brow?
Crown me with ivy from his dwelling-place.
Whose arch or pillar meets me in the face,
Titus or Trajan's? No--'tis that of Time:
Triumph, arch, pillar, all he doth displace[oi]
Scoffing; and apostolic statues[488] climb
To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sublime,
CXI.
Buried in air, the deep blue sky of Rome,
And looking to the stars: they had contained
A Spirit which with these would find a home,
The last of those who o'er the whole earth reigned,
The Roman Globe--for, after, none sustained,
But yielded back his conquests:--he was more
Than a mere Alexander, and, unstained
With household blood and wine, serenely wore
His sovereign virtues--still we Trajan's[489] name adore.
CXII.
Where is the rock of Triumph,[490] the high place
Where Rome embraced her heroes? --where the steep
Tarpeian? --fittest goal of Treason's race,
The Promontory whence the Traitor's Leap[oj]
Cured all ambition? [491] Did the conquerors heap
Their spoils here? Yes; and in yon field below,
A thousand years of silenced factions sleep--
The Forum, where the immortal accents glow,
And still the eloquent air breathes-burns with Cicero! [ok][492]
CXIII.
The field of Freedom--Faction--Fame--and Blood:
Here a proud people's passions were exhaled,
From the first hour of Empire in the bud
To that when further worlds to conquer failed;
But long before had Freedom's face been veiled,
And Anarchy assumed her attributes;
Till every lawless soldier who assailed
Trod on the trembling Senate's slavish mutes,
Or raised the venal voice of baser prostitutes.
CXIV.
Then turn we to her latest Tribune's name,
From her ten thousand tyrants turn to thee,
Redeemer of dark centuries of shame--
The friend of Petrarch--hope of Italy--
Rienzi! last of Romans! [493] While the tree
Of Freedom's withered trunk puts forth a leaf,
Even for thy tomb a garland let it be--
The Forum's champion, and the people's chief--
Her new-born Numa thou--with reign, alas! too brief.
CXV.
Egeria! sweet creation of some heart[27. H. ]
Which found no mortal resting-place so fair
As thine ideal breast; whate'er thou art
Or wert,--a young Aurora of the air,
The nympholepsy[494] of some fond despair--[ol]
Or--it might be--a Beauty of the earth,
Who found a more than common Votary there
Too much adoring--whatsoe'er thy birth,
Thou wert a beautiful Thought, and softly bodied forth.
CXVI.
The mosses of thy Fountain[495] still are sprinkled
With thine Elysian water-drops; the face
Of thy cave-guarded Spring, with years unwrinkled,
Reflects the meek-eyed Genius of the place,
Whose green, wild margin now no more erase
Art's works; nor must the delicate waters sleep
Prisoned in marble--bubbling from the base
Of the cleft statue, with a gentle leap
The rill runs o'er--and round, fern, flowers, and ivy, creep
CXVII.
Fantastically tangled: the green hills
Are clothed with early blossoms--through the grass
The quick-eyed lizard rustles--and the bills
Of summer-birds sing welcome as ye pass;
Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class,
Implore the pausing step, and with their dyes
Dance in the soft breeze in a fairy mass;
The sweetness of the Violet's deep blue eyes,
Kissed by the breath of heaven, seems coloured by its skies. [496]
CXVIII.
Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover,[497]
Egeria! thy all heavenly bosom beating
For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover;
The purple Midnight veiled that mystic meeting
With her most starry canopy[498]--and seating
Thyself by thine adorer, what befel?
This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting
Of an enamoured Goddess, and the cell
Haunted by holy Love--the earliest Oracle!
CXIX.
And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying,
Blend a celestial with a human heart;[om]
And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing,
Share with immortal transports? could thine art
Make them indeed immortal, and impart
The purity of Heaven to earthly joys,
Expel the venom and not blunt the dart--
The dull satiety which all destroys--
And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys?
CXX.
Alas! our young affections run to waste,
Or water but the desert! whence arise
But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste,
Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes
Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies,
And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants
Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies
O'er the World's wilderness, and vainly pants
For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants.
CXXI.
Oh, Love! no habitant of earth thou art--[on]
An unseen Seraph, we believe in thee,--
A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,--
But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see
The naked eye, thy form, as it should be;[499]
The mind hath made thee, as it peopled Heaven,
Even with its own desiring phantasy,
And to a thought such shape and image given,
As haunts the unquenched soul--parched--wearied--wrung--and riven.
CXXII.
Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,
And fevers into false creation:--where,
Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized?
In him alone. Can Nature show so fair?
Where are the charms and virtues which we dare
Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men,
The unreached Paradise of our despair,
Which o'er-informs[500] the pencil and the pen,
And overpowers the page where it would bloom again?
CXXIII.
Who loves, raves[501]--'tis youth's frenzy--but the cure
Is bitterer still, as charm by charm unwinds
Which robed our idols, and we see too sure
Nor Worth nor Beauty dwells from out the mind's
Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds
The fatal spell, and still it draws us on,
Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds;
The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun,
Seems ever near the prize--wealthiest when most undone.
CXXIV.
We wither from our youth, we gasp away--
Sick--sick; unfound the boon--unslaked the thirst,
Though to the last, in verge of our decay,
Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first--
But all too late,--so are we doubly curst.
Love, Fame, Ambition, Avarice--'tis the same,
Each idle--and all ill--and none the worst--
For all are meteors with a different name,[oo]
And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.
CXXV.
Few--none--find what they love or could have loved,
Though accident, blind contact, and the strong
Necessity of loving, have removed
Antipathies--but to recur, ere long,
Envenomed with irrevocable wrong;
And Circumstance, that unspiritual God
And Miscreator, makes and helps along
Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,[502]
Whose touch turns Hope to dust,--the dust we all have trod.
CXXVI.
Our life is a false nature--'tis not in
The harmony of things,--this hard decree,
This uneradicable taint of Sin,
This boundless Upas, this all-blasting tree,
Whose root is Earth--whose leaves and branches be
The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew--
Disease, death, bondage--all the woes we see,
And worse, the woes we see not--which throb through
The immedicable soul,[503] with heart-aches ever new.
CXXVII.
Yet let us ponder boldly--'tis a base
Abandonment of reason[504] to resign
Our right of thought--our last and only place
Of refuge; this, at least, shall still be mine:
Though from our birth the Faculty divine
Is chained and tortured--cabined, cribbed, confined,
And bred in darkness,[505] lest the Truth should shine
Too brightly on the unprepared mind,
The beam pours in--for Time and Skill will couch the blind.
CXXVIII.
Arches on arches! [506] as it were that Rome,
Collecting the chief trophies of her line,
Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,
Her Coliseum stands;[507] the moonbeams shine
As 'twere its natural torches--for divine
Should be the light which streams here,--to illume
This long-explored but still exhaustless mine
Of Contemplation; and the azure gloom
Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume
CXXIX.
Hues which have words, and speak to ye of Heaven,
Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument,
And shadows forth its glory. There is given
Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent,
A Spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant
His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power
And magic in the ruined battlement,
For which the Palace of the present hour
Must yield its pomp, and wait till Ages are its dower.
CXXX.
Oh, Time! the Beautifier of the dead,
Adorner of the ruin[508]--Comforter
And only Healer when the heart hath bled;
Time! the Corrector where our judgments err,
The test of Truth, Love--sole philosopher,
For all beside are sophists--from thy thrift,
Which never loses though it doth defer--
Time, the Avenger! unto thee I lift
My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift:
CXXXI.
Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine
And temple more divinely desolate--
Among thy mightier offerings here are mine,
Ruins of years--though few, yet full of fate:--
If thou hast ever seen me too elate,
Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne
Good, and reserved my pride against the hate
Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn
This iron in my soul in vain--shall _they_ not mourn?
CXXXII.
And Thou, who never yet of human wrong
Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis! [509][28. H. ]
Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long--
Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss,
And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss
For that unnatural retribution--just,
Had it but been from hands less near--in this
Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust!
Dost thou not hear my heart? --Awake! thou shalt, and must.
CXXXIII.
It is not that I may not have incurred,
For my ancestral faults or mine, the wound[op]
I bleed withal; and, had it been conferred
With a just weapon, it had flowed unbound;
But now my blood shall not sink in the ground--
To thee I do devote it--_Thou_ shalt take
The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found--
Which if _I_ have not taken for the sake--
But let that pass--I sleep--but Thou shalt yet awake.
CXXXIV.
And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now[oq]
I shrink from what is suffered: let him speak
Who hath beheld decline upon my brow,
Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak;
But in this page a record will I seek.
Not in the air shall these my words disperse,
Though I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak
The deep prophetic fulness of this verse,
And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse!
CXXXV.
That curse shall be Forgiveness. --Have I not--
Hear me, my mother Earth! behold it, Heaven! --
Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?
Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?
Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,
Hopes sapped, name blighted, Life's life lied away?
And only not to desperation driven,
Because not altogether of such clay
As rots into the souls of those whom I survey.
CXXXVI. [or]
From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy
Have I not seen what human things could do?
From the loud roar of foaming calumny
To the small whisper of the as paltry few--
And subtler venom of the reptile crew,
The Janus glance[510] of whose significant eye,
Learning to lie with silence, would _seem_ true--
And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh,
Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy.
CXXXVII.
But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:
My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,
And my frame perish even in conquering pain;
But there is that within me which shall tire
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire;
Something unearthly, which they deem not of,
Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre,
Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move
In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of Love.
CXXXVIII.
The seal is set. --Now welcome, thou dread Power!
Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here
Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour
With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear;
Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear
Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene
Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear
That we become a part of what has been,
And grow upon the spot--all-seeing but unseen.
CXXXIX.
And here the buzz of eager nations ran,
In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause,
As man was slaughtered by his fellow man.
And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because
Such were the bloody Circus' genial laws,
And the imperial pleasure. --Wherefore not?
What matters where we fall to fill the maws
Of worms--on battle-plains or listed spot?
Both are but theatres--where the chief actors rot.
CXL.
I see before me the Gladiator[511] lie:
He leans upon his hand--his manly brow[os]
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his drooped head sinks gradually low--
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,[ot]
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now[ou]
The arena swims around him--he is gone,[ov]
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.
CXLI.
He heard it, but he heeded not--his eyes
Were with his heart--and that was far away;
He recked not of the life he lost nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay--
_There_ were his young barbarians all at play,
_There_ was their Dacian mother--he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday--[ow][29. H. ]
All this rushed with his blood--Shall he expire
And unavenged? --Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!
CXLII.
But here, where Murder breathed her bloody steam;--
And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways,
And roared or murmured like a mountain stream
Dashing or winding as its torrent strays;
Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise
Was Death or Life--the playthings of a crowd--[ox][30. H. ]
My voice sounds much--and fall the stars' faint rays[oy]
On the arena void--seats crushed--walls bowed--
And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.
CXLIII.
A Ruin--yet what Ruin! from its mass
Walls--palaces--half-cities, have been reared;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,[oz]
And marvel where the spoil could have appeared.
Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared?
Alas! developed, opens the decay,
When the colossal fabric's form is neared:
It will not bear the brightness of the day,
Which streams too much on all--years--man--have reft away.
CXLIV.
But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there--
When the stars twinkle through the loops of Time,
And the low night-breeze waves along the air
The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear,[pa]
Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head--[512]
When the light shines serene but doth not glare--
Then in this magic circle raise the dead;--
Heroes have trod this spot--'tis on their dust ye tread. [pb]
CXLV.
"While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand:[513]
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
And when Rome falls--the World. " From our own land
Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall
In Saxon times, which we are wont to call
Ancient; and these three mortal things are still
On their foundations, and unaltered all--
Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill--
The World--the same wide den--of thieves, or what ye will.
CXLVI.
Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime--[514]
Shrine of all saints and temple of all Gods,
From Jove to Jesus--spared and blest by Time--
Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods
Arch--empire--each thing round thee--and Man plods
His way through thorns to ashes--glorious Dome!
Shalt thou not last? Time's scythe and Tyrants' rods
Shiver upon thee--sanctuary and home
Of Art and Piety--Pantheon! --pride of Rome! [pc]
CXLVII.
Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts!
Despoiled yet perfect! with thy circle spreads
A holiness appealing to all hearts;
To Art a model--and to him who treads
Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds
Her light through thy sole aperture; to those
Who worship, here are altars for their beads--
And they who feel for Genius may repose
Their eyes on honoured forms, whose busts around them close.
The iron crown of laurel's mimicked leaves;
Nor was the ominous element unjust,
For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves[12. H. ]
Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves,
And the false semblance but disgraced his brow;
Yet still, if fondly Superstition grieves,
Know, that the lightning sanctifies below[13. H. ]
Whate'er it strikes;--yon head is doubly sacred now.
XLII.
Italia! oh, Italia! thou who hast[421]
The fatal gift of Beauty, which became
A funeral dower of present woes and past--
On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame,[mn]
And annals graved in characters of flame.
Oh, God! that thou wert in thy nakedness
Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim
Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press
To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress;
XLIII.
Then might'st thou more appal--or, less desired,
Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored[mo]
For thy destructive charms; then, still untired,
Would not be seen the armed torrents poured
Down the deep Alps; nor would the hostile horde
Of many-nationed spoilers from the Po
Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger's sword
Be thy sad weapon of defence--and so,
Victor or vanquished, thou the slave of friend or foe.
XLIV.
Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him,
The Roman friend of Rome's least-mortal mind,[422]
The friend of Tully: as my bark did skim
The bright blue waters with a fanning wind,
Came Megara before me, and behind
AEgina lay--Piraeus on the right,
And Corinth on the left; I lay reclined
Along the prow, and saw all these unite
In ruin--even as he had seen the desolate sight;
XLV.
For Time hath not rebuilt them, but upreared
Barbaric dwellings on their shattered site,
Which only make more mourned and more endeared
The few last rays of their far-scattered light,
And the crashed relics of their vanished might.
The Roman saw these tombs in his own age,
These sepulchres of cities, which excite[mp]
Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page
The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage.
XLVI.
That page is now before me, and on mine
_His_ Country's ruin added to the mass
Of perished states he mourned in their decline,
And I in desolation: all that _was_
Of then destruction _is_; and now, alas!
Rome--Rome imperial, bows her to the storm,[423]
In the same dust and blackness, and we pass
The skeleton of her Titanic form,[424]
Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm.
XLVII.
Yet, Italy! through every other land
Thy wrongs should ring--and shall--from side to side;[425]
Mother of Arts! as once of Arms! thy hand
Was then our Guardian, and is still our Guide;
Parent of our Religion! whom the wide
Nations have knelt to for the keys of Heaven!
Europe, repentant of her parricide,
Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven,
Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven.
XLVIII.
But Arno wins us to the fair white walls,
Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps
A softer feeling for her fairy halls:
Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps
Her corn, and wine, and oil--and Plenty leaps
To laughing life, with her redundant Horn.
Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps
Was modern Luxury of Commerce born,[mq][426]
And buried Learning rose, redeemed to a new Morn.
XLIX.
There, too, the Goddess loves in stone, and fills[mr][427][14. H. ]
The air around with Beauty--we inhale[ms]
The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils
Part of its immortality--the veil
Of heaven is half undrawn--within the pale
We stand, and in that form and face behold
What Mind can make, when Nature's self would fail;
And to the fond Idolaters of old
Envy the innate flash which such a Soul could mould:
L.
We gaze and turn away, and know not where,
Dazzled and drunk with Beauty,[428] till the heart
Reels with its fulness; there--for ever there--
Chained to the chariot of triumphal Art,
We stand as captives, and would not depart.
Away! --there need no words, nor terms precise,
The paltry jargon of the marble mart,
Where Pedantry gulls Folly--we have eyes:
Blood--pulse--and breast confirm the Dardan Shepherd's prize.
LI.
Appear'dst thou not to Paris in this guise?
Or to more deeply blest Anchises? or,
In all thy perfect Goddess-ship, when lies
Before thee thy own vanquished Lord of War?
And gazing in thy face as toward a star,
Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn,
Feeding on thy sweet cheek! [429] while thy lips are
With lava kisses melting while they burn,
Showered on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn!
LII.
Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love--[mt][430]
Their full divinity inadequate
That feeling to express, or to improve--
The Gods become as mortals--and man's fate[mu]
Has moments like their brightest; but the weight
Of earth recoils upon us;--let it go!
We can recall such visions, and create,
From what has been, or might be, things which grow
Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below.
LIII.
I leave to learned fingers, and wise hands,
The Artist and his Ape, to teach and tell
How well his Connoisseurship understands
The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell:
Let these describe the undescribable:
I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream
Wherein that Image shall for ever dwell--
The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream
That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam.
LIV.
In Santa Croce's[431] holy precincts lie[15. H. ]
Ashes which make it holier, dust which is
Even in itself an immortality,
Though there were nothing save the past, and this,
The particle of those sublimities
Which have relapsed to chaos:--here repose
Angelo's--Alfieri's[432] bones--and his,[16. H. ]
The starry Galileo, with his woes;
Here Machiavelli's earth returned to whence it rose. [17. H. ]
LV.
These are four minds, which, like the elements,
Might furnish forth creation:--Italy! [mv]
Time, which hath wronged thee with ten thousand rents
Of thine imperial garment, shall deny[mw]
And hath denied, to every other sky,
Spirits which soar from ruin:--thy Decay
Is still impregnate with divinity,
Which gilds it with revivifying ray;
Such as the great of yore, Canova[433] is to-day.
LVI.
But where repose the all Etruscan three--
Dante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they,
The Bard of Prose, creative Spirit! he[mx]
Of the Hundred Tales of Love--where did they lay
Their bones, distinguished from our common clay
In death as life? Are they resolved to dust,
And have their Country's Marbles nought to say?
Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust?
Did they not to her breast their filial earth entrust?
LVII.
Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,[434][18. H. ]
Like Scipio buried by the upbraiding shore:[435][19. H. ]
Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,[436]
Proscribed the Bard whose name for evermore
Their children's children would in vain adore
With the remorse of ages; and the crown[437][20. H. ]
Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore,
Upon a far and foreign soil had grown,
His Life, his Fame, his Grave, though rifled--not thine own. [438]
LVIII.
Boccaccio[439] to his parent earth bequeathed[my][21. H. ]
His dust,--and lies it not her Great among,
With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed
O'er him who formed the Tuscan's siren tongue? [440]
That music in itself, whose sounds are song,
The poetry of speech? No;--even his tomb
Uptorn, must bear the hyaena bigot's wrong,
No more amidst the meaner dead find room,
Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for _whom! _
LIX.
And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust;
Yet for this want more noted, as of yore
The Caesar's pageant,[441] shorn of Brutus' bust,
Did but of Rome's best Son remind her more:
Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore,
Fortress of falling Empire! honoured sleeps[mz]
The immortal Exile;--Arqua, too, her store
Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps,
While Florence vainly begs her banished dead and weeps. [442]
LX.
What is her Pyramid of precious stones? [22. H. ]
Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues
Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones
Of merchant-dukes? [443] the momentary dews
Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse
Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead,
Whose names are Mausoleums of the Muse,
Are gently prest with far more reverent tread
Than ever paced the slab which paves the princely head.
LXI.
There be more things to greet the heart and eyes
In Arno's dome of Art's most princely shrine,
Where Sculpture with her rainbow Sister vies;[444]
There be more marvels yet--but not for mine;
For I have been accustomed to entwine
My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields,
Than Art in galleries: though a work divine
Calls for my Spirit's homage, yet it yields
Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields
LXII.
Is of another temper, and I roam
By Thrasimene's lake,[445] in the defiles
Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home;
For there the Carthaginian's warlike wiles
Come back before me, as his skill beguiles
The host between the mountains and the shore,
Where Courage falls in her despairing files,[na]
And torrents, swoll'n to rivers with their gore,
Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scattered o'er.
LXIII.
Like to a forest felled by mountain winds;
And such the storm of battle on this day,
And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds
To all save Carnage, that, beneath the fray,
An Earthquake[446] reeled unheededly away! [23. H. ]
None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet,
And yawning forth a grave for those who lay
Upon their bucklers for a winding sheet--
Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet!
LXIV.
The Earth to them was as a rolling bark
Which bore them to Eternity--they saw
The Ocean round, but had no time to mark
The motions of their vessel; Nature's law,
In them suspended, recked not of the awe
Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds
Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdraw[nb]
From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds
Stumble o'er heaving plains--and Man's dread hath no words.
LXV.
Far other scene is Thrasimene now;
Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain
Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough;
Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain
Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta'en--
A little rill of scanty stream and bed--
A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain;
And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead
Made the earth wet, and turned the unwilling waters red. [nc]
LXVI.
But thou, Clitumnus[447]! in thy sweetest wave
Of the most living crystal that was e'er
The haunt of river-Nymph, to gaze and lave
Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear
Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer[448]
Grazes--the purest God of gentle waters!
And most serene of aspect, and most clear;
Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters--
A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters!
LXVII.
And on thy happy shore a Temple[449] still,
Of small and delicate proportion, keeps
Upon a mild declivity of hill,[nd]
Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps
Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps
The finny darter with the glittering scales,[450]
Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;
While, chance, some scattered water-lily sails[ne]
Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales.
LXVIII.
Pass not unblest the Genius of the place!
If through the air a Zephyr more serene
Win to the brow, 'tis his; and if ye trace
Along his margin a more eloquent green,
If on the heart the freshness of the scene
Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust
Of weary life a moment lave it clean
With Nature's baptism,--'tis to him ye must
Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust. [451]
LXIX.
The roar of waters! --from the headlong height
Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;
The fall of waters! rapid as the light
The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;
The Hell of Waters! where they howl and hiss,
And boil in endless torture; while the sweat
Of their great agony, wrung out from this
Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet
That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,
LXX.
And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again
Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,
With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,
Is an eternal April to the ground,
Making it all one emerald:--how profound[nf]
The gulf! and how the Giant Element
From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,[ng]
Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent
With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent
LXXI.
To the broad column which rolls on, and shows
More like the fountain of an infant sea
Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes
Of a new world, than only thus to be
Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,
With many windings, through the vale:--Look back!
Lo! where it comes like an Eternity,
As if to sweep down all things in its track,
Charming the eye with dread,--a matchless cataract,[452]
LXXII.
Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,
From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,
An Iris[453] sits, amidst the infernal surge,
Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn
Its steady dyes, while all around is torn
By the distracted waters, bears serene
Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn:
Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene,
Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.
LXXIII.
Once more upon the woody Apennine--
The infant Alps, which--had I not before
Gazed on their mightier Parents, where the pine
Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar[nh]
The thundering Lauwine[454]--might be worshipped more;
But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear[ni]
Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar
Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near--
And in Chimari heard the Thunder-Hills of fear,
LXXIV.
Th' Acroceraunian mountains of old name;
And on Parnassus seen the Eagles fly
Like Spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame.
For still they soared unutterably high:
I've looked on Ida with a Trojan's eye;
Athos--Olympus--AEtna. --Atlas--made
These hills seem things of lesser dignity;
All, save the lone Soracte's height, displayed
Not _now_ in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid
LXXV.
For our remembrance, and from out the plain
Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,
And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain
May he, who will, his recollections rake,
And quote in classic raptures, and awake
The hills with Latian echoes--I abhorred
Too much, to conquer for the Poet's sake,[455]
The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word
In my repugnant youth,[456] with pleasure to record
LXXVI.
Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned
My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught
My mind to meditate what then it learned,[nj]
Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought[nk]
By the impatience of my early thought,
That, with the freshness wearing out before
My mind could relish what it might have sought,
If free to choose, I cannot now restore
Its health--but what it then detested, still abhor. [nl]
LXXVII.
Then farewell, Horace--whom I hated so,
Not for thy faults, but mine: it is a curse
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,
To comprehend, but never love thy verse;
Although no deeper Moralist rehearse
Our little life, nor Bard prescribe his art,
Nor livelier Satirist the conscience pierce,
Awakening without wounding the touched heart,
Yet fare thee well--upon Soracte's ridge we part.
LXXVIII.
Oh, Rome! my Country! City of the Soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone Mother of dead Empires! and control
In their shut breasts their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see
The cypress--hear the owl--and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples--Ye!
Whose agonies are evils of a day--
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.
LXXIX.
The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;[nm]
empty urn within her withered hands,
Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;[457]
The very sepulchres lie tenantless[458]
Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,
Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?
Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress. [459]
LXXX.
The Goth, the Christian--Time--War--Flood, and Fire,[460]
Have dealt upon the seven-hilled City's pride;
She saw her glories star by star expire,[nn]
And up the steep barbarian Monarchs ride,
Where the car climbed the Capitol;[461] far and wide
Temple and tower went down, nor left a site:
Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void,
O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,
And say, "here was, or is," where all is doubly night?
LXXXI.
The double night of ages, and of her,[no]
Night's daughter, Ignorance,[462] hath wrapt and wrap
All round us; we but feel our way to err:
The Ocean hath his chart, the Stars their map,
And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap;
But Rome is as the desert--where we steer
Stumbling o'er recollections; now we clap
Our hands, and cry "Eureka! " "it is clear"--
When but some false Mirage of ruin rises near.
LXXXII.
Alas! the lofty city! and alas!
The trebly hundred triumphs! [463] and the day
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass
The Conqueror's sword in bearing fame away!
Alas, for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay,[np]
And Livy's pictured page! --but these shall be
Her resurrection; all beside--decay.
Alas, for Earth, for never shall we see
That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free!
LXXXIII.
Oh, thou, whose chariot rolled on Fortune's wheel,
Triumphant Sylla! [464] Thou, who didst subdue
Thy country's foes ere thou wouldst pause to feel
The wrath of thy own wrongs, or reap the due
Of hoarded vengeance till thine Eagles flew
O'er prostrate Asia;--thou, who with thy frown
Annihilated senates;--Roman, too,
With all thy vices--for thou didst lay down
With an atoning smile a more than earthly crown,
LXXXIV.
Thy dictatorial wreath--couldst thou divine
To what would one day dwindle that which made
Thee more than mortal? and that so supine
By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid? [nq]
She who was named Eternal, and arrayed
Her warriors but to conquer--she who veiled
Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed,[nr]
Until the o'er-canopied horizon failed,
Her rushing wings--Oh! she who was Almighty hailed!
LXXXV.
Sylla was first of victors; but our own,[ns]
The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell! --he
Too swept off senates while he hewed the throne
Down to a block--immortal rebel! See
What crimes it costs to be a moment free,
And famous through all ages! but beneath
His fate the moral lurks of destiny;
His day of double victory and death
Beheld him win two realms, and, happier, yield his breath. [465]
LXXXVI.
The third of the same Moon whose former course
Had all but crowned him, on the selfsame day
Deposed him gently from his throne of force,
And laid him with the Earth's preceding clay.
And showed not Fortune thus how fame and sway,
And all we deem delightful, and consume
Our souls to compass through each arduous way,
Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb?
Were they but so in Man's, how different were his doom!
LXXXVII.
And thou, dread Statue! [466] yet existent in[24. H. ]
The austerest form of naked majesty--
Thou who beheldest, 'mid the assassins' din,
At thy bathed base the bloody Caesar lie,
Folding his robe in dying dignity--
An offering to thine altar from the Queen
Of gods and men, great Nemesis! did he die,
And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been
Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene?
LXXXVIII.
And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome! [467][25. H. ]
She-wolf! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart
The milk of conquest yet within the dome
Where, as a monument of antique art,
Thou standest:--Mother of the mighty heart,
Which the great Founder sucked from thy wild teat,
Scorched by the Roman Jove's ethereal dart,
And thy limbs black with lightning--dost thou yet
Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget?
LXXXIX.
Thou dost;--but all thy foster-babes are dead--
The men of iron; and the World hath reared
Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled
In imitation of the things[468] they feared,
And fought and conquered, and the same course steered,
At apish distance; but as yet none have,
Nor could, the same supremacy have neared,
Save one vain Man, who is not in the grave--
But, vanquished by himself, to his own slaves a slave--[469]
XC.
The fool of false dominion--and a kind
Of bastard Caesar, following him of old
With steps unequal; for the Roman's mind
Was modelled in a less terrestrial mould,[26. H. ]
With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold,[470]
And an immortal instinct which redeemed
The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold--
Alcides with the distaff now he seemed
At Cleopatra's feet,--and now himself he beamed,
XCI.
And came--and saw--and conquered! [471] But the man
Who would have tamed his Eagles down to flee,
Like a trained falcon, in the Gallic van,[472]
Which he, in sooth, long led to Victory,
With a deaf heart which never seemed to be
A listener to itself, was strangely framed;
With but one weakest weakness--Vanity--[nt]
Coquettish in ambition--still he aimed--
And what? can he avouch, or answer what he claimed? [nu]
XCII.
And would be all or nothing--nor could wait
For the sure grave to level him; few years
Had fixed him with the Caesars in his fate
On whom we tread: For _this_ the conqueror rears
The Arch of Triumph!
and for this the tears
And blood of earth flow on as they have flowed,
An universal Deluge, which appears
Without an Ark for wretched Man's abode,
And ebbs but to reflow! --Renew thy rainbow, God! [nv]
XCIII.
What from this barren being do we reap? [473]
Our senses narrow, and our reason frail,
Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep,
And all things weighed in Custom's falsest scale;[474]
Opinion an Omnipotence,--whose veil
Mantles the earth with darkness, until right
And wrong are accidents, and Men grow pale
Lest their own judgments should become too bright,
And their free thoughts be crimes, and Earth have too much light.
XCIV.
And thus they plod in sluggish misery,[nw]
Rotting from sire to son, and age to age,[475]
Proud of their trampled nature, and so die,[nx]
Bequeathing their hereditary rage
To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage
War for their chains, and rather than be free,
Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage
Within the same Arena where they see
Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree.
XCV.
I speak not of men's creeds--they rest between
Man and his Maker--but of things allowed,
Averred, and known, and daily, hourly seen--
The yoke that is upon us doubly bowed,
And the intent of Tyranny avowed,
The edict of Earth's rulers, who are grown
The apes of him who humbled once the proud,
And shook them from their slumbers on the throne;
Too glorious, were this all his mighty arm had done.
XCVI.
Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be,
And Freedom find no Champion and no Child[476]
Such as Columbia saw arise when she
Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefined?
Or must such minds be nourished in the wild,
Deep in the unpruned forest, 'midst the roar[ny]
Of cataracts, where nursing Nature smiled
On infant Washington? Has Earth no more
Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore?
XCVII.
But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime;[nz]
And fatal have her Saturnalia been[oa]
To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime;
Because the deadly days which we have seen,
And vile Ambition, that built up between
Man and his hopes an adamantine wall,
And the base pageant[477] last upon the scene,
Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall
Which nips Life's tree, and dooms Man's worst--his second fall. [478]
XCVIII.
Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying,
Streams like the thunder-storm _against_ the wind;[479]
Thy trumpet voice, though broken now and dying,
The loudest still the Tempest leaves behind;
Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind,
Chopped by the axe, looks rough and little worth,
But the sap lasts,--and still the seed we find
Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North;
So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth.
XCIX.
There is a stern round tower of other days[480]
Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone,
Such as an army's baffled strength delays,
Standing with half its battlements alone,
And with two thousand years of ivy grown,
The garland of Eternity, where wave
The green leaves over all by Time o'erthrown;--
What was this tower of strength? within its cave
What treasure lay so locked, so hid? --A woman's grave. [ob]
C.
But who was she, the Lady of the dead,
Tombed in a palace? Was she chaste and fair?
Worthy a king's--or more--a Roman's bed?
What race of Chiefs and Heroes did she bear?
What daughter of her beauties was the heir?
How lived--how loved--how died she? Was she not
So honoured--and conspicuously there,
Where meaner relics must not dare to rot,
Placed to commemorate a more than mortal lot?
CI.
Was she as those who love their lords, or they
Who love the lords of others? such have been
Even in the olden time, Rome's annals say.
Was she a matron of Cornelia's mien,
Or the light air of Egypt's graceful Queen,
Profuse of joy--or 'gainst it did she war,
Inveterate in virtue? Did she lean
To the soft side of the heart, or wisely bar
Love from amongst her griefs? --for such the affections are. [oc]
CII.
Perchance she died in youth--it may be, bowed
With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb
That weighed upon her gentle dust: a cloud
Might gather o'er her beauty, and a gloom
In her dark eye, prophetic of the doom
Heaven gives its favourites[481]--early death--yet shed
A sunset charm around her, and illume
With hectic light, the Hesperus of the dead,
Of her consuming cheek the autumnal leaf-like red.
CIII.
Perchance she died in age--surviving all,
Charms--kindred--children--with the silver gray
On her long tresses, which might yet recall,
It may be, still a something of the day
When they were braided, and her proud array
And lovely form were envied, praised, and eyed
By Rome--But whither would Conjecture stray? [482]
Thus much alone we know--Metella died,
The wealthiest Roman's wife: Behold his love or pride!
CIV.
I know not why--but standing thus by thee
It seems as if I had thine inmate known,
Thou Tomb! and other days come back on me
With recollected music, though the tone
Is changed and solemn, like the cloudy groan
Of dying thunder on the distant wind;
Yet could I seat me by this ivied stone
Till I had bodied forth the heated mind[od]
Forms from the floating wreck which Ruin leaves behind:
CV.
And from the planks, far shattered o'er the rocks,
Built me a little bark of hope, once more
To battle with the Ocean and the shocks
Of the loud breakers, and the ceaseless roar
Which rushes on the solitary shore
Where all lies foundered that was ever dear:
But could I gather from the wave-worn store
Enough for my rude boat, where should I steer?
There woos no home, nor hope, nor life, save what is here. [oe]
CVI.
Then let the Winds howl on! their harmony
Shall henceforth be my music, and the Night
The sound shall temper with the owlets' cry,
As I now hear them, in the fading light
Dim o'er the bird of darkness' native site,
Answering each other on the Palatine,
With their large eyes, all glistening gray and bright,
And sailing pinions. --Upon such a shrine
What are our petty griefs? --let me not number mine.
CVII.
Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower grown[483]
Matted and massed together--hillocks heaped
On what were chambers--arch crushed, column strown
In fragments--choked up vaults, and frescos steeped
In subterranean damps, where the owl peeped,[of]
Deeming it midnight:--Temples--Baths--or Halls?
Pronounce who can: for all that Learning reaped
From her research hath been, that these are walls--
Behold the Imperial Mount! 'tis thus the Mighty falls. [484]
CVIII.
There is the moral of all human tales;[485]
'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,
First Freedom, and then Glory--when that fails,
Wealth--Vice--Corruption,--Barbarism at last.
And History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but _one_ page,--'tis better written here,
Where gorgeous Tyranny hath thus amassed
All treasures, all delights, that Eye or Ear,
Heart, Soul could seek--Tongue ask--Away with words! draw near,
CIX.
Admire--exult--despise--laugh--weep,--for here
There is such matter for all feeling:--Man! [og]
Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear,
Ages and Realms are crowded in this span,
This mountain, whose obliterated plan
The pyramid of Empires pinnacled,
Of Glory's gewgaws shining in the van[oh]
Till the Sun's rays with added flame were filled!
Where are its golden roofs? [486] where those who dared to build?
CX.
Tully was not so eloquent as thou,
Thou nameless column[487] with the buried base!
What are the laurels of the Caesar's brow?
Crown me with ivy from his dwelling-place.
Whose arch or pillar meets me in the face,
Titus or Trajan's? No--'tis that of Time:
Triumph, arch, pillar, all he doth displace[oi]
Scoffing; and apostolic statues[488] climb
To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sublime,
CXI.
Buried in air, the deep blue sky of Rome,
And looking to the stars: they had contained
A Spirit which with these would find a home,
The last of those who o'er the whole earth reigned,
The Roman Globe--for, after, none sustained,
But yielded back his conquests:--he was more
Than a mere Alexander, and, unstained
With household blood and wine, serenely wore
His sovereign virtues--still we Trajan's[489] name adore.
CXII.
Where is the rock of Triumph,[490] the high place
Where Rome embraced her heroes? --where the steep
Tarpeian? --fittest goal of Treason's race,
The Promontory whence the Traitor's Leap[oj]
Cured all ambition? [491] Did the conquerors heap
Their spoils here? Yes; and in yon field below,
A thousand years of silenced factions sleep--
The Forum, where the immortal accents glow,
And still the eloquent air breathes-burns with Cicero! [ok][492]
CXIII.
The field of Freedom--Faction--Fame--and Blood:
Here a proud people's passions were exhaled,
From the first hour of Empire in the bud
To that when further worlds to conquer failed;
But long before had Freedom's face been veiled,
And Anarchy assumed her attributes;
Till every lawless soldier who assailed
Trod on the trembling Senate's slavish mutes,
Or raised the venal voice of baser prostitutes.
CXIV.
Then turn we to her latest Tribune's name,
From her ten thousand tyrants turn to thee,
Redeemer of dark centuries of shame--
The friend of Petrarch--hope of Italy--
Rienzi! last of Romans! [493] While the tree
Of Freedom's withered trunk puts forth a leaf,
Even for thy tomb a garland let it be--
The Forum's champion, and the people's chief--
Her new-born Numa thou--with reign, alas! too brief.
CXV.
Egeria! sweet creation of some heart[27. H. ]
Which found no mortal resting-place so fair
As thine ideal breast; whate'er thou art
Or wert,--a young Aurora of the air,
The nympholepsy[494] of some fond despair--[ol]
Or--it might be--a Beauty of the earth,
Who found a more than common Votary there
Too much adoring--whatsoe'er thy birth,
Thou wert a beautiful Thought, and softly bodied forth.
CXVI.
The mosses of thy Fountain[495] still are sprinkled
With thine Elysian water-drops; the face
Of thy cave-guarded Spring, with years unwrinkled,
Reflects the meek-eyed Genius of the place,
Whose green, wild margin now no more erase
Art's works; nor must the delicate waters sleep
Prisoned in marble--bubbling from the base
Of the cleft statue, with a gentle leap
The rill runs o'er--and round, fern, flowers, and ivy, creep
CXVII.
Fantastically tangled: the green hills
Are clothed with early blossoms--through the grass
The quick-eyed lizard rustles--and the bills
Of summer-birds sing welcome as ye pass;
Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class,
Implore the pausing step, and with their dyes
Dance in the soft breeze in a fairy mass;
The sweetness of the Violet's deep blue eyes,
Kissed by the breath of heaven, seems coloured by its skies. [496]
CXVIII.
Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover,[497]
Egeria! thy all heavenly bosom beating
For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover;
The purple Midnight veiled that mystic meeting
With her most starry canopy[498]--and seating
Thyself by thine adorer, what befel?
This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting
Of an enamoured Goddess, and the cell
Haunted by holy Love--the earliest Oracle!
CXIX.
And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying,
Blend a celestial with a human heart;[om]
And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing,
Share with immortal transports? could thine art
Make them indeed immortal, and impart
The purity of Heaven to earthly joys,
Expel the venom and not blunt the dart--
The dull satiety which all destroys--
And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys?
CXX.
Alas! our young affections run to waste,
Or water but the desert! whence arise
But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste,
Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes
Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies,
And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants
Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies
O'er the World's wilderness, and vainly pants
For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants.
CXXI.
Oh, Love! no habitant of earth thou art--[on]
An unseen Seraph, we believe in thee,--
A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,--
But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see
The naked eye, thy form, as it should be;[499]
The mind hath made thee, as it peopled Heaven,
Even with its own desiring phantasy,
And to a thought such shape and image given,
As haunts the unquenched soul--parched--wearied--wrung--and riven.
CXXII.
Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,
And fevers into false creation:--where,
Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized?
In him alone. Can Nature show so fair?
Where are the charms and virtues which we dare
Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men,
The unreached Paradise of our despair,
Which o'er-informs[500] the pencil and the pen,
And overpowers the page where it would bloom again?
CXXIII.
Who loves, raves[501]--'tis youth's frenzy--but the cure
Is bitterer still, as charm by charm unwinds
Which robed our idols, and we see too sure
Nor Worth nor Beauty dwells from out the mind's
Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds
The fatal spell, and still it draws us on,
Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds;
The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun,
Seems ever near the prize--wealthiest when most undone.
CXXIV.
We wither from our youth, we gasp away--
Sick--sick; unfound the boon--unslaked the thirst,
Though to the last, in verge of our decay,
Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first--
But all too late,--so are we doubly curst.
Love, Fame, Ambition, Avarice--'tis the same,
Each idle--and all ill--and none the worst--
For all are meteors with a different name,[oo]
And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.
CXXV.
Few--none--find what they love or could have loved,
Though accident, blind contact, and the strong
Necessity of loving, have removed
Antipathies--but to recur, ere long,
Envenomed with irrevocable wrong;
And Circumstance, that unspiritual God
And Miscreator, makes and helps along
Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,[502]
Whose touch turns Hope to dust,--the dust we all have trod.
CXXVI.
Our life is a false nature--'tis not in
The harmony of things,--this hard decree,
This uneradicable taint of Sin,
This boundless Upas, this all-blasting tree,
Whose root is Earth--whose leaves and branches be
The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew--
Disease, death, bondage--all the woes we see,
And worse, the woes we see not--which throb through
The immedicable soul,[503] with heart-aches ever new.
CXXVII.
Yet let us ponder boldly--'tis a base
Abandonment of reason[504] to resign
Our right of thought--our last and only place
Of refuge; this, at least, shall still be mine:
Though from our birth the Faculty divine
Is chained and tortured--cabined, cribbed, confined,
And bred in darkness,[505] lest the Truth should shine
Too brightly on the unprepared mind,
The beam pours in--for Time and Skill will couch the blind.
CXXVIII.
Arches on arches! [506] as it were that Rome,
Collecting the chief trophies of her line,
Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,
Her Coliseum stands;[507] the moonbeams shine
As 'twere its natural torches--for divine
Should be the light which streams here,--to illume
This long-explored but still exhaustless mine
Of Contemplation; and the azure gloom
Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume
CXXIX.
Hues which have words, and speak to ye of Heaven,
Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument,
And shadows forth its glory. There is given
Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent,
A Spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant
His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power
And magic in the ruined battlement,
For which the Palace of the present hour
Must yield its pomp, and wait till Ages are its dower.
CXXX.
Oh, Time! the Beautifier of the dead,
Adorner of the ruin[508]--Comforter
And only Healer when the heart hath bled;
Time! the Corrector where our judgments err,
The test of Truth, Love--sole philosopher,
For all beside are sophists--from thy thrift,
Which never loses though it doth defer--
Time, the Avenger! unto thee I lift
My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift:
CXXXI.
Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine
And temple more divinely desolate--
Among thy mightier offerings here are mine,
Ruins of years--though few, yet full of fate:--
If thou hast ever seen me too elate,
Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne
Good, and reserved my pride against the hate
Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn
This iron in my soul in vain--shall _they_ not mourn?
CXXXII.
And Thou, who never yet of human wrong
Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis! [509][28. H. ]
Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long--
Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss,
And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss
For that unnatural retribution--just,
Had it but been from hands less near--in this
Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust!
Dost thou not hear my heart? --Awake! thou shalt, and must.
CXXXIII.
It is not that I may not have incurred,
For my ancestral faults or mine, the wound[op]
I bleed withal; and, had it been conferred
With a just weapon, it had flowed unbound;
But now my blood shall not sink in the ground--
To thee I do devote it--_Thou_ shalt take
The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found--
Which if _I_ have not taken for the sake--
But let that pass--I sleep--but Thou shalt yet awake.
CXXXIV.
And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now[oq]
I shrink from what is suffered: let him speak
Who hath beheld decline upon my brow,
Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak;
But in this page a record will I seek.
Not in the air shall these my words disperse,
Though I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak
The deep prophetic fulness of this verse,
And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse!
CXXXV.
That curse shall be Forgiveness. --Have I not--
Hear me, my mother Earth! behold it, Heaven! --
Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?
Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?
Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,
Hopes sapped, name blighted, Life's life lied away?
And only not to desperation driven,
Because not altogether of such clay
As rots into the souls of those whom I survey.
CXXXVI. [or]
From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy
Have I not seen what human things could do?
From the loud roar of foaming calumny
To the small whisper of the as paltry few--
And subtler venom of the reptile crew,
The Janus glance[510] of whose significant eye,
Learning to lie with silence, would _seem_ true--
And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh,
Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy.
CXXXVII.
But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:
My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,
And my frame perish even in conquering pain;
But there is that within me which shall tire
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire;
Something unearthly, which they deem not of,
Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre,
Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move
In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of Love.
CXXXVIII.
The seal is set. --Now welcome, thou dread Power!
Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here
Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour
With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear;
Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear
Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene
Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear
That we become a part of what has been,
And grow upon the spot--all-seeing but unseen.
CXXXIX.
And here the buzz of eager nations ran,
In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause,
As man was slaughtered by his fellow man.
And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because
Such were the bloody Circus' genial laws,
And the imperial pleasure. --Wherefore not?
What matters where we fall to fill the maws
Of worms--on battle-plains or listed spot?
Both are but theatres--where the chief actors rot.
CXL.
I see before me the Gladiator[511] lie:
He leans upon his hand--his manly brow[os]
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his drooped head sinks gradually low--
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,[ot]
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now[ou]
The arena swims around him--he is gone,[ov]
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.
CXLI.
He heard it, but he heeded not--his eyes
Were with his heart--and that was far away;
He recked not of the life he lost nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay--
_There_ were his young barbarians all at play,
_There_ was their Dacian mother--he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday--[ow][29. H. ]
All this rushed with his blood--Shall he expire
And unavenged? --Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!
CXLII.
But here, where Murder breathed her bloody steam;--
And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways,
And roared or murmured like a mountain stream
Dashing or winding as its torrent strays;
Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise
Was Death or Life--the playthings of a crowd--[ox][30. H. ]
My voice sounds much--and fall the stars' faint rays[oy]
On the arena void--seats crushed--walls bowed--
And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.
CXLIII.
A Ruin--yet what Ruin! from its mass
Walls--palaces--half-cities, have been reared;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,[oz]
And marvel where the spoil could have appeared.
Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared?
Alas! developed, opens the decay,
When the colossal fabric's form is neared:
It will not bear the brightness of the day,
Which streams too much on all--years--man--have reft away.
CXLIV.
But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there--
When the stars twinkle through the loops of Time,
And the low night-breeze waves along the air
The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear,[pa]
Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head--[512]
When the light shines serene but doth not glare--
Then in this magic circle raise the dead;--
Heroes have trod this spot--'tis on their dust ye tread. [pb]
CXLV.
"While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand:[513]
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
And when Rome falls--the World. " From our own land
Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall
In Saxon times, which we are wont to call
Ancient; and these three mortal things are still
On their foundations, and unaltered all--
Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill--
The World--the same wide den--of thieves, or what ye will.
CXLVI.
Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime--[514]
Shrine of all saints and temple of all Gods,
From Jove to Jesus--spared and blest by Time--
Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods
Arch--empire--each thing round thee--and Man plods
His way through thorns to ashes--glorious Dome!
Shalt thou not last? Time's scythe and Tyrants' rods
Shiver upon thee--sanctuary and home
Of Art and Piety--Pantheon! --pride of Rome! [pc]
CXLVII.
Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts!
Despoiled yet perfect! with thy circle spreads
A holiness appealing to all hearts;
To Art a model--and to him who treads
Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds
Her light through thy sole aperture; to those
Who worship, here are altars for their beads--
And they who feel for Genius may repose
Their eyes on honoured forms, whose busts around them close.
