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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Canto the Fourth</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;<br> A palace and a prison on each hand:<br> I saw from out the wave her structures rise<br> As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand:<br> A thousand years their cloudy wings expand<br> Around me, and a dying glory smiles<br> O’er the far times when many a subject land<br> Looked to the wingèd Lion’s marble piles,<br>Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> II.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,<br> Rising with her tiara of proud towers<br> At airy distance, with majestic motion,<br> A ruler of the waters and their powers:<br> And such she was; her daughters had their dowers<br> From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East<br> Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.<br> In purple was she robed, and of her feast<br>Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> III.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> In Venice, Tasso’s echoes are no more,<br> And silent rows the songless gondolier;<br> Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,<br> And music meets not always now the ear:<br> Those days are gone - but beauty still is here.<br> States fall, arts fade - but Nature doth not die,<br> Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,<br> The pleasant place of all festivity,<br>The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> IV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But unto us she hath a spell beyond<br> Her name in story, and her long array<br> Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond<br> Above the dogeless city’s vanished sway;<br> Ours is a trophy which will not decay<br> With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,<br> And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away -<br> The keystones of the arch! though all were o’er,<br>For us repeopled were the solitary shore.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> V.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The beings of the mind are not of clay;<br> Essentially immortal, they create<br> And multiply in us a brighter ray<br> And more beloved existence: that which Fate<br> Prohibits to dull life, in this our state<br> Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied,<br> First exiles, then replaces what we hate;<br> Watering the heart whose early flowers have died,<br>And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> VI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Such is the refuge of our youth and age,<br> The first from Hope, the last from Vacancy;<br> And this worn feeling peoples many a page,<br> And, may be, that which grows beneath mine eye:<br> Yet there are things whose strong reality<br> Outshines our fairy-land; in shape and hues<br> More beautiful than our fantastic sky,<br> And the strange constellations which the Muse<br>O’er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse:</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> VII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> I saw or dreamed of such, - but let them go -<br> They came like truth, and disappeared like dreams;<br> And whatsoe’er they were - are now but so;<br> I could replace them if I would: still teems<br> My mind with many a form which aptly seems<br> Such as I sought for, and at moments found;<br> Let these too go - for waking reason deems<br> Such overweening phantasies unsound,<br>And other voices speak, and other sights surround.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> VIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> I’ve taught me other tongues, and in strange eyes<br> Have made me not a stranger; to the mind<br> Which is itself, no changes bring surprise;<br> Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find<br> A country with - ay, or without mankind;<br> Yet was I born where men are proud to be,<br> Not without cause; and should I leave behind<br> The inviolate island of the sage and free,<br>And seek me out a home by a remoter sea,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> IX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Perhaps I loved it well: and should I lay<br> My ashes in a soil which is not mine,<br> My spirit shall resume it - if we may<br> Unbodied choose a sanctuary. I twine<br> My hopes of being remembered in my line<br> With my land’s language: if too fond and far<br> These aspirations in their scope incline, -<br> If my fame should be, as my fortunes are,<br>Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> X.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> My name from out the temple where the dead<br> Are honoured by the nations - let it be -<br> And light the laurels on a loftier head!<br> And be the Spartan’s epitaph on me -<br> ‘Sparta hath many a worthier son than he.’<br> Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need;<br> The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree<br> I planted, - they have torn me, and I bleed:<br>I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord;<br> And, annual marriage now no more renewed,<br> The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored,<br> Neglected garment of her widowhood!<br> St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood<br> Stand, but in mockery of his withered power,<br> Over the proud place where an Emperor sued,<br> And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour<br>When Venice was a queen with an unequalled dower.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns -<br> An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt;<br> Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains<br> Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt<br> From power’s high pinnacle, when they have felt<br> The sunshine for a while, and downward go<br> Like lauwine loosened from the mountain’s belt:<br> Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo!<br>The octogenarian chief, Byzantium’s conquering foe.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass,<br> Their gilded collars glittering in the sun;<br> But is not Doria’s menace come to pass?<br> Are they not bridled? - Venice, lost and won,<br> Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,<br> Sinks, like a seaweed, into whence she rose!<br> Better be whelmed beneath the waves, and shun,<br> Even in Destruction’s depth, her foreign foes,<br>From whom submission wrings an infamous repose.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XIV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> In youth she was all glory, - a new Tyre, -<br> Her very byword sprung from victory,<br> The ‘Planter of the Lion,’ which through fire<br> And blood she bore o’er subject earth and sea;<br> Though making many slaves, herself still free<br> And Europe’s bulwark ’gainst the Ottomite:<br> Witness Troy’s rival, Candia! Vouch it, ye<br> Immortal waves that saw Lepanto’s fight!<br>For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Statues of glass - all shivered - the long file<br> Of her dead doges are declined to dust;<br> But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile<br> Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust;<br> Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust,<br> Have yielded to the stranger: empty halls,<br> Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must<br> Too oft remind her who and what enthrals,<br>Have flung a desolate cloud o’er Venice’ lovely walls.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XVI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> When Athens’ armies fell at Syracuse,<br> And fettered thousands bore the yoke of war,<br> Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse,<br> Her voice their only ransom from afar:<br> See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car<br> Of the o’ermastered victor stops, the reins<br> Fall from his hands - his idle scimitar<br> Starts from its belt - he rends his captive’s chains,<br>And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XVII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Thus, Venice, if no stronger claim were thine,<br> Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot,<br> Thy choral memory of the bard divine,<br> Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot<br> Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot<br> Is shameful to the nations, - most of all,<br> Albion! to thee: the Ocean Queen should not<br> Abandon Ocean’s children; in the fall<br>Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XVIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> I loved her from my boyhood: she to me<br> Was as a fairy city of the heart,<br> Rising like water-columns from the sea,<br> Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart<br> And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakspeare’s art,<br> Had stamped her image in me, and e’en so,<br> Although I found her thus, we did not part,<br> Perchance e’en dearer in her day of woe,<br>Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XIX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> I can repeople with the past - and of<br> The present there is still for eye and thought,<br> And meditation chastened down, enough;<br> And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought;<br> And of the happiest moments which were wrought<br> Within the web of my existence, some<br> From thee, fair Venice! have their colours caught:<br> There are some feelings Time cannot benumb,<br>Nor torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But from their nature will the tannen grow<br> Loftiest on loftiest and least sheltered rocks,<br> Rooted in barrenness, where nought below<br> Of soil supports them ’gainst the Alpine shocks<br> Of eddying storms; yet springs the trunk, and mocks<br> The howling tempest, till its height and frame<br> Are worthy of the mountains from whose blocks<br> Of bleak, grey granite, into life it came,<br>And grew a giant tree; - the mind may grow the same.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Existence may be borne, and the deep root<br> Of life and sufferance make its firm abode<br> In bare and desolate bosoms: mute<br> The camel labours with the heaviest load,<br> And the wolf dies in silence. Not bestowed<br> In vain should such examples be; if they,<br> Things of ignoble or of savage mood,<br> Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay<br>May temper it to bear, - it is but for a day.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> All suffering doth destroy, or is destroyed,<br> Even by the sufferer; and, in each event,<br> Ends: - Some, with hope replenished and rebuoyed,<br> Return to whence they came - with like intent,<br> And weave their web again; some, bowed and bent,<br> Wax grey and ghastly, withering ere their time,<br> And perish with the reed on which they leant;<br> Some seek devotion, toil, war, good or crime,<br>According as their souls were formed to sink or climb.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But ever and anon of griefs subdued<br> There comes a token like a scorpion’s sting,<br> Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued;<br> And slight withal may be the things which bring<br> Back on the heart the weight which it would fling<br> Aside for ever: it may be a sound -<br> A tone of music - summer’s eve - or spring -<br> A flower - the wind - the ocean - which shall wound,<br>Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXIV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And how and why we know not, nor can trace<br> Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind,<br> But feel the shock renewed, nor can efface<br> The blight and blackening which it leaves behind,<br> Which out of things familiar, undesigned,<br> When least we deem of such, calls up to view<br> The spectres whom no exorcism can bind, -<br> The cold - the changed - perchance the dead - anew,<br>The mourned, the loved, the lost - too many! - yet how few!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But my soul wanders; I demand it back<br> To meditate amongst decay, and stand<br> A ruin amidst ruins; there to track<br> Fall’n states and buried greatness, o’er a land<br> Which was the mightiest in its old command,<br> And is the loveliest, and must ever be<br> The master-mould of Nature’s heavenly hand,<br> Wherein were cast the heroic and the free,<br>The beautiful, the brave - the lords of earth and sea.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXVI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The commonwealth of kings, the men of Rome!<br> And even since, and now, fair Italy!<br> Thou art the garden of the world, the home<br> Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree;<br> Even in thy desert, what is like to thee?<br> Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste<br> More rich than other climes’ fertility;<br> Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced<br>With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXVII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The moon is up, and yet it is not night -<br> Sunset divides the sky with her - a sea<br> Of glory streams along the Alpine height<br> Of blue Friuli’s mountains; Heaven is free<br> From clouds, but of all colours seems to be -<br> Melted to one vast Iris of the West,<br> Where the day joins the past eternity;<br> While, on the other hand, meek Dian’s crest<br>Floats through the azure air - an island of the blest!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXVIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> A single star is at her side, and reigns<br> With her o’er half the lovely heaven; but still<br> Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains<br> Rolled o’er the peak of the far Rhætian hill,<br> As Day and Night contending were, until<br> Nature reclaimed her order: - gently flows<br> The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instil<br> The odorous purple of a new-born rose,<br>Which streams upon her stream, and glassed within it glows,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXIX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Filled with the face of heaven, which, from afar,<br> Comes down upon the waters; all its hues,<br> From the rich sunset to the rising star,<br> Their magical variety diffuse:<br> And now they change; a paler shadow strews<br> Its mantle o’er the mountains; parting day<br> Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues<br> With a new colour as it gasps away,<br>The last still loveliest, till - ’tis gone - and all is grey.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> There is a tomb in Arqua; - reared in air,<br> Pillared in their sarcophagus, repose<br> The bones of Laura’s lover: here repair<br> Many familiar with his well-sung woes,<br> The pilgrims of his genius. He arose<br> To raise a language, and his land reclaim<br> From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes:<br> Watering the tree which bears his lady’s name<br>With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXXI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died;<br> The mountain-village where his latter days<br> Went down the vale of years; and ’tis their pride -<br> An honest pride - and let it be their praise,<br> To offer to the passing stranger’s gaze<br> His mansion and his sepulchre; both plain<br> And venerably simple, such as raise<br> A feeling more accordant with his strain,<br>Than if a pyramid formed his monumental fane.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXXII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And the soft quiet hamlet where he dwelt<br> Is one of that complexion which seems made<br> For those who their mortality have felt,<br> And sought a refuge from their hopes decayed<br> In the deep umbrage of a green hill’s shade,<br> Which shows a distant prospect far away<br> Of busy cities, now in vain displayed,<br> For they can lure no further; and the ray<br>Of a bright sun can make sufficient holiday.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXXIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Developing the mountains, leaves, and flowers<br> And shining in the brawling brook, where-by,<br> Clear as its current, glide the sauntering hours<br> With a calm languor, which, though to the eye<br> Idlesse it seem, hath its morality,<br> If from society we learn to live,<br> ’Tis solitude should teach us how to die;<br> It hath no flatterers; vanity can give<br>No hollow aid; alone - man with his God must strive:</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXXIV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Or, it may be, with demons, who impair<br> The strength of better thoughts, and seek their prey<br> In melancholy bosoms, such as were<br> Of moody texture from their earliest day,<br> And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay,<br> Deeming themselves predestined to a doom<br> Which is not of the pangs that pass away;<br> Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb,<br>The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXXV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Ferrara! in thy wide and grass-grown streets,<br> Whose symmetry was not for solitude,<br> There seems as ’twere a curse upon the seat’s<br> Of former sovereigns, and the antique brood<br> Of Este, which for many an age made good<br> Its strength within thy walls, and was of yore<br> Patron or tyrant, as the changing mood<br> Of petty power impelled, of those who wore<br>The wreath which Dante’s brow alone had worn before.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXXVI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And Tasso is their glory and their shame.<br> Hark to his strain! and then survey his cell!<br> And see how dearly earned Torquato’s fame,<br> And where Alfonso bade his poet dwell.<br> The miserable despot could not quell<br> The insulted mind he sought to quench, and blend<br> With the surrounding maniacs, in the hell<br> Where he had plunged it. Glory without end<br>Scattered the clouds away - and on that name attend</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXXVII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The tears and praises of all time, while thine<br> Would rot in its oblivion - in the sink<br> Of worthless dust, which from thy boasted line<br> Is shaken into nothing; but the link<br> Thou formest in his fortunes bids us think<br> Of thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn -<br> Alfonso! how thy ducal pageants shrink<br> From thee! if in another station born,<br>Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou mad’st to mourn:</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXXVIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Thou! formed to eat, and be despised, and die,<br> Even as the beasts that perish, save that thou<br> Hadst a more splendid trough, and wider sty:<br> He! with a glory round his furrowed brow,<br> Which emanated then, and dazzles now<br> In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire,<br> And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow<br> No strain which shamed his country’s creaking lyre,<br>That whetstone of the teeth - monotony in wire!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXXIX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Peace to Torquato’s injured shade! ’twas his<br> In life and death to be the mark where Wrong<br> Aimed with their poisoned arrows - but to miss.<br> Oh, victor unsurpassed in modern song!<br> Each year brings forth its millions; but how long<br> The tide of generations shall roll on,<br> And not the whole combined and countless throng<br> Compose a mind like thine? Though all in one<br>Condensed their scattered rays, they would not form a sun.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XL.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Great as thou art, yet paralleled by those<br> Thy countrymen, before thee born to shine,<br> The bards of Hell and Chivalry: first rose<br> The Tuscan father’s comedy divine;<br> Then, not unequal to the Florentine,<br> The Southern Scott, the minstrel who called forth<br> A new creation with his magic line,<br> And, like the Ariosto of the North,<br>Sang ladye-love and war, romance and knightly worth.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XLI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The lightning rent from Ariosto’s bust<br> The iron crown of laurel’s mimicked leaves;<br> Nor was the ominous element unjust,<br> For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves<br> Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves,<br> And the false semblance but disgraced his brow;<br> Yet still, if fondly Superstition grieves,<br> Know that the lightning sanctifies below<br>Whate’er it strikes; - yon head is doubly sacred now.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XLII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Italia! O Italia! thou who hast<br> The fatal gift of beauty, which became<br> A funeral dower of present woes and past,<br> On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame,<br> And annals graved in characters of flame.<br> Oh God! that thou wert in thy nakedness<br> Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim<br> Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press<br>To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress;</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XLIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Then mightst thou more appal; or, less desired,<br> Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored<br> For thy destructive charms; then, still untired,<br> Would not be seen the armèd torrents poured<br> Down the deep Alps; nor would the hostile horde<br> Of many-nationed spoilers from the Po<br> Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger’s sword<br> Be thy sad weapon of defence, and so,<br>Victor or vanquished, thou the slave of friend or foe.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XLIV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him,<br> The Roman friend of Rome’s least mortal mind,<br> The friend of Tully: as my bark did skim<br> The bright blue waters with a fanning wind,<br> Came Megara before me, and behind<br> Ægina lay, Piræus on the right,<br> And Corinth on the left; I lay reclined<br> Along the prow, and saw all these unite<br>In ruin, even as he had seen the desolate sight;</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XLV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> For time hath not rebuilt them, but upreared<br> Barbaric dwellings on their shattered site,<br> Which only make more mourned and more endeared<br> The few last rays of their far-scattered light,<br> And the crushed relics of their vanished might.<br> The Roman saw these tombs in his own age,<br> These sepulchres of cities, which excite<br> Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page<br>The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XLVI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> That page is now before me, and on mine<br> His country’s ruin added to the mass<br> Of perished states he mourned in their decline,<br> And I in desolation: all that was<br> Of then destruction is; and now, alas!<br> Rome - Rome imperial, bows her to the storm,<br> In the same dust and blackness, and we pass<br> The skeleton of her Titanic form,<br>Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XLVII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Yet, Italy! through every other land<br> Thy wrongs should ring, and shall, from side to side;<br> Mother of Arts! as once of Arms; thy hand<br> Was then our Guardian, and is still our guide;<br> Parent of our religion! whom the wide<br> Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven!<br> Europe, repentant of her parricide,<br> Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven,<br>Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XLVIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But Arno wins us to the fair white walls,<br> Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps<br> A softer feeling for her fairy halls.<br> Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps<br> Her corn, and wine, and oil, and Plenty leaps<br> To laughing life, with her redundant horn.<br> Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps,<br> Was modern Luxury of Commerce born,<br>And buried Learning rose, redeemed to a new morn.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XLIX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> There, too, the goddess loves in stone, and fills<br> The air around with beauty; we inhale<br> The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils<br> Part of its immortality; the veil<br> Of heaven is half undrawn; within the pale<br> We stand, and in that form and face behold<br> What Mind can make, when Nature’s self would fail;<br> And to the fond idolaters of old<br>Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould:</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> L.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> We gaze and turn away, and know not where,<br> Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart<br> Reels with its fulness; there - for ever there -<br> Chained to the chariot of triumphal Art,<br> We stand as captives, and would not depart.<br> Away! - there need no words, nor terms precise,<br> The paltry jargon of the marble mart,<br> Where Pedantry gulls Folly - we have eyes:<br>Blood, pulse, and breast, confirm the Dardan Shepherd’s prize.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Appearedst thou not to Paris in this guise?<br> Or to more deeply blest Anchises? or,<br> In all thy perfect goddess-ship, when lies<br> Before thee thy own vanquished Lord of War?<br> And gazing in thy face as toward a star,<br> Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn,<br> Feeding on thy sweet cheek! while thy lips are<br> With lava kisses melting while they burn,<br>Showered on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love,<br> Their full divinity inadequate<br> That feeling to express, or to improve,<br> The gods become as mortals, and man’s fate<br> Has moments like their brightest! but the weight<br> Of earth recoils upon us; - let it go!<br> We can recall such visions, and create<br> From what has been, or might be, things which grow,<br>Into thy statue’s form, and look like gods below.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> I leave to learnèd fingers, and wise hands,<br> The artist and his ape, to teach and tell<br> How well his connoisseurship understands<br> The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell:<br> Let these describe the undescribable:<br> I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream<br> Wherein that image shall for ever dwell;<br> The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream<br>That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LIV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> In Santa Croce’s holy precincts lie<br> Ashes which make it holier, dust which is<br> E’en in itself an immortality,<br> Though there were nothing save the past, and this<br> The particle of those sublimities<br> Which have relapsed to chaos: - here repose<br> Angelo’s, Alfieri’s bones, and his,<br> The starry Galileo, with his woes;<br>Here Machiavelli’s earth returned to whence it rose.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> These are four minds, which, like the elements,<br> Might furnish forth creation: - Italy!<br> Time, which hath wronged thee with ten thousand rents<br> Of thine imperial garment, shall deny,<br> And hath denied, to every other sky,<br> Spirits which soar from ruin: - thy decay<br> Is still impregnate with divinity,<br> Which gilds it with revivifying ray;<br>Such as the great of yore, Canova is to-day.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LVI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But where repose the all Etruscan three -<br> Dante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they,<br> The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he<br> Of the Hundred Tales of love - where did they lay<br> Their bones, distinguished from our common clay<br> In death as life? Are they resolved to dust,<br> And have their country’s marbles nought to say?<br> Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust?<br>Did they not to her breast their filial earth entrust?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LVII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,<br> Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore;<br> Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,<br> Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore<br> Their children’s children would in vain adore<br> With the remorse of ages; and the crown<br> Which Petrarch’s laureate brow supremely wore,<br> Upon a far and foreign soil had grown,<br>His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled - not thine own.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LVIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed<br> His dust, - and lies it not her great among,<br> With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed<br> O’er him who formed the Tuscan’s siren tongue?<br> That music in itself, whose sounds are song,<br> The poetry of speech? No; - even his tomb<br> Uptorn, must bear the hyæna bigots’ wrong,<br> No more amidst the meaner dead find room,<br>Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for whom?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LIX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust;<br> Yet for this want more noted, as of yore<br> The Cæsar’s pageant, shorn of Brutus’ bust,<br> Did but of Rome’s best son remind her more:<br> Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore,<br> Fortress of falling empire! honoured sleeps<br> The immortal exile; - Arqua, too, her store<br> Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps,<br>While Florence vainly begs her banished dead, and weeps.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> What is her pyramid of precious stones?<br> Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues<br> Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones<br> Of merchant-dukes? the momentary dews<br> Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse<br> Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead,<br> Whose names are mausoleums of the Muse,<br> Are gently prest with far more reverent tread<br>Than ever paced the slab which paves the princely head.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> There be more things to greet the heart and eyes<br> In Arno’s dome of Art’s most princely shrine,<br> Where Sculpture with her rainbow sister vies;<br> There be more marvels yet - but not for mine;<br> For I have been accustomed to entwine<br> My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields<br> Than Art in galleries: though a work divine<br> Calls for my spirit’s homage, yet it yields<br>Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Is of another temper, and I roam<br> By Thrasimene’s lake, in the defiles<br> Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home;<br> For there the Carthaginian’s warlike wiles<br> Come back before me, as his skill beguiles<br> The host between the mountains and the shore,<br> Where Courage falls in her despairing files,<br> And torrents, swoll’n to rivers with their gore,<br>Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scattered o’er,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Like to a forest felled by mountain winds;<br> And such the storm of battle on this day,<br> And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds<br> To all save carnage, that, beneath the fray,<br> An earthquake reeled unheededly away!<br> None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet,<br> And yawning forth a grave for those who lay<br> Upon their bucklers for a winding-sheet;<br>Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXIV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The Earth to them was as a rolling bark<br> Which bore them to Eternity; they saw<br> The Ocean round, but had no time to mark<br> The motions of their vessel: Nature’s law,<br> In them suspended, recked not of the awe<br> Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds<br> Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdraw<br> From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds<br>Stumble o’er heaving plains, and man’s dread hath no words.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Far other scene is Thrasimene now;<br> Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain<br> Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough;<br> Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain<br> Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta’en -<br> A little rill of scanty stream and bed -<br> A name of blood from that day’s sanguine rain;<br> And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead<br>Made the earth wet, and turned the unwilling waters red.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXVI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave<br> Of the most living crystal that was e’er<br> The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave<br> Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear<br> Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer<br> Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters!<br> And most serene of aspect, and most clear:<br> Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters,<br>A mirror and a bath for Beauty’s youngest daughters!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXVII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And on thy happy shore a temple still,<br> Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,<br> Upon a mild declivity of hill,<br> Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps<br> Thy current’s calmness; oft from out it leaps<br> The finny darter with the glittering scales,<br> Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;<br> While, chance, some scattered water-lily sails<br>Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXVIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Pass not unblest the genius of the place!<br> If through the air a zephyr more serene<br> Win to the brow, ’tis his; and if ye trace<br> Along his margin a more eloquent green,<br> If on the heart the freshness of the scene<br> Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust<br> Of weary life a moment lave it clean<br> With Nature’s baptism, - ’tis to him ye must<br>Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXIX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The roar of waters! - from the headlong height<br> Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;<br> The fall of waters! rapid as the light<br> The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;<br> The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,<br> And boil in endless torture; while the sweat<br> Of their great agony, wrung out from this<br> Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet<br>That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again<br> Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,<br> With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,<br> Is an eternal April to the ground,<br> Making it all one emerald. How profound<br> The gulf! and how the giant element<br> From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,<br> Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent<br>With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> To the broad column which rolls on, and shows<br> More like the fountain of an infant sea<br> Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes<br> Of a new world, than only thus to be<br> Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,<br> With many windings through the vale: - Look back!<br> Lo! where it comes like an eternity,<br> As if to sweep down all things in its track,<br>Charming the eye with dread, - a matchless cataract,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,<br> From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,<br> An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,<br> Like Hope upon a deathbed, and, unworn<br> Its steady dyes, while all around is torn<br> By the distracted waters, bears serene<br> Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn:<br> Resembling, mid the torture of the scene,<br>Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Once more upon the woody Apennine,<br> The infant Alps, which - had I not before<br> Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine<br> Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar<br> The thundering lauwine - might be worshipped more;<br> But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear<br> Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar<br> Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near,<br>And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXIV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The Acroceraunian mountains of old name;<br> And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly<br> Like spirits of the spot, as ’twere for fame,<br> For still they soared unutterably high:<br> I’ve looked on Ida with a Trojan’s eye;<br> Athos, Olympus, Ætna, Atlas, made<br> These hills seem things of lesser dignity,<br> All, save the lone Soracte’s height displayed,<br>Not now in snow, which asks the lyric Roman’s aid</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> For our remembrance, and from out the plain<br> Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,<br> And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain<br> May he who will his recollections rake,<br> And quote in classic raptures, and awake<br> The hills with Latian echoes; I abhorred<br> Too much, to conquer for the poet’s sake,<br> The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word<br>In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXVI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned<br> My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught<br> My mind to meditate what then it learned,<br> Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought<br> By the impatience of my early thought,<br> That, with the freshness wearing out before<br> My mind could relish what it might have sought,<br> If free to choose, I cannot now restore<br>Its health; but what it then detested, still abhor.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXVII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so,<br> Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse<br> To understand, not feel, thy lyric flow,<br> To comprehend, but never love thy verse,<br> Although no deeper moralist rehearse<br> Our little life, nor bard prescribe his art,<br> Nor livelier satirist the conscience pierce,<br> Awakening without wounding the touched heart,<br>Yet fare thee well - upon Soracte’s ridge we part.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXVIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> O Rome! my country! city of the soul!<br> The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,<br> Lone mother of dead empires! and control<br> In their shut breasts their petty misery.<br> What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see<br> The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way<br> O’er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye!<br> Whose agonies are evils of a day -<br>A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXIX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The Niobe of nations! there she stands,<br> Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;<br> An empty urn within her withered hands,<br> Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;<br> The Scipios’ tomb contains no ashes now;<br> The very sepulchres lie tenantless<br> Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,<br> Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?<br>Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire,<br> Have dwelt upon the seven-hilled city’s pride:<br> She saw her glories star by star expire,<br> And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride,<br> Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide<br> Temple and tower went down, nor left a site; -<br> Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void,<br> O’er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,<br>And say, ‘Here was, or is,’ where all is doubly night?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXXI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The double night of ages, and of her,<br> Night’s daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt, and wrap<br> All round us; we but feel our way to err:<br> The ocean hath its chart, the stars their map;<br> And knowledge spreads them on her ample lap;<br> But Rome is as the desert, where we steer<br> Stumbling o’er recollections: now we clap<br> Our hands, and cry, ‘Eureka!’ it is clear -<br>When but some false mirage of ruin rises near.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXXII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Alas, the lofty city! and alas<br> The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day<br> When Brutus made the dagger’s edge surpass<br> The conqueror’s sword in bearing fame away!<br> Alas for Tully’s voice, and Virgil’s lay,<br> And Livy’s pictured page! But these shall be<br> Her resurrection; all beside - decay.<br> Alas for Earth, for never shall we see<br>That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXXIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> O thou, whose chariot rolled on Fortune’s wheel,<br> Triumphant Sylla! Thou, who didst subdue<br> Thy country’s foes ere thou wouldst pause to feel<br> The wrath of thy own wrongs, or reap the due<br> Of hoarded vengeance till thine eagles flew<br> O’er prostrate Asia; - thou, who with thy frown<br> Annihilated senates - Roman, too,<br> With all thy vices, for thou didst lay down<br>With an atoning smile a more than earthly crown -</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXXIV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The dictatorial wreath, - couldst thou divine<br> To what would one day dwindle that which made<br> Thee more than mortal? and that so supine<br> By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid?<br> She who was named eternal, and arrayed<br> Her warriors but to conquer - she who veiled<br> Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed<br> Until the o’er-canopied horizon failed,<br>Her rushing wings - Oh! she who was almighty hailed!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXXV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Sylla was first of victors; but our own,<br> The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell! - he<br> Too swept off senates while he hewed the throne<br> Down to a block - immortal rebel! See<br> What crimes it costs to be a moment free<br> And famous through all ages! But beneath<br> His fate the moral lurks of destiny;<br> His day of double victory and death<br>Beheld him win two realms, and, happier, yield his breath.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXXVI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The third of the same moon whose former course<br> Had all but crowned him, on the self-same day<br> Deposed him gently from his throne of force,<br> And laid him with the earth’s preceding clay.<br> And showed not Fortune thus how fame and sway,<br> And all we deem delightful, and consume<br> Our souls to compass through each arduous way,<br> Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb?<br>Were they but so in man’s, how different were his doom!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXXVII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And thou, dread statue! yet existent in<br> The austerest form of naked majesty,<br> Thou who beheldest, mid the assassins’ din,<br> At thy bathed base the bloody Cæsar lie,<br> Folding his robe in dying dignity,<br> An offering to thine altar from the queen<br> Of gods and men, great Nemesis! did he die,<br> And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been<br>Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXXVIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome!<br> She-wolf! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart<br> The milk of conquest yet within the dome<br> Where, as a monument of antique art,<br> Thou standest: - Mother of the mighty heart,<br> Which the great founder sucked from thy wild teat,<br> Scorched by the Roman Jove’s ethereal dart,<br> And thy limbs blacked with lightning - dost thou yet<br>Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXXIX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Thou dost; - but all thy foster-babes are dead -<br> The men of iron; and the world hath reared<br> Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled<br> In imitation of the things they feared,<br> And fought and conquered, and the same course steered,<br> At apish distance; but as yet none have,<br> Nor could, the same supremacy have neared,<br> Save one vain man, who is not in the grave,<br>But, vanquished by himself, to his own slaves a slave,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XC.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The fool of false dominion - and a kind<br> Of bastard Cæsar, following him of old<br> With steps unequal; for the Roman’s mind<br> Was modelled in a less terrestrial mould,<br> With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold,<br> And an immortal instinct which redeemed<br> The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold.<br> Alcides with the distaff now he seemed<br>At Cleopatra’s feet, and now himself he beamed.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XCI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And came, and saw, and conquered. But the man<br> Who would have tamed his eagles down to flee,<br> Like a trained falcon, in the Gallic van,<br> Which he, in sooth, long led to victory,<br> With a deaf heart which never seemed to be<br> A listener to itself, was strangely framed;<br> With but one weakest weakness - vanity:<br> Coquettish in ambition, still he aimed<br>At what? Can he avouch, or answer what he claimed?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XCII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And would be all or nothing - nor could wait<br> For the sure grave to level him; few years<br> Had fixed him with the Cæsars in his fate,<br> On whom we tread: For this the conqueror rears<br> The arch of triumph! and for this the tears<br> And blood of earth flow on as they have flowed,<br> An universal deluge, which appears<br> Without an ark for wretched man’s abode,<br>And ebbs but to reflow! - Renew thy rainbow, God!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XCIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> What from this barren being do we reap?<br> Our senses narrow, and our reason frail,<br> Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep,<br> And all things weighed in custom’s falsest scale;<br> Opinion an omnipotence, whose veil<br> Mantles the earth with darkness, until right<br> And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale<br> Lest their own judgments should become too bright,<br>And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XCIV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And thus they plod in sluggish misery,<br> Rotting from sire to son, and age to age,<br> Proud of their trampled nature, and so die,<br> Bequeathing their hereditary rage<br> To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage<br> War for their chains, and rather than be free,<br> Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage<br> Within the same arena where they see<br>Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XCV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> I speak not of men’s creeds - they rest between<br> Man and his Maker - but of things allowed,<br> Averred, and known, - and daily, hourly seen -<br> The yoke that is upon us doubly bowed,<br> And the intent of tyranny avowed,<br> The edict of Earth’s rulers, who are grown<br> The apes of him who humbled once the proud,<br> And shook them from their slumbers on the throne;<br>Too glorious, were this all his mighty arm had done.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XCVI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be,<br> And Freedom find no champion and no child<br> Such as Columbia saw arise when she<br> Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefiled?<br> Or must such minds be nourished in the wild,<br> Deep in the unpruned forest, midst the roar<br> Of cataracts, where nursing nature smiled<br> On infant Washington? Has Earth no more<br>Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XCVII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime,<br> And fatal have her Saturnalia been<br> To Freedom’s cause, in every age and clime;<br> Because the deadly days which we have seen,<br> And vile Ambition, that built up between<br> Man and his hopes an adamantine wall,<br> And the base pageant last upon the scene,<br> Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall<br>Which nips Life’s tree, and dooms man’s worst - his second fall.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XCVIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying,<br> Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind;<br> Thy trumpet-voice, though broken now and dying,<br> The loudest still the tempest leaves behind;<br> Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind,<br> Chopped by the axe, looks rough and little worth,<br> But the sap lasts, - and still the seed we find<br> Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North;<br>So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XCIX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> There is a stern round tower of other days,<br> Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone,<br> Such as an army’s baffled strength delays,<br> Standing with half its battlements alone,<br> And with two thousand years of ivy grown,<br> The garland of eternity, where wave<br> The green leaves over all by time o’erthrown:<br> What was this tower of strength? within its cave<br>What treasure lay so locked, so hid? - A woman’s grave.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> C.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But who was she, the lady of the dead,<br> Tombed in a palace? Was she chaste and fair?<br> Worthy a king’s - or more - a Roman’s bed?<br> What race of chiefs and heroes did she bear?<br> What daughter of her beauties was the heir?<br> How lived - how loved - how died she? Was she not<br> So honoured - and conspicuously there,<br> Where meaner relics must not dare to rot,<br>Placed to commemorate a more than mortal lot?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Was she as those who love their lords, or they<br> Who love the lords of others? such have been<br> Even in the olden time, Rome’s annals say.<br> Was she a matron of Cornelia’s mien,<br> Or the light air of Egypt’s graceful queen,<br> Profuse of joy; or ’gainst it did she war,<br> Inveterate in virtue? Did she lean<br> To the soft side of the heart, or wisely bar<br>Love from amongst her griefs? - for such the affections are.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Perchance she died in youth: it may be, bowed<br> With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb<br> That weighed upon her gentle dust, a cloud<br> Might gather o’er her beauty, and a gloom<br> In her dark eye, prophetic of the doom<br> Heaven gives its favourites - early death; yet shed<br> A sunset charm around her, and illume<br> With hectic light, the Hesperus of the dead,<br>Of her consuming cheek the autumnal leaf-like red.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Perchance she died in age - surviving all,<br> Charms, kindred, children - with the silver grey<br> On her long tresses, which might yet recall,<br> It may be, still a something of the day<br> When they were braided, and her proud array<br> And lovely form were envied, praised, and eyed<br> By Rome - But whither would Conjecture stray?<br> Thus much alone we know - Metella died,<br>The wealthiest Roman’s wife: Behold his love or pride!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CIV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> I know not why - but standing thus by thee<br> It seems as if I had thine inmate known,<br> Thou Tomb! and other days come back on me<br> With recollected music, though the tone<br> Is changed and solemn, like the cloudy groan<br> Of dying thunder on the distant wind;<br> Yet could I seat me by this ivied stone<br> Till I had bodied forth the heated mind,<br>Forms from the floating wreck which ruin leaves behind;</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And from the planks, far shattered o’er the rocks,<br> Built me a little bark of hope, once more<br> To battle with the ocean and the shocks<br> Of the loud breakers, and the ceaseless roar<br> Which rushes on the solitary shore<br> Where all lies foundered that was ever dear:<br> But could I gather from the wave-worn store<br> Enough for my rude boat, where should I steer?<br>There woos no home, nor hope, nor life, save what is here.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CVI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Then let the winds howl on! their harmony<br> Shall henceforth be my music, and the night<br> The sound shall temper with the owlet’s cry,<br> As I now hear them, in the fading light<br> Dim o’er the bird of darkness’ native site,<br> Answer each other on the Palatine,<br> With their large eyes, all glistening grey and bright,<br> And sailing pinions. - Upon such a shrine<br>What are our petty griefs? - let me not number mine.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CVII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower grown<br> Matted and massed together, hillocks heaped<br> On what were chambers, arch crushed, column strown<br> In fragments, choked-up vaults, and frescoes steeped<br> In subterranean damps, where the owl peeped,<br> Deeming it midnight: - Temples, baths, or halls?<br> Pronounce who can; for all that Learning reaped<br> From her research hath been, that these are walls -<br>Behold the Imperial Mount! ’tis thus the mighty falls.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CVIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> There is the moral of all human tales:<br> ’Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,<br> First Freedom, and then Glory - when that fails,<br> Wealth, vice, corruption - barbarism at last.<br> And History, with all her volumes vast,<br> Hath but one page, - ’tis better written here,<br> Where gorgeous Tyranny hath thus amassed<br> All treasures, all delights, that eye or ear,<br>Heart, soul could seek, tongue ask - Away with words! draw near,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CIX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Admire, exult - despise - laugh, weep - for here<br> There is such matter for all feeling: - Man!<br> Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear,<br> Ages and realms are crowded in this span,<br> This mountain, whose obliterated plan<br> The pyramid of empires pinnacled,<br> Of Glory’s gewgaws shining in the van<br> Till the sun’s rays with added flame were filled!<br>Where are its golden roofs? where those who dared to build?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Tully was not so eloquent as thou,<br> Thou nameless column with the buried base!<br> What are the laurels of the Cæsar’s brow?<br> Crown me with ivy from his dwelling-place.<br> Whose arch or pillar meets me in the face,<br> Titus or Trajan’s? No; ’tis that of Time:<br> Triumph, arch, pillar, all he doth displace,<br> Scoffing; and apostolic statues climb<br>To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sublime,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Buried in air, the deep blue sky of Rome,<br> And looking to the stars; they had contained<br> A spirit which with these would find a home,<br> The last of those who o’er the whole earth reigned,<br> The Roman globe, for after none sustained<br> But yielded back his conquests: - he was more<br> Than a mere Alexander, and unstained<br> With household blood and wine, serenely wore<br>His sovereign virtues - still we Trajan’s name adore.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Where is the rock of Triumph, the high place<br> Where Rome embraced her heroes? where the steep<br> Tarpeian - fittest goal of Treason’s race,<br> The promontory whence the traitor’s leap<br> Cured all ambition? Did the Conquerors heap<br> Their spoils here? Yes; and in yon field below,<br> A thousand years of silenced factions sleep -<br> The Forum, where the immortal accents glow,<br>And still the eloquent air breathes - burns with Cicero!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The field of freedom, faction, fame, and blood:<br> Here a proud people’s passions were exhaled,<br> From the first hour of empire in the bud<br> To that when further worlds to conquer failed;<br> But long before had Freedom’s face been veiled,<br> And Anarchy assumed her attributes:<br> Till every lawless soldier who assailed<br> Trod on the trembling Senate’s slavish mutes,<br>Or raised the venal voice of baser prostitutes.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXIV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Then turn we to our latest tribune’s name,<br> From her ten thousand tyrants turn to thee,<br> Redeemer of dark centuries of shame -<br> The friend of Petrarch - hope of Italy -<br> Rienzi! last of Romans! While the tree<br> Of freedom’s withered trunk puts forth a leaf,<br> Even for thy tomb a garland let it be -<br> The forum’s champion, and the people’s chief -<br>Her new-born Numa thou, with reign, alas! too brief.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Egeria! sweet creation of some heart<br> Which found no mortal resting-place so fair<br> As thine ideal breast; whate’er thou art<br> Or wert, - a young Aurora of the air,<br> The nympholepsy of some fond despair;<br> Or, it might be, a beauty of the earth,<br> Who found a more than common votary there<br> Too much adoring; whatsoe’er thy birth,<br>Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXVI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The mosses of thy fountain still are sprinkled<br> With thine Elysian water-drops; the face<br> Of thy cave-guarded spring, with years unwrinkled,<br> Reflects the meek-eyed genius of the place,<br> Whose green wild margin now no more erase<br> Art’s works; nor must the delicate waters sleep,<br> Prisoned in marble, bubbling from the base<br> Of the cleft statue, with a gentle leap<br>The rill runs o’er, and round, fern, flowers, and ivy creep,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXVII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Fantastically tangled; the green hills<br> Are clothed with early blossoms, through the grass<br> The quick-eyed lizard rustles, and the bills<br> Of summer birds sing welcome as ye pass;<br> Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class,<br> Implore the pausing step, and with their dyes<br> Dance in the soft breeze in a fairy mass;<br> The sweetness of the violet’s deep blue eyes,<br>Kissed by the breath of heaven, seems coloured by its skies.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXVIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover,<br> Egeria! thy all heavenly bosom beating<br> For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover;<br> The purple Midnight veiled that mystic meeting<br> With her most starry canopy, and seating<br> Thyself by thine adorer, what befell?<br> This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting<br> Of an enamoured Goddess, and the cell<br>Haunted by holy Love - the earliest oracle!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXIX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying,<br> Blend a celestial with a human heart;<br> And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing,<br> Share with immortal transports? could thine art<br> Make them indeed immortal, and impart<br> The purity of heaven to earthly joys,<br> Expel the venom and not blunt the dart -<br> The dull satiety which all destroys -<br>And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Alas! our young affections run to waste,<br> Or water but the desert: whence arise<br> But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste,<br> Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes,<br> Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies,<br> And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants<br> Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies<br> O’er the world’s wilderness, and vainly pants<br>For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> O Love! no habitant of earth thou art -<br> An unseen seraph, we believe in thee, -<br> A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,<br> But never yet hath seen, nor e’er shall see,<br> The naked eye, thy form, as it should be;<br> The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven,<br> Even with its own desiring phantasy,<br> And to a thought such shape and image given,<br>As haunts the unquenched soul - parched - wearied - wrung - and riven.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,<br> And fevers into false creation; - where,<br> Where are the forms the sculptor’s soul hath seized?<br> In him alone. Can Nature show so fair?<br> Where are the charms and virtues which we dare<br> Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men,<br> The unreached Paradise of our despair,<br> Which o’er-informs the pencil and the pen,<br>And overpowers the page where it would bloom again.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Who loves, raves - ’tis youth’s frenzy - but the cure<br> Is bitterer still; as charm by charm unwinds<br> Which robed our idols, and we see too sure<br> Nor worth nor beauty dwells from out the mind’s<br> Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds<br> The fatal spell, and still it draws us on,<br> Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds;<br> The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun,<br>Seems ever near the prize - wealthiest when most undone.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXIV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> We wither from our youth, we gasp away -<br> Sick - sick; unfound the boon, unslaked the thirst,<br> Though to the last, in verge of our decay,<br> Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first -<br> But all too late, - so are we doubly curst.<br> Love, fame, ambition, avarice - ’tis the same -<br> Each idle, and all ill, and none the worst -<br> For all are meteors with a different name,<br>And death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Few - none - find what they love or could have loved:<br> Though accident, blind contact, and the strong<br> Necessity of loving, have removed<br> Antipathies - but to recur, ere long,<br> Envenomed with irrevocable wrong;<br> And Circumstance, that unspiritual god<br> And miscreator, makes and helps along<br> Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,<br>Whose touch turns hope to dust - the dust we all have trod.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXVI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Our life is a false nature - ’tis not in<br> The harmony of things, - this hard decree,<br> This uneradicable taint of sin,<br> This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree,<br> Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be<br> The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew -<br> Disease, death, bondage, all the woes we see -<br> And worse, the woes we see not - which throb through<br>The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXVII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Yet let us ponder boldly - ’tis a base<br> Abandonment of reason to resign<br> Our right of thought - our last and only place<br> Of refuge; this, at least, shall still be mine:<br> Though from our birth the faculty divine<br> Is chained and tortured - cabined, cribbed, confined,<br> And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine<br> Too brightly on the unpreparèd mind,<br>The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the blind.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXVIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Arches on arches! as it were that Rome,<br> Collecting the chief trophies of her line,<br> Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,<br> Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine<br> As ’twere its natural torches, for divine<br> Should be the light which streams here, to illume<br> This long explored but still exhaustless mine<br> Of contemplation; and the azure gloom<br>Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXIX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven,<br> Floats o’er this vast and wondrous monument,<br> And shadows forth its glory. There is given<br> Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent,<br> A spirit’s feeling, and where he hath leant<br> His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power<br> And magic in the ruined battlement,<br> For which the palace of the present hour<br>Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> O Time! the beautifier of the dead,<br> Adorner of the ruin, comforter<br> And only healer when the heart hath bled -<br> Time! the corrector where our judgments err,<br> The test of truth, love, - sole philosopher,<br> For all beside are sophists, from thy thrift,<br> Which never loses though it doth defer -<br> Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift<br>My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift:</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXXI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine<br> And temple more divinely desolate,<br> Among thy mightier offerings here are mine,<br> Ruins of years - though few, yet full of fate:<br> If thou hast ever seen me too elate,<br> Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne<br> Good, and reserved my pride against the hate<br> Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn<br>This iron in my soul in vain - shall they not mourn?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXXII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And thou, who never yet of human wrong<br> Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis!<br> Here, where the ancients paid thee homage long -<br> Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss,<br> And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss<br> For that unnatural retribution - just,<br> Had it but been from hands less near - in this<br> Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust!<br>Dost thou not hear my heart? - Awake! thou shalt, and must.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXXIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> It is not that I may not have incurred<br> For my ancestral faults or mine the wound<br> I bleed withal, and had it been conferred<br> With a just weapon, it had flowed unbound.<br> But now my blood shall not sink in the ground;<br> To thee I do devote it - thou shalt take<br> The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found,<br> Which if I have not taken for the sake -<br>But let that pass - I sleep, but thou shalt yet awake.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXXIV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And if my voice break forth, ’tis not that now<br> I shrink from what is suffered: let him speak<br> Who hath beheld decline upon my brow,<br> Or seen my mind’s convulsion leave it weak;<br> But in this page a record will I seek.<br> Not in the air shall these my words disperse,<br> Though I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak<br> The deep prophetic fulness of this verse,<br>And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXXV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> That curse shall be forgiveness. - Have I not -<br> Hear me, my mother Earth! behold it, Heaven! -<br> Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?<br> Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?<br> Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,<br> Hopes sapped, name blighted, Life’s life lied away?<br> And only not to desperation driven,<br> Because not altogether of such clay<br>As rots into the souls of those whom I survey.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXXVI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy<br> Have I not seen what human things could do?<br> From the loud roar of foaming calumny<br> To the small whisper of the as paltry few<br> And subtler venom of the reptile crew,<br> The Janus glance of whose significant eye,<br> Learning to lie with silence, would seem true,<br> And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh,<br>Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXXVII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:<br> My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,<br> And my frame perish even in conquering pain,<br> But there is that within me which shall tire<br> Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire:<br> Something unearthly, which they deem not of,<br> Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre,<br> Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move<br>In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of love.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXXVIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The seal is set. - Now welcome, thou dread Power<br> Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here<br> Walk’st in the shadow of the midnight hour<br> With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear:<br> Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear<br> Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene<br> Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear<br> That we become a part of what has been,<br>And grow unto the spot, all-seeing but unseen.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXXIX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And here the buzz of eager nations ran,<br> In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause,<br> As man was slaughtered by his fellow-man.<br> And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because<br> Such were the bloody circus’ genial laws,<br> And the imperial pleasure. - Wherefore not?<br> What matters where we fall to fill the maws<br> Of worms - on battle-plains or listed spot?<br>Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXL.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> I see before me the Gladiator lie:<br> He leans upon his hand - his manly brow<br> Consents to death, but conquers agony,<br> And his drooped head sinks gradually low -<br> And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow<br> From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,<br> Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now<br> The arena swims around him: he is gone,<br>Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXLI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> He heard it, but he heeded not - his eyes<br> Were with his heart, and that was far away;<br> He recked not of the life he lost nor prize,<br> But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,<br> There were his young barbarians all at play,<br> There was their Dacian mother - he, their sire,<br> Butchered to make a Roman holiday -<br> All this rushed with his blood - Shall he expire,<br>And unavenged? - Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXLII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But here, where murder breathed her bloody steam;<br> And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways,<br> And roared or murmured like a mountain-stream<br> Dashing or winding as its torrent strays;<br> Here, where the Roman million’s blame or praise<br> Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd,<br> My voice sounds much - and fall the stars’ faint rays<br> On the arena void - seats crushed, walls bowed,<br>And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXLIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> A ruin - yet what ruin! from its mass<br> Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared;<br> Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,<br> And marvel where the spoil could have appeared.<br> Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared?<br> Alas! developed, opens the decay,<br> When the colossal fabric’s form is neared:<br> It will not bear the brightness of the day,<br>Which streams too much on all, years, man, have reft away.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXLIV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But when the rising moon begins to climb<br> Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;<br> When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,<br> And the low night-breeze waves along the air,<br> The garland-forest, which the grey walls wear,<br> Like laurels on the bald first Cæsar’s head;<br> When the light shines serene, but doth not glare,<br> Then in this magic circle raise the dead:<br>Heroes have trod this spot - ’tis on their dust ye tread.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXLV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> ‘While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;<br> When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;<br> And when Rome falls - the World.’ From our own land<br> Thus spake the pilgrims o’er this mighty wall<br> In Saxon times, which we are wont to call<br> Ancient; and these three mortal things are still<br> On their foundations, and unaltered all;<br> Rome and her Ruin past Redemption’s skill,<br>The World, the same wide den - of thieves, or what ye will.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXLVI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime -<br> Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods,<br> From Jove to Jesus - spared and blest by time;<br> Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods<br> Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods<br> His way through thorns to ashes - glorious dome!<br> Shalt thou not last? - Time’s scythe and tyrants’ rods<br> Shiver upon thee - sanctuary and home<br>Of art and piety - Pantheon! - pride of Rome!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXLVII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts!<br> Despoiled yet perfect, with thy circle spreads<br> A holiness appealing to all hearts -<br> To art a model; and to him who treads<br> Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds<br> Her light through thy sole aperture; to those<br> Who worship, here are altars for their beads;<br> And they who feel for genius may repose<br>Their eyes on honoured forms, whose busts around them close.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXLVIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light<br> What do I gaze on? Nothing: Look again!<br> Two forms are slowly shadowed on my sight -<br> Two insulated phantoms of the brain:<br> It is not so: I see them full and plain -<br> An old man, and a female young and fair,<br> Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein<br> The blood is nectar: - but what doth she there,<br>With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXLIX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life,<br> Where on the heart and from the heart we took<br> Our first and sweetest nurture, when the wife,<br> Blest into mother, in the innocent look,<br> Or even the piping cry of lips that brook<br> No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives<br> Man knows not, when from out its cradled nook<br> She sees her little bud put forth its leaves -<br>What may the fruit be yet? - I know not - Cain was Eve’s.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CL.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But here youth offers to old age the food,<br> The milk of his own gift: - it is her sire<br> To whom she renders back the debt of blood<br> Born with her birth. No; he shall not expire<br> While in those warm and lovely veins the fire<br> Of health and holy feeling can provide<br> Great Nature’s Nile, whose deep stream rises higher<br> Than Egypt’s river: - from that gentle side<br>Drink, drink and live, old man! heaven’s realm holds no such tide.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The starry fable of the milky way<br> Has not thy story’s purity; it is<br> A constellation of a sweeter ray,<br> And sacred Nature triumphs more in this<br> Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss<br> Where sparkle distant worlds: - Oh, holiest nurse!<br> No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss<br> To thy sire’s heart, replenishing its source<br>With life, as our freed souls rejoin the universe.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Turn to the mole which Hadrian reared on high,<br> Imperial mimic of old Egypt’s piles,<br> Colossal copyist of deformity,<br> Whose travelled phantasy from the far Nile’s<br> Enormous model, doomed the artist’s toils<br> To build for giants, and for his vain earth,<br> His shrunken ashes, raise this dome: How smiles<br> The gazer’s eye with philosophic mirth,<br>To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But lo! the dome - the vast and wondrous dome,<br> To which Diana’s marvel was a cell -<br> Christ’s mighty shrine above his martyr’s tomb!<br> I have beheld the Ephesian’s miracle -<br> Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell<br> The hyæna and the jackal in their shade;<br> I have beheld Sophia’s bright roofs swell<br> Their glittering mass i’ the sun, and have surveyed<br>Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem prayed;</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLIV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But thou, of temples old, or altars new,<br> Standest alone - with nothing like to thee -<br> Worthiest of God, the holy and the true,<br> Since Zion’s desolation, when that he<br> Forsook his former city, what could be,<br> Of earthly structures, in his honour piled,<br> Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty,<br> Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled<br>In this eternal ark of worship undefiled.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not;<br> And why? it is not lessened; but thy mind,<br> Expanded by the genius of the spot,<br> Has grown colossal, and can only find<br> A fit abode wherein appear enshrined<br> Thy hopes of immortality; and thou<br> Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined,<br> See thy God face to face, as thou dost now<br>His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by his brow.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLVI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Thou movest - but increasing with th’ advance,<br> Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise,<br> Deceived by its gigantic elegance;<br> Vastness which grows - but grows to harmonise -<br> All musical in its immensities;<br> Rich marbles - richer painting - shrines where flame<br> The lamps of gold - and haughty dome which vies<br> In air with Earth’s chief structures, though their frame<br>Sits on the firm-set ground - and this the clouds must claim.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLVII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break<br> To separate contemplation, the great whole;<br> And as the ocean many bays will make,<br> That ask the eye - so here condense thy soul<br> To more immediate objects, and control<br> Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart<br> Its eloquent proportions, and unroll<br> In mighty graduations, part by part,<br>The glory which at once upon thee did not dart.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLVIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Not by its fault - but thine: Our outward sense<br> Is but of gradual grasp - and as it is<br> That what we have of feeling most intense<br> Outstrips our faint expression; e’en so this<br> Outshining and o’erwhelming edifice<br> Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great<br> Defies at first our nature’s littleness,<br> Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate<br>Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLIX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Then pause and be enlightened; there is more<br> In such a survey than the sating gaze<br> Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore<br> The worship of the place, or the mere praise<br> Of art and its great masters, who could raise<br> What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan;<br> The fountain of sublimity displays<br> Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man<br>Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Or, turning to the Vatican, go see<br> Laocoön’s torture dignifying pain -<br> A father’s love and mortal’s agony<br> With an immortal’s patience blending: - Vain<br> The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain<br> And gripe, and deepening of the dragon’s grasp,<br> The old man’s clench; the long envenomed chain<br> Rivets the living links, - the enormous asp<br>Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Or view the Lord of the unerring bow,<br> The God of life, and poesy, and light -<br> The Sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow<br> All radiant from his triumph in the fight;<br> The shaft hath just been shot - the arrow bright<br> With an immortal’s vengeance; in his eye<br> And nostril beautiful disdain, and might<br> And majesty, flash their full lightnings by,<br>Developing in that one glance the Deity.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But in his delicate form - a dream of Love,<br> Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast<br> Longed for a deathless lover from above,<br> And maddened in that vision - are expressed<br> All that ideal beauty ever blessed<br> The mind within its most unearthly mood,<br> When each conception was a heavenly guest -<br> A ray of immortality - and stood<br>Starlike, around, until they gathered to a god?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And if it be Prometheus stole from heaven<br> The fire which we endure, it was repaid<br> By him to whom the energy was given<br> Which this poetic marble hath arrayed<br> With an eternal glory - which, if made<br> By human hands, is not of human thought<br> And Time himself hath hallowed it, nor laid<br> One ringlet in the dust - nor hath it caught<br>A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which ’twas wrought.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXIV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But where is he, the pilgrim of my song,<br> The being who upheld it through the past?<br> Methinks he cometh late and tarries long.<br> He is no more - these breathings are his last;<br> His wanderings done, his visions ebbing fast,<br> And he himself as nothing: - if he was<br> Aught but a phantasy, and could be classed<br> With forms which live and suffer - let that pass -<br>His shadow fades away into Destruction’s mass,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Which gathers shadow, substance, life, and all<br> That we inherit in its mortal shroud,<br> And spreads the dim and universal pall<br> Thro’ which all things grow phantoms; and the cloud<br> Between us sinks and all which ever glowed,<br> Till Glory’s self is twilight, and displays<br> A melancholy halo scarce allowed<br> To hover on the verge of darkness; rays<br>Sadder than saddest night, for they distract the gaze,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXVI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And send us prying into the abyss,<br> To gather what we shall be when the frame<br> Shall be resolved to something less than this<br> Its wretched essence; and to dream of fame,<br> And wipe the dust from off the idle name<br> We never more shall hear, - but never more,<br> Oh, happier thought! can we be made the same:<br> It is enough, in sooth, that once we bore<br>These fardels of the heart - the heart whose sweat was gore.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXVII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds,<br> A long, low distant murmur of dread sound,<br> Such as arises when a nation bleeds<br> With some deep and immedicable wound;<br> Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground.<br> The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief<br> Seems royal still, though with her head discrowned,<br> And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief<br>She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXVIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou?<br> Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead?<br> Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low<br> Some less majestic, less beloved head?<br> In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled,<br> The mother of a moment, o’er thy boy,<br> Death hushed that pang for ever: with thee fled<br> The present happiness and promised joy<br>Which filled the imperial isles so full it seemed to cloy.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXIX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Peasants bring forth in safety. - Can it be,<br> O thou that wert so happy, so adored!<br> Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee,<br> And Freedom’s heart, grown heavy, cease to hoard<br> Her many griefs for One; for she had poured<br> Her orisons for thee, and o’er thy head<br> Beheld her Iris. - Thou, too, lonely lord,<br> And desolate consort - vainly wert thou wed!<br>The husband of a year! the father of the dead!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made:<br> Thy bridal’s fruit is ashes; in the dust<br> The fair-haired Daughter of the Isles is laid,<br> The love of millions! How we did entrust<br> Futurity to her! and, though it must<br> Darken above our bones, yet fondly deemed<br> Our children should obey her child, and blessed<br> Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seemed<br>Like star to shepherd’s eyes; ’twas but a meteor beamed.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Woe unto us, not her; for she sleeps well:<br> The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue<br> Of hollow counsel, the false oracle,<br> Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung<br> Its knell in princely ears, till the o’erstrung<br> Nations have armed in madness, the strange fate<br> Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung<br> Against their blind omnipotence a weight<br>Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late, -</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> These might have been her destiny; but no,<br> Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair,<br> Good without effort, great without a foe;<br> But now a bride and mother - and now there!<br> How many ties did that stern moment tear!<br> From thy Sire’s to his humblest subject’s breast<br> Is linked the electric chain of that despair,<br> Whose shock was as an earthquake’s, and oppressed<br>The land which loved thee so, that none could love thee best.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Lo, Nemi! navelled in the woody hills<br> So far, that the uprooting wind which tears<br> The oak from his foundation, and which spills<br> The ocean o’er its boundary, and bears<br> Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares<br> The oval mirror of thy glassy lake;<br> And, calm as cherished hate, its surface wears<br> A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake,<br>All coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXIV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And near Albano’s scarce divided waves<br> Shine from a sister valley; - and afar<br> The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves<br> The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war,<br> ‘Arms and the Man,’ whose reascending star<br> Rose o’er an empire, - but beneath thy right<br> Tully reposed from Rome; - and where yon bar<br> Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight,<br>The Sabine farm was tilled, the weary bard’s delight.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But I forget. - My pilgrim’s shrine is won,<br> And he and I must part, - so let it be, -<br> His task and mine alike are nearly done;<br> Yet once more let us look upon the sea:<br> The midland ocean breaks on him and me,<br> And from the Alban mount we now behold<br> Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we<br> Beheld it last by Calpe’s rock unfold<br>Those waves, we followed on till the dark Euxine rolled</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXVI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Upon the blue Symplegades: long years -<br> Long, though not very many - since have done<br> Their work on both; some suffering and some tears<br> Have left us nearly where we had begun:<br> Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run,<br> We have had our reward - and it is here;<br> That we can yet feel gladdened by the sun,<br> And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear<br>As if there were no man to trouble what is clear.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXVII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,<br> With one fair Spirit for my minister,<br> That I might all forget the human race,<br> And, hating no one, love but only her!<br> Ye Elements! - in whose ennobling stir<br> I feel myself exalted - can ye not<br> Accord me such a being? Do I err<br> In deeming such inhabit many a spot?<br>Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXVIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,<br> There is a rapture on the lonely shore,<br> There is society where none intrudes,<br> By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:<br> I love not Man the less, but Nature more,<br> From these our interviews, in which I steal<br> From all I may be, or have been before,<br> To mingle with the Universe, and feel<br>What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXIX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean - roll!<br> Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;<br> Man marks the earth with ruin - his control<br> Stops with the shore; - upon the watery plain<br> The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain<br> A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,<br> When for a moment, like a drop of rain,<br> He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,<br>Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXX.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> His steps are not upon thy paths, - thy fields<br> Are not a spoil for him, - thou dost arise<br> And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields<br> For earth’s destruction thou dost all despise,<br> Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,<br> And send’st him, shivering in thy playful spray<br> And howling, to his gods, where haply lies<br> His petty hope in some near port or bay,<br>And dashest him again to earth: - there let him lay.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXXI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The armaments which thunderstrike the walls<br> Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,<br> And monarchs tremble in their capitals.<br> The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make<br> Their clay creator the vain title take<br> Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;<br> These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,<br> They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar<br>Alike the Armada’s pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXXII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee -<br> Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?<br> Thy waters washed them power while they were free<br> And many a tyrant since: their shores obey<br> The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay<br> Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou,<br> Unchangeable save to thy wild waves’ play -<br> Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow -<br>Such as creation’s dawn beheld, thou rollest now.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXXIII.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty’s form<br> Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,<br> Calm or convulsed - in breeze, or gale, or storm,<br> Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime<br> Dark-heaving; - boundless, endless, and sublime -<br> The image of Eternity - the throne<br> Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime<br> The monsters of the deep are made; each zone<br>Obeys thee: thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXXIV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy<br> Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be<br> Borne like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy<br> I wantoned with thy breakers - they to me<br> Were a delight; and if the freshening sea<br> Made them a terror - ’twas a pleasing fear,<br> For I was as it were a child of thee,<br> And trusted to thy billows far and near,<br>And laid my hand upon thy mane - as I do here.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXXV.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> My task is done - my song hath ceased - my theme<br> Has died into an echo; it is fit<br> The spell should break of this protracted dream.<br> The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit<br> My midnight lamp - and what is writ, is writ -<br> Would it were worthier! but I am not now<br> That which I have been - and my visions flit<br> Less palpably before me - and the glow<br>Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXXVI.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116817" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been -<br> A sound which makes us linger; yet, farewell!<br> Ye, who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene<br> Which is his last, if in your memories dwell<br> A thought which once was his, if on ye swell<br> A single recollection, not in vain<br> He wore his sandal-shoon and scallop shell;<br> Farewell! with him alone may rest the pain,<br>If such there were - with you, the moral of his strain.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br/></a><a href="https://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="https://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Byron">Byron</a></strong> from <em><a href="https://sources.citatepedia.com/from.php?a=Byron&d=Childe+Harold%27s+Pilgrimage">Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</a></em></div>

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