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Childe Harold's Pilgrimage - Canto The Fourth.

by George Gordon Byron

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;

A palace and a prison on each hand:

I saw from out the wave her structures rise

As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:

A thousand years their cloudy wings expand

Around me, and a dying glory smiles

O'er the far times when many a subject land

Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles,

Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!

II.

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,

Rising with her tiara of proud towers

At airy distance, with majestic motion,

A ruler of the waters and their powers:

And such she was; her daughters had their dowers

From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East

Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.

In purple was she robed, and of her feast

Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.

III.

In Venice, Tasso's echoes are no more,

And silent rows the songless gondolier;

Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,

And music meets not always now the ear:

Those days are gone - but beauty still is here.

States fall, arts fade - but Nature doth not die,

Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,

The pleasant place of all festivity,

The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!

IV.

But unto us she hath a spell beyond

Her name in story, and her long array

Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond

Above the dogeless city's vanished sway;

Ours is a trophy which will not decay

With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,

And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away -

The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er,

For us repeopled were the solitary shore.

The beings of the mind are not of clay;

Essentially immortal, they create

And multiply in us a brighter ray

And more beloved existence: that which Fate

Prohibits to dull life, in this our state

Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied,

First exiles, then replaces what we hate;

Watering the heart whose early flowers have died,

And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.

VI.

Such is the refuge of our youth and age,

The first from Hope, the last from Vacancy;

And this worn feeling peoples many a page,

And, may be, that which grows beneath mine eye:

Yet there are things whose strong reality

Outshines our fairy-land; in shape and hues

More beautiful than our fantastic sky,

And the strange constellations which the Muse

O'er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse:

VII.

I saw or dreamed of such, - but let them go -

They came like truth, and disappeared like dreams;

And whatsoe'er they were - are now but so;

I could replace them if I would: still teems

My mind with many a form which aptly seems

Such as I sought for, and at moments found;

Let these too go - for waking reason deems

Such overweening phantasies unsound,

And other voices speak, and other sights surround.

VIII.

I've taught me other tongues, and in strange eyes

Have made me not a stranger; to the mind

Which is itself, no changes bring surprise;

Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find

A country with - ay, or without mankind;

Yet was I born where men are proud to be,

Not without cause; and should I leave behind

The inviolate island of the sage and free,

And seek me out a home by a remoter sea,

IX.

Perhaps I loved it well: and should I lay

My ashes in a soil which is not mine,

My spirit shall resume it - if we may

Unbodied choose a sanctuary. I twine

My hopes of being remembered in my line

With my land's language: if too fond and far

These aspirations in their scope incline, -

If my fame should be, as my fortunes are,

Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar.

My name from out the temple where the dead

Are honoured by the nations - let it be -

And light the laurels on a loftier head!

And be the Spartan's epitaph on me -

'Sparta hath many a worthier son than he.'

Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need;

The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree

I planted, - they have torn me, and I bleed:

I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.

XI.

The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord;

And, annual marriage now no more renewed,

The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored,

Neglected garment of her widowhood!

St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood

Stand, but in mockery of his withered power,

Over the proud place where an Emperor sued,

And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour

When Venice was a queen with an unequalled dower.

XII.

The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns -

An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt;

Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains

Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt

From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt

The sunshine for a while, and downward go

Like lauwine loosened from the mountain's belt:

Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo!

The octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe.

XIII.

Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass,

Their gilded collars glittering in the sun;

But is not Doria's menace come to pass?

Are they not BRIDLED? - Venice, lost and won,

Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,

Sinks, like a seaweed, into whence she rose!

Better be whelmed beneath the waves, and shun,

Even in Destruction's depth, her foreign foes,

From whom submission wrings an infamous repose.

XIV.

In youth she was all glory, - a new Tyre, -

Her very byword sprung from victory,

The 'Planter of the Lion,' which through fire

And blood she bore o'er subject earth and sea;

Though making many slaves, herself still free

And Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite:

Witness Troy's rival, Candia! Vouch it, ye

Immortal waves that saw Lepanto's fight!

For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight.

XV.

Statues of glass - all shivered - the long file

Of her dead doges are declined to dust;

But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile

Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust;

Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust,

Have yielded to the stranger: empty halls,

Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must

Too oft remind her who and what enthrals,

Have flung a desolate cloud o'er Venice' lovely walls.

XVI.

When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse,

And fettered thousands bore the yoke of war,

Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse,

Her voice their only ransom from afar:

See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car

Of the o'ermastered victor stops, the reins

Fall from his hands - his idle scimitar

Starts from its belt - he rends his captive's chains,

And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains.

XVII.

Thus, Venice, if no stronger claim were thine,

Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot,

Thy choral memory of the bard divine,

Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot

Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot

Is shameful to the nations, - most of all,

Albion! to thee: the Ocean Queen should not

Abandon Ocean's children; in the fall

Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall.

XVIII.

I loved her from my boyhood: she to me

Was as a fairy city of the heart,

Rising like water-columns from the sea,

Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart

And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakspeare's art,

Had stamped her image in me, and e'en so,

Although I found her thus, we did not part,

Perchance e'en dearer in her day of woe,

Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show.

XIX.

I can repeople with the past - and of

The present there is still for eye and thought,

And meditation chastened down, enough;

And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought;

And of the happiest moments which were wrought

Within the web of my existence, some

From thee, fair Venice! have their colours caught:

There are some feelings Time cannot benumb,

Nor torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb.

XX.

But from their nature will the tannen grow

Loftiest on loftiest and least sheltered rocks,

Rooted in barrenness, where nought below

Of soil supports them 'gainst the Alpine shocks

Of eddying storms; yet springs the trunk, and mocks

The howling tempest, till its height and frame

Are worthy of the mountains from whose blocks

Of bleak, grey granite, into life it came,

And grew a giant tree; - the mind may grow the same.

XXI.

Existence may be borne, and the deep root

Of life and sufferance make its firm abode

In bare and desolate bosoms: mute

The camel labours with the heaviest load,

And the wolf dies in silence. Not bestowed

In vain should such examples be; if they,

Things of ignoble or of savage mood,

Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay

May temper it to bear, - it is but for a day.

XXII.

All suffering doth destroy, or is destroyed,

Even by the sufferer; and, in each event,

Ends: - Some, with hope replenished and rebuoyed,

Return to whence they came - with like intent,

And weave their web again; some, bowed and bent,

Wax grey and ghastly, withering ere their time,

And perish with the reed on which they leant;

Some seek devotion, toil, war, good or crime,

According as their souls were formed to sink or climb.

XXIII.

But ever and anon of griefs subdued

There comes a token like a scorpion's sting,

Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued;

And slight withal may be the things which bring

Back on the heart the weight which it would fling

Aside for ever: it may be a sound -

A tone of music - summer's eve - or spring -

A flower - the wind - the ocean - which shall wound,

Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound.

XXIV.

And how and why we know not, nor can trace

Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind,

But feel the shock renewed, nor can efface

The blight and blackening which it leaves behind,

Which out of things familiar, undesigned,

When least we deem of such, calls up to view

The spectres whom no exorcism can bind, -

The cold - the changed - perchance the dead - anew,

The mourned, the loved, the lost - too many! - yet how few!

XXV.

But my soul wanders; I demand it back

To meditate amongst decay, and stand

A ruin amidst ruins; there to track

Fall'n states and buried greatness, o'er a land

Which WAS the mightiest in its old command,

And IS the loveliest, and must ever be

The master-mould of Nature's heavenly hand,

Wherein were cast the heroic and the free,

The beautiful, the brave - the lords of earth and sea.

XXVI.

The commonwealth of kings, the men of Rome!

And even since, and now, fair Italy!

Thou art the garden of the world, the home

Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree;

Even in thy desert, what is like to thee?

Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste

More rich than other climes' fertility;

Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced

With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced.

XXVII.

The moon is up, and yet it is not night -

Sunset divides the sky with her - a sea

Of glory streams along the Alpine height

Of blue Friuli's mountains; Heaven is free

From clouds, but of all colours seems to be -

Melted to one vast Iris of the West,

Where the day joins the past eternity;

While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest

Floats through the azure air - an island of the blest!

XXVIII.

A single star is at her side, and reigns

With her o'er half the lovely heaven; but still

Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains

Rolled o'er the peak of the far Rhaetian hill,

As Day and Night contending were, until

Nature reclaimed her order: - gently flows

The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instil

The odorous purple of a new-born rose,

Which streams upon her stream, and glassed within it glows,

XXIX.

Filled with the face of heaven, which, from afar,

Comes down upon the waters; all its hues,

From the rich sunset to the rising star,

Their magical variety diffuse:

And now they change; a paler shadow strews

Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day

Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues

With a new colour as it gasps away,

The last still loveliest, till - 'tis gone - and all is grey.

XXX.

There is a tomb in Arqua; - reared in air,

Pillared in their sarcophagus, repose

The bones of Laura's lover: here repair

Many familiar with his well-sung woes,

The pilgrims of his genius. He arose

To raise a language, and his land reclaim

From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes:

Watering the tree which bears his lady's name

With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame.

XXXI.

They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died;

The mountain-village where his latter days

Went down the vale of years; and 'tis their pride -

An honest pride - and let it be their praise,

To offer to the passing stranger's gaze

His mansion and his sepulchre; both plain

And venerably simple, such as raise

A feeling more accordant with his strain,

Than if a pyramid formed his monumental fane.

XXXII.

And the soft quiet hamlet where he dwelt

Is one of that complexion which seems made

For those who their mortality have felt,

And sought a refuge from their hopes decayed

In the deep umbrage of a green hill's shade,

Which shows a distant prospect far away

Of busy cities, now in vain displayed,

For they can lure no further; and the ray

Of a bright sun can make sufficient holiday.

XXXIII.

Developing the mountains, leaves, and flowers

And shining in the brawling brook, where-by,

Clear as its current, glide the sauntering hours

With a calm languor, which, though to the eye

Idlesse it seem, hath its morality,

If from society we learn to live,

'Tis solitude should teach us how to die;

It hath no flatterers; vanity can give

No hollow aid; alone - man with his God must strive:

XXXIV.

Or, it may be, with demons, who impair

The strength of better thoughts, and seek their prey

In melancholy bosoms, such as were

Of moody texture from their earliest day,

And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay,

Deeming themselves predestined to a doom

Which is not of the pangs that pass away;

Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb,

The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom.

XXXV.

Ferrara! in thy wide and grass-grown streets,

Whose symmetry was not for solitude,

There seems as 'twere a curse upon the seat's

Of former sovereigns, and the antique brood

Of Este, which for many an age made good

Its strength within thy walls, and was of yore

Patron or tyrant, as the changing mood

Of petty power impelled, of those who wore

The wreath which Dante's brow alone had worn before.

XXXVI.

And Tasso is their glory and their shame.

Hark to his strain! and then survey his cell!

And see how dearly earned Torquato's fame,

And where Alfonso bade his poet dwell.

The miserable despot could not quell

The insulted mind he sought to quench, and blend

With the surrounding maniacs, in the hell

Where he had plunged it. Glory without end

Scattered the clouds away - and on that name attend

XXXVII.

The tears and praises of all time, while thine

Would rot in its oblivion - in the sink

Of worthless dust, which from thy boasted line

Is shaken into nothing; but the link

Thou formest in his fortunes bids us think

Of thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn -

Alfonso! how thy ducal pageants shrink

From thee! if in another station born,

Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou mad'st to mourn:

XXXVIII.

THOU! formed to eat, and be despised, and die,

Even as the beasts that perish, save that thou

Hadst a more splendid trough, and wider sty:

HE! with a glory round his furrowed brow,

Which emanated then, and dazzles now

In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire,

And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow

No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre,

That whetstone of the teeth - monotony in wire!

XXXIX.

Peace to Torquato's injured shade! 'twas his

In life and death to be the mark where Wrong

Aimed with their poisoned arrows - but to miss.

Oh, victor unsurpassed in modern song!

Each year brings forth its millions; but how long

The tide of generations shall roll on,

And not the whole combined and countless throng

Compose a mind like thine? Though all in one

Condensed their scattered rays, they would not form a sun.

XL.

Great as thou art, yet paralleled by those

Thy countrymen, before thee born to shine,

The bards of Hell and Chivalry: first rose

The Tuscan father's comedy divine;

Then, not unequal to the Florentine,

The Southern Scott, the minstrel who called forth

A new creation with his magic line,

And, like the Ariosto of the North,

Sang ladye-love and war, romance and knightly worth.

XLI.

The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust

The iron crown of laurel's mimicked leaves;

Nor was the ominous element unjust,

For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves

Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves,

And the false semblance but disgraced his brow;

Yet still, if fondly Superstition grieves,

Know that the lightning sanctifies below

Whate'er it strikes; - yon head is doubly sacred now.

XLII.

Italia! O Italia! thou who hast

The fatal gift of beauty, which became

A funeral dower of present woes and past,

On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame,

And annals graved in characters of flame.

Oh God! that thou wert in thy nakedness

Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim

Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press

To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress;

XLIII.

Then mightst thou more appal; or, less desired,

Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored

For thy destructive charms; then, still untired,

Would not be seen the armed torrents poured

Down the deep Alps; nor would the hostile horde

Of many-nationed spoilers from the Po

Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger's sword

Be thy sad weapon of defence, and so,

Victor or vanquished, thou the slave of friend or foe.

XLIV.

Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him,

The Roman friend of Rome's least mortal mind,

The friend of Tully: as my bark did skim

The bright blue waters with a fanning wind,

Came Megara before me, and behind

AEgina lay, Piraeus on the right,

And Corinth on the left; I lay reclined

Along the prow, and saw all these unite

In ruin, even as he had seen the desolate sight;

XLV.

For time hath not rebuilt them, but upreared

Barbaric dwellings on their shattered site,

Which only make more mourned and more endeared

The few last rays of their far-scattered light,

And the crushed relics of their vanished might.

The Roman saw these tombs in his own age,

These sepulchres of cities, which excite

Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page

The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage.

XLVI.

That page is now before me, and on mine

HIS country's ruin added to the mass

Of perished states he mourned in their decline,

And I in desolation: all that WAS

Of then destruction IS; and now, alas!

Rome - Rome imperial, bows her to the storm,

In the same dust and blackness, and we pass

The skeleton of her Titanic form,

Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm.

XLVII.

Yet, Italy! through every other land

Thy wrongs should ring, and shall, from side to side;

Mother of Arts! as once of Arms; thy hand

Was then our Guardian, and is still our guide;

Parent of our religion! whom the wide

Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven!

Europe, repentant of her parricide,

Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven,

Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven.

XLVIII.

But Arno wins us to the fair white walls,

Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps

A softer feeling for her fairy halls.

Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps

Her corn, and wine, and oil, and Plenty leaps

To laughing life, with her redundant horn.

Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps,

Was modern Luxury of Commerce born,

And buried Learning rose, redeemed to a new morn.

XLIX.

There, too, the goddess loves in stone, and fills

The air around with beauty; we inhale

The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils

Part of its immortality; the veil

Of heaven is half undrawn; within the pale

We stand, and in that form and face behold

What Mind can make, when Nature's self would fail;

And to the fond idolaters of old

Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould:

We gaze and turn away, and know not where,

Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart

Reels with its fulness; there - for ever there -

Chained to the chariot of triumphal Art,

We stand as captives, and would not depart.

Away! - there need no words, nor terms precise,

The paltry jargon of the marble mart,

Where Pedantry gulls Folly - we have eyes:

Blood, pulse, and breast, confirm the Dardan Shepherd's prize.

LI.

Appearedst thou not to Paris in this guise?

Or to more deeply blest Anchises? or,

In all thy perfect goddess-ship, when lies

Before thee thy own vanquished Lord of War?

And gazing in thy face as toward a star,

Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn,

Feeding on thy sweet cheek! while thy lips are

With lava kisses melting while they burn,

Showered on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn!

LII.

Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love,

Their full divinity inadequate

That feeling to express, or to improve,

The gods become as mortals, and man's fate

Has moments like their brightest! but the weight

Of earth recoils upon us; - let it go!

We can recall such visions, and create

From what has been, or might be, things which grow,

Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below.

LIII.

I leave to learned fingers, and wise hands,

The artist and his ape, to teach and tell

How well his connoisseurship understands

The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell:

Let these describe the undescribable:

I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream

Wherein that image shall for ever dwell;

The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream

That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam.

LIV.

In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie

Ashes which make it holier, dust which is

E'en in itself an immortality,

Though there were nothing save the past, and this

The particle of those sublimities

Which have relapsed to chaos: - here repose

Angelo's, Alfieri's bones, and his,

The starry Galileo, with his woes;

Here Machiavelli's earth returned to whence it rose.

LV.

These are four minds, which, like the elements,

Might furnish forth creation: - Italy!

Time, which hath wronged thee with ten thousand rents

Of thine imperial garment, shall deny,

And hath denied, to every other sky,

Spirits which soar from ruin: - thy decay

Is still impregnate with divinity,

Which gilds it with revivifying ray;

Such as the great of yore, Canova is to-day.

LVI.

But where repose the all Etruscan three -

Dante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they,

The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he

Of the Hundred Tales of love - where did they lay

Their bones, distinguished from our common clay

In death as life? Are they resolved to dust,

And have their country's marbles nought to say?

Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust?

Did they not to her breast their filial earth entrust?

LVII.

Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,

Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore;

Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,

Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore

Their children's children would in vain adore

With the remorse of ages; and the crown

Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore,

Upon a far and foreign soil had grown,

His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled - not thine own.

LVIII.

Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed

His dust, - and lies it not her great among,

With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed

O'er him who formed the Tuscan's siren tongue?

That music in itself, whose sounds are song,

The poetry of speech? No; - even his tomb

Uptorn, must bear the hyaena bigots' wrong,

No more amidst the meaner dead find room,

Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for WHOM?

LIX.

And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust;

Yet for this want more noted, as of yore

The Caesar's pageant, shorn of Brutus' bust,

Did but of Rome's best son remind her more:

Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore,

Fortress of falling empire! honoured sleeps

The immortal exile; - Arqua, too, her store

Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps,

While Florence vainly begs her banished dead, and weeps.

LX.

What is her pyramid of precious stones?

Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues

Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones

Of merchant-dukes? the momentary dews

Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse

Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead,

Whose names are mausoleums of the Muse,

Are gently prest with far more reverent tread

Than ever paced the slab which paves the princely head.

LXI.

There be more things to greet the heart and eyes

In Arno's dome of Art's most princely shrine,

Where Sculpture with her rainbow sister vies;

There be more marvels yet - but not for mine;

For I have been accustomed to entwine

My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields

Than Art in galleries: though a work divine

Calls for my spirit's homage, yet it yields

Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields

LXII.

Is of another temper, and I roam

By Thrasimene's lake, in the defiles

Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home;

For there the Carthaginian's warlike wiles

Come back before me, as his skill beguiles

The host between the mountains and the shore,

Where Courage falls in her despairing files,

And torrents, swoll'n to rivers with their gore,

Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scattered o'er,

LXIII.

Like to a forest felled by mountain winds;

And such the storm of battle on this day,

And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds

To all save carnage, that, beneath the fray,

An earthquake reeled unheededly away!

None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet,

And yawning forth a grave for those who lay

Upon their bucklers for a winding-sheet;

Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet.

LXIV.

The Earth to them was as a rolling bark

Which bore them to Eternity; they saw

The Ocean round, but had no time to mark

The motions of their vessel: Nature's law,

In them suspended, recked not of the awe

Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds

Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdraw

From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds

Stumble o'er heaving plains, and man's dread hath no words.

LXV.

Far other scene is Thrasimene now;

Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain

Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough;

Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain

Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta'en -

A little rill of scanty stream and bed -

A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain;

And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead

Made the earth wet, and turned the unwilling waters red.

LXVI.

But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave

Of the most living crystal that was e'er

The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave

Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear

Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer

Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters!

And most serene of aspect, and most clear:

Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters,

A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters!

LXVII.

And on thy happy shore a temple still,

Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,

Upon a mild declivity of hill,

Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps

Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps

The finny darter with the glittering scales,

Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;

While, chance, some scattered water-lily sails

Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales.

LXVIII.

Pass not unblest the genius of the place!

If through the air a zephyr more serene

Win to the brow, 'tis his; and if ye trace

Along his margin a more eloquent green,

If on the heart the freshness of the scene

Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust

Of weary life a moment lave it clean

With Nature's baptism, - 'tis to him ye must

Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust.

LXIX.

The roar of waters! - from the headlong height

Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;

The fall of waters! rapid as the light

The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;

The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,

And boil in endless torture; while the sweat

Of their great agony, wrung out from this

Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet

That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,

LXX.

And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again

Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,

With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,

Is an eternal April to the ground,

Making it all one emerald. How profound

The gulf! and how the giant element

From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,

Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent

With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent

LXXI.

To the broad column which rolls on, and shows

More like the fountain of an infant sea

Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes

Of a new world, than only thus to be

Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,

With many windings through the vale: - Look back!

Lo! where it comes like an eternity,

As if to sweep down all things in its track,

Charming the eye with dread, - a matchless cataract,

LXXII.

Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,

From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,

An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,

Like Hope upon a deathbed, and, unworn

Its steady dyes, while all around is torn

By the distracted waters, bears serene

Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn:

Resembling, mid the torture of the scene,

Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.

LXXIII.

Once more upon the woody Apennine,

The infant Alps, which - had I not before

Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine

Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar

The thundering lauwine - might be worshipped more;

But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear

Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar

Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near,

And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear,

LXXIV.

The Acroceraunian mountains of old name;

And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly

Like spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame,

For still they soared unutterably high:

I've looked on Ida with a Trojan's eye;

Athos, Olympus, AEtna, Atlas, made

These hills seem things of lesser dignity,

All, save the lone Soracte's height displayed,

Not NOW in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid

LXXV.

For our remembrance, and from out the plain

Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,

And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain

May he who will his recollections rake,

And quote in classic raptures, and awake

The hills with Latian echoes; I abhorred

Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake,

The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word

In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record

LXXVI.

Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned

My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught

My mind to meditate what then it learned,

Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought

By the impatience of my early thought,

That, with the freshness wearing out before

My mind could relish what it might have sought,

If free to choose, I cannot now restore

Its health; but what it then detested, still abhor.

LXXVII.

Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so,

Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse

To understand, not feel, thy lyric flow,

To comprehend, but never love thy verse,

Although no deeper moralist rehearse

Our little life, nor bard prescribe his art,

Nor livelier satirist the conscience pierce,

Awakening without wounding the touched heart,

Yet fare thee well - upon Soracte's ridge we part.

LXXVIII.

O Rome! my country! city of the soul!

The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,

Lone mother of dead empires! and control

In their shut breasts their petty misery.

What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see

The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way

O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye!

Whose agonies are evils of a day -

A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.

LXXIX.

The Niobe of nations! there she stands,

Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;

An empty urn within her withered hands,

Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;

The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;

The very sepulchres lie tenantless

Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,

Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?

Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress!

LXXX.

The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire,

Have dwelt upon the seven-hilled city's pride:

She saw her glories star by star expire,

And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride,

Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide

Temple and tower went down, nor left a site; -

Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void,

O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,

And say, 'Here was, or is,' where all is doubly night?

LXXXI.

The double night of ages, and of her,

Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt, and wrap

All round us; we but feel our way to err:

The ocean hath its chart, the stars their map;

And knowledge spreads them on her ample lap;

But Rome is as the desert, where we steer

Stumbling o'er recollections: now we clap

Our hands, and cry, 'Eureka!' it is clear -

When but some false mirage of ruin rises near.

LXXXII.

Alas, the lofty city! and alas

The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day

When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass

The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away!

Alas for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay,

And Livy's pictured page! But these shall be

Her resurrection; all beside - decay.

Alas for Earth, for never shall we see

That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free!

LXXXIII.

O thou, whose chariot rolled on Fortune's wheel,

Triumphant Sylla! Thou, who didst subdue

Thy country's foes ere thou wouldst pause to feel

The wrath of thy own wrongs, or reap the due

Of hoarded vengeance till thine eagles flew

O'er prostrate Asia; - thou, who with thy frown

Annihilated senates - Roman, too,

With all thy vices, for thou didst lay down

With an atoning smile a more than earthly crown -

LXXXIV.

The dictatorial wreath, - couldst thou divine

To what would one day dwindle that which made

Thee more than mortal? and that so supine

By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid?

She who was named eternal, and arrayed

Her warriors but to conquer - she who veiled

Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed

Until the o'er-canopied horizon failed,

Her rushing wings - Oh! she who was almighty hailed!

LXXXV.

Sylla was first of victors; but our own,

The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell! - he

Too swept off senates while he hewed the throne

Down to a block - immortal rebel! See

What crimes it costs to be a moment free

And famous through all ages! But beneath

His fate the moral lurks of destiny;

His day of double victory and death

Beheld him win two realms, and, happier, yield his breath.

LXXXVI.

The third of the same moon whose former course

Had all but crowned him, on the self-same day

Deposed him gently from his throne of force,

And laid him with the earth's preceding clay.

And showed not Fortune thus how fame and sway,

And all we deem delightful, and consume

Our souls to compass through each arduous way,

Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb?

Were they but so in man's, how different were his doom!

LXXXVII.

And thou, dread statue! yet existent in

The austerest form of naked majesty,

Thou who beheldest, mid the assassins' din,

At thy bathed base the bloody Caesar lie,

Folding his robe in dying dignity,

An offering to thine altar from the queen

Of gods and men, great Nemesis! did he die,

And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been

Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene?

LXXXVIII.

And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome!

She-wolf! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart

The milk of conquest yet within the dome

Where, as a monument of antique art,

Thou standest: - Mother of the mighty heart,

Which the great founder sucked from thy wild teat,

Scorched by the Roman Jove's ethereal dart,

And thy limbs blacked with lightning - dost thou yet

Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget?

LXXXIX.

Thou dost; - but all thy foster-babes are dead -

The men of iron; and the world hath reared

Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled

In imitation of the things they feared,

And fought and conquered, and the same course steered,

At apish distance; but as yet none have,

Nor could, the same supremacy have neared,

Save one vain man, who is not in the grave,

But, vanquished by himself, to his own slaves a slave,

XC.

The fool of false dominion - and a kind

Of bastard Caesar, following him of old

With steps unequal; for the Roman's mind

Was modelled in a less terrestrial mould,

With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold,

And an immortal instinct which redeemed

The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold.

Alcides with the distaff now he seemed

At Cleopatra's feet, and now himself he beamed.

XCI.

And came, and saw, and conquered. But the man

Who would have tamed his eagles down to flee,

Like a trained falcon, in the Gallic van,

Which he, in sooth, long led to victory,

With a deaf heart which never seemed to be

A listener to itself, was strangely framed;

With but one weakest weakness - vanity:

Coquettish in ambition, still he aimed

At what? Can he avouch, or answer what he claimed?

XCII.

And would be all or nothing - nor could wait

For the sure grave to level him; few years

Had fixed him with the Caesars in his fate,

On whom we tread: For THIS the conqueror rears

The arch of triumph! and for this the tears

And blood of earth flow on as they have flowed,

An universal deluge, which appears

Without an ark for wretched man's abode,

And ebbs but to reflow! - Renew thy rainbow, God!

XCIII.

What from this barren being do we reap?

Our senses narrow, and our reason frail,

Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep,

And all things weighed in custom's falsest scale;

Opinion an omnipotence, whose veil

Mantles the earth with darkness, until right

And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale

Lest their own judgments should become too bright,

And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light.

XCIV.

And thus they plod in sluggish misery,

Rotting from sire to son, and age to age,

Proud of their trampled nature, and so die,

Bequeathing their hereditary rage

To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage

War for their chains, and rather than be free,

Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage

Within the same arena where they see

Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree.

XCV.

I speak not of men's creeds - they rest between

Man and his Maker - but of things allowed,

Averred, and known, - and daily, hourly seen -

The yoke that is upon us doubly bowed,

And the intent of tyranny avowed,

The edict of Earth's rulers, who are grown

The apes of him who humbled once the proud,

And shook them from their slumbers on the throne;

Too glorious, were this all his mighty arm had done.

XCVI.

Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be,

And Freedom find no champion and no child

Such as Columbia saw arise when she

Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefiled?

Or must such minds be nourished in the wild,

Deep in the unpruned forest, midst the roar

Of cataracts, where nursing nature smiled

On infant Washington? Has Earth no more

Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore?

XCVII.

But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime,

And fatal have her Saturnalia been

To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime;

Because the deadly days which we have seen,

And vile Ambition, that built up between

Man and his hopes an adamantine wall,

And the base pageant last upon the scene,

Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall

Which nips Life's tree, and dooms man's worst - his second fall.

XCVIII.

Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying,

Streams like the thunder-storm AGAINST the wind;

Thy trumpet-voice, though broken now and dying,

The loudest still the tempest leaves behind;

Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind,

Chopped by the axe, looks rough and little worth,

But the sap lasts, - and still the seed we find

Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North;

So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth.

XCIX.

There is a stern round tower of other days,

Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone,

Such as an army's baffled strength delays,

Standing with half its battlements alone,

And with two thousand years of ivy grown,

The garland of eternity, where wave

The green leaves over all by time o'erthrown:

What was this tower of strength? within its cave

What treasure lay so locked, so hid? - A woman's grave.

But who was she, the lady of the dead,

Tombed in a palace? Was she chaste and fair?

Worthy a king's - or more - a Roman's bed?

What race of chiefs and heroes did she bear?

What daughter of her beauties was the heir?

How lived - how loved - how died she? Was she not

So honoured - and conspicuously there,

Where meaner relics must not dare to rot,

Placed to commemorate a more than mortal lot?

CI.

Was she as those who love their lords, or they

Who love the lords of others? such have been

Even in the olden time, Rome's annals say.

Was she a matron of Cornelia's mien,

Or the light air of Egypt's graceful queen,

Profuse of joy; or 'gainst it did she war,

Inveterate in virtue? Did she lean

To the soft side of the heart, or wisely bar

Love from amongst her griefs? - for such the affections are.

CII.

Perchance she died in youth: it may be, bowed

With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb

That weighed upon her gentle dust, a cloud

Might gather o'er her beauty, and a gloom

In her dark eye, prophetic of the doom

Heaven gives its favourites - early death; yet shed

A sunset charm around her, and illume

With hectic light, the Hesperus of the dead,

Of her consuming cheek the autumnal leaf-like red.

CIII.

Perchance she died in age - surviving all,

Charms, kindred, children - with the silver grey

On her long tresses, which might yet recall,

It may be, still a something of the day

When they were braided, and her proud array

And lovely form were envied, praised, and eyed

By Rome - But whither would Conjecture stray?

Thus much alone we know - Metella died,

The wealthiest Roman's wife: Behold his love or pride!

CIV.

I know not why - but standing thus by thee

It seems as if I had thine inmate known,

Thou Tomb! and other days come back on me

With recollected music, though the tone

Is changed and solemn, like the cloudy groan

Of dying thunder on the distant wind;

Yet could I seat me by this ivied stone

Till I had bodied forth the heated mind,

Forms from the floating wreck which ruin leaves behind;

CV.

And from the planks, far shattered o'er the rocks,

Built me a little bark of hope, once more

To battle with the ocean and the shocks

Of the loud breakers, and the ceaseless roar

Which rushes on the solitary shore

Where all lies foundered that was ever dear:

But could I gather from the wave-worn store

Enough for my rude boat, where should I steer?

There woos no home, nor hope, nor life, save what is here.

CVI.

Then let the winds howl on! their harmony

Shall henceforth be my music, and the night

The sound shall temper with the owlet's cry,

As I now hear them, in the fading light

Dim o'er the bird of darkness' native site,

Answer each other on the Palatine,

With their large eyes, all glistening grey and bright,

And sailing pinions. - Upon such a shrine

What are our petty griefs? - let me not number mine.

CVII.

Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower grown

Matted and massed together, hillocks heaped

On what were chambers, arch crushed, column strown

In fragments, choked-up vaults, and frescoes steeped

In subterranean damps, where the owl peeped,

Deeming it midnight: - Temples, baths, or halls?

Pronounce who can; for all that Learning reaped

From her research hath been, that these are walls -

Behold the Imperial Mount! 'tis thus the mighty falls.

CVIII.

There is the moral of all human tales:

'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,

First Freedom, and then Glory - when that fails,

Wealth, vice, corruption - barbarism at last.

And History, with all her volumes vast,

Hath but ONE page, - 'tis better written here,

Where gorgeous Tyranny hath thus amassed

All treasures, all delights, that eye or ear,

Heart, soul could seek, tongue ask - Away with words! draw near,

CIX.

Admire, exult - despise - laugh, weep - for here

There is such matter for all feeling: - Man!

Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear,

Ages and realms are crowded in this span,

This mountain, whose obliterated plan

The pyramid of empires pinnacled,

Of Glory's gewgaws shining in the van

Till the sun's rays with added flame were filled!

Where are its golden roofs? where those who dared to build?

CX.

Tully was not so eloquent as thou,

Thou nameless column with the buried base!

What are the laurels of the Caesar's brow?

Crown me with ivy from his dwelling-place.

Whose arch or pillar meets me in the face,

Titus or Trajan's? No; 'tis that of Time:

Triumph, arch, pillar, all he doth displace,

Scoffing; and apostolic statues climb

To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sublime,

CXI.

Buried in air, the deep blue sky of Rome,

And looking to the stars; they had contained

A spirit which with these would find a home,

The last of those who o'er the whole earth reigned,

The Roman globe, for after none sustained

But yielded back his conquests: - he was more

Than a mere Alexander, and unstained

With household blood and wine, serenely wore

His sovereign virtues - still we Trajan's name adore.

CXII.

Where is the rock of Triumph, the high place

Where Rome embraced her heroes? where the steep

Tarpeian - fittest goal of Treason's race,

The promontory whence the traitor's leap

Cured all ambition? Did the Conquerors heap

Their spoils here? Yes; and in yon field below,

A thousand years of silenced factions sleep -

The Forum, where the immortal accents glow,

And still the eloquent air breathes - burns with Cicero!

CXIII.

The field of freedom, faction, fame, and blood:

Here a proud people's passions were exhaled,

From the first hour of empire in the bud

To that when further worlds to conquer failed;

But long before had Freedom's face been veiled,

And Anarchy assumed her attributes:

Till every lawless soldier who assailed

Trod on the trembling Senate's slavish mutes,

Or raised the venal voice of baser prostitutes.

CXIV.

Then turn we to our latest tribune's name,

From her ten thousand tyrants turn to thee,

Redeemer of dark centuries of shame -

The friend of Petrarch - hope of Italy -

Rienzi! last of Romans! While the tree

Of freedom's withered trunk puts forth a leaf,

Even for thy tomb a garland let it be -

The forum's champion, and the people's chief -

Her new-born Numa thou, with reign, alas! too brief.

CXV.

Egeria! sweet creation of some heart

Which found no mortal resting-place so fair

As thine ideal breast; whate'er thou art

Or wert, - a young Aurora of the air,

The nympholepsy of some fond despair;

Or, it might be, a beauty of the earth,

Who found a more than common votary there

Too much adoring; whatsoe'er thy birth,

Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth.

CXVI.

The mosses of thy fountain still are sprinkled

With thine Elysian water-drops; the face

Of thy cave-guarded spring, with years unwrinkled,

Reflects the meek-eyed genius of the place,

Whose green wild margin now no more erase

Art's works; nor must the delicate waters sleep,

Prisoned in marble, bubbling from the base

Of the cleft statue, with a gentle leap

The rill runs o'er, and round, fern, flowers, and ivy creep,

CXVII.

Fantastically tangled; the green hills

Are clothed with early blossoms, through the grass

The quick-eyed lizard rustles, and the bills

Of summer birds sing welcome as ye pass;

Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class,

Implore the pausing step, and with their dyes

Dance in the soft breeze in a fairy mass;

The sweetness of the violet's deep blue eyes,

Kissed by the breath of heaven, seems coloured by its skies.

CXVIII.

Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover,

Egeria! thy all heavenly bosom beating

For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover;

The purple Midnight veiled that mystic meeting

With her most starry canopy, and seating

Thyself by thine adorer, what befell?

This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting

Of an enamoured Goddess, and the cell

Haunted by holy Love - the earliest oracle!

CXIX.

And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying,

Blend a celestial with a human heart;

And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing,

Share with immortal transports? could thine art

Make them indeed immortal, and impart

The purity of heaven to earthly joys,

Expel the venom and not blunt the dart -

The dull satiety which all destroys -

And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys?

CXX.

Alas! our young affections run to waste,

Or water but the desert: whence arise

But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste,

Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes,

Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies,

And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants

Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies

O'er the world's wilderness, and vainly pants

For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants.

CXXI.

O Love! no habitant of earth thou art -

An unseen seraph, we believe in thee, -

A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,

But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see,

The naked eye, thy form, as it should be;

The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven,

Even with its own desiring phantasy,

And to a thought such shape and image given,

As haunts the unquenched soul - parched - wearied - wrung - and riven.

CXXII.

Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,

And fevers into false creation; - where,

Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized?

In him alone. Can Nature show so fair?

Where are the charms and virtues which we dare

Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men,

The unreached Paradise of our despair,

Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen,

And overpowers the page where it would bloom again.

CXXIII.

Who loves, raves - 'tis youth's frenzy - but the cure

Is bitterer still; as charm by charm unwinds

Which robed our idols, and we see too sure

Nor worth nor beauty dwells from out the mind's

Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds

The fatal spell, and still it draws us on,

Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds;

The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun,

Seems ever near the prize - wealthiest when most undone.

CXXIV.

We wither from our youth, we gasp away -

Sick - sick; unfound the boon, unslaked the thirst,

Though to the last, in verge of our decay,

Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first -

But all too late, - so are we doubly curst.

Love, fame, ambition, avarice - 'tis the same -

Each idle, and all ill, and none the worst -

For all are meteors with a different name,

And death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.

CXXV.

Few - none - find what they love or could have loved:

Though accident, blind contact, and the strong

Necessity of loving, have removed

Antipathies - but to recur, ere long,

Envenomed with irrevocable wrong;

And Circumstance, that unspiritual god

And miscreator, makes and helps along

Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,

Whose touch turns hope to dust - the dust we all have trod.

CXXVI.

Our life is a false nature - 'tis not in

The harmony of things, - this hard decree,

This uneradicable taint of sin,

This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree,

Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be

The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew -

Disease, death, bondage, all the woes we see -

And worse, the woes we see not - which throb through

The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new.

CXXVII.

Yet let us ponder boldly - 'tis a base

Abandonment of reason to resign

Our right of thought - our last and only place

Of refuge; this, at least, shall still be mine:

Though from our birth the faculty divine

Is chained and tortured - cabined, cribbed, confined,

And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine

Too brightly on the unprepared mind,

The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the blind.

CXXVIII.

Arches on arches! as it were that Rome,

Collecting the chief trophies of her line,

Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,

Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine

As 'twere its natural torches, for divine

Should be the light which streams here, to illume

This long explored but still exhaustless mine

Of contemplation; and the azure gloom

Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume

CXXIX.

Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven,

Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument,

And shadows forth its glory. There is given

Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent,

A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant

His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power

And magic in the ruined battlement,

For which the palace of the present hour

Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower.

CXXX.

O Time! the beautifier of the dead,

Adorner of the ruin, comforter

And only healer when the heart hath bled -

Time! the corrector where our judgments err,

The test of truth, love, - sole philosopher,

For all beside are sophists, from thy thrift,

Which never loses though it doth defer -

Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift

My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift:

CXXXI.

Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine

And temple more divinely desolate,

Among thy mightier offerings here are mine,

Ruins of years - though few, yet full of fate:

If thou hast ever seen me too elate,

Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne

Good, and reserved my pride against the hate

Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn

This iron in my soul in vain - shall THEY not mourn?

CXXXII.

And thou, who never yet of human wrong

Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis!

Here, where the ancients paid thee homage long -

Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss,

And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss

For that unnatural retribution - just,

Had it but been from hands less near - in this

Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust!

Dost thou not hear my heart? - Awake! thou shalt, and must.

CXXXIII.

It is not that I may not have incurred

For my ancestral faults or mine the wound

I bleed withal, and had it been conferred

With a just weapon, it had flowed unbound.

But now my blood shall not sink in the ground;

To thee I do devote it - THOU shalt take

The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found,

Which if _I_ have not taken for the sake -

But let that pass - I sleep, but thou shalt yet awake.

CXXXIV.

And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now

I shrink from what is suffered: let him speak

Who hath beheld decline upon my brow,

Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak;

But in this page a record will I seek.

Not in the air shall these my words disperse,

Though I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak

The deep prophetic fulness of this verse,

And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse!

CXXXV.

That curse shall be forgiveness. - Have I not -

Hear me, my mother Earth! behold it, Heaven! -

Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?

Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?

Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,

Hopes sapped, name blighted, Life's life lied away?

And only not to desperation driven,

Because not altogether of such clay

As rots into the souls of those whom I survey.

CXXXVI.

From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy

Have I not seen what human things could do?

From the loud roar of foaming calumny

To the small whisper of the as paltry few

And subtler venom of the reptile crew,

The Janus glance of whose significant eye,

Learning to lie with silence, would SEEM true,

And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh,

Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy.

CXXXVII.

But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:

My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,

And my frame perish even in conquering pain,

But there is that within me which shall tire

Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire:

Something unearthly, which they deem not of,

Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre,

Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move

In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of love.

CXXXVIII.

The seal is set. - Now welcome, thou dread Power

Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here

Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour

With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear:

Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear

Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene

Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear

That we become a part of what has been,

And grow unto the spot, all-seeing but unseen.

CXXXIX.

And here the buzz of eager nations ran,

In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause,

As man was slaughtered by his fellow-man.

And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because

Such were the bloody circus' genial laws,

And the imperial pleasure. - Wherefore not?

What matters where we fall to fill the maws

Of worms - on battle-plains or listed spot?

Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot.

CXL.

I see before me the Gladiator lie:

He leans upon his hand - his manly brow

Consents to death, but conquers agony,

And his drooped head sinks gradually low -

And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow

From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,

Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now

The arena swims around him: he is gone,

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.

CXLI.

He heard it, but he heeded not - his eyes

Were with his heart, and that was far away;

He recked not of the life he lost nor prize,

But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,

THERE were his young barbarians all at play,

THERE was their Dacian mother - he, their sire,

Butchered to make a Roman holiday -

All this rushed with his blood - Shall he expire,

And unavenged? - Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!

CXLII.

But here, where murder breathed her bloody steam;

And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways,

And roared or murmured like a mountain-stream

Dashing or winding as its torrent strays;

Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise

Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd,

My voice sounds much - and fall the stars' faint rays

On the arena void - seats crushed, walls bowed,

And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.

CXLIII.

A ruin - yet what ruin! from its mass

Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared;

Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,

And marvel where the spoil could have appeared.

Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared?

Alas! developed, opens the decay,

When the colossal fabric's form is neared:

It will not bear the brightness of the day,

Which streams too much on all, years, man, have reft away.

CXLIV.

But when the rising moon begins to climb

Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;

When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,

And the low night-breeze waves along the air,

The garland-forest, which the grey walls wear,

Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head;

When the light shines serene, but doth not glare,

Then in this magic circle raise the dead:

Heroes have trod this spot - 'tis on their dust ye tread.

CXLV.

'While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;

When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;

And when Rome falls - the World.' From our own land

Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall

In Saxon times, which we are wont to call

Ancient; and these three mortal things are still

On their foundations, and unaltered all;

Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill,

The World, the same wide den - of thieves, or what ye will.

CXLVI.

Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime -

Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods,

From Jove to Jesus - spared and blest by time;

Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods

Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods

His way through thorns to ashes - glorious dome!

Shalt thou not last? - Time's scythe and tyrants' rods

Shiver upon thee - sanctuary and home

Of art and piety - Pantheon! - pride of Rome!

CXLVII.

Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts!

Despoiled yet perfect, with thy circle spreads

A holiness appealing to all hearts -

To art a model; and to him who treads

Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds

Her light through thy sole aperture; to those

Who worship, here are altars for their beads;

And they who feel for genius may repose

Their eyes on honoured forms, whose busts around them close.

CXLVIII.

There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light

What do I gaze on? Nothing: Look again!

Two forms are slowly shadowed on my sight -

Two insulated phantoms of the brain:

It is not so: I see them full and plain -

An old man, and a female young and fair,

Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein

The blood is nectar: - but what doth she there,

With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare?

CXLIX.

Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life,

Where ON the heart and FROM the heart we took

Our first and sweetest nurture, when the wife,

Blest into mother, in the innocent look,

Or even the piping cry of lips that brook

No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives

Man knows not, when from out its cradled nook

She sees her little bud put forth its leaves -

What may the fruit be yet? - I know not - Cain was Eve's.

CL.

But here youth offers to old age the food,

The milk of his own gift: - it is her sire

To whom she renders back the debt of blood

Born with her birth. No; he shall not expire

While in those warm and lovely veins the fire

Of health and holy feeling can provide

Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher

Than Egypt's river: - from that gentle side

Drink, drink and live, old man! heaven's realm holds no such tide.

CLI.

The starry fable of the milky way

Has not thy story's purity; it is

A constellation of a sweeter ray,

And sacred Nature triumphs more in this

Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss

Where sparkle distant worlds: - Oh, holiest nurse!

No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss

To thy sire's heart, replenishing its source

With life, as our freed souls rejoin the universe.

CLII.

Turn to the mole which Hadrian reared on high,

Imperial mimic of old Egypt's piles,

Colossal copyist of deformity,

Whose travelled phantasy from the far Nile's

Enormous model, doomed the artist's toils

To build for giants, and for his vain earth,

His shrunken ashes, raise this dome: How smiles

The gazer's eye with philosophic mirth,

To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth!

CLIII.

But lo! the dome - the vast and wondrous dome,

To which Diana's marvel was a cell -

Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb!

I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle -

Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell

The hyaena and the jackal in their shade;

I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell

Their glittering mass i' the sun, and have surveyed

Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem prayed;

CLIV.

But thou, of temples old, or altars new,

Standest alone - with nothing like to thee -

Worthiest of God, the holy and the true,

Since Zion's desolation, when that he

Forsook his former city, what could be,

Of earthly structures, in his honour piled,

Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty,

Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled

In this eternal ark of worship undefiled.

CLV.

Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not;

And why? it is not lessened; but thy mind,

Expanded by the genius of the spot,

Has grown colossal, and can only find

A fit abode wherein appear enshrined

Thy hopes of immortality; and thou

Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined,

See thy God face to face, as thou dost now

His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by his brow.

CLVI.

Thou movest - but increasing with th' advance,

Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise,

Deceived by its gigantic elegance;

Vastness which grows - but grows to harmonise -

All musical in its immensities;

Rich marbles - richer painting - shrines where flame

The lamps of gold - and haughty dome which vies

In air with Earth's chief structures, though their frame

Sits on the firm-set ground - and this the clouds must claim.

CLVII.

Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break

To separate contemplation, the great whole;

And as the ocean many bays will make,

That ask the eye - so here condense thy soul

To more immediate objects, and control

Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart

Its eloquent proportions, and unroll

In mighty graduations, part by part,

The glory which at once upon thee did not dart.

CLVIII.

Not by its fault - but thine: Our outward sense

Is but of gradual grasp - and as it is

That what we have of feeling most intense

Outstrips our faint expression; e'en so this

Outshining and o'erwhelming edifice

Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great

Defies at first our nature's littleness,

Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate

Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate.

CLIX.

Then pause and be enlightened; there is more

In such a survey than the sating gaze

Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore

The worship of the place, or the mere praise

Of art and its great masters, who could raise

What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan;

The fountain of sublimity displays

Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man

Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can.

CLX.

Or, turning to the Vatican, go see

Laocoon's torture dignifying pain -

A father's love and mortal's agony

With an immortal's patience blending: - Vain

The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain

And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp,

The old man's clench; the long envenomed chain

Rivets the living links, - the enormous asp

Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp.

CLXI.

Or view the Lord of the unerring bow,

The God of life, and poesy, and light -

The Sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow

All radiant from his triumph in the fight;

The shaft hath just been shot - the arrow bright

With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye

And nostril beautiful disdain, and might

And majesty, flash their full lightnings by,

Developing in that one glance the Deity.

CLXII.

But in his delicate form - a dream of Love,

Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast

Longed for a deathless lover from above,

And maddened in that vision - are expressed

All that ideal beauty ever blessed

The mind within its most unearthly mood,

When each conception was a heavenly guest -

A ray of immortality - and stood

Starlike, around, until they gathered to a god?

CLXIII.

And if it be Prometheus stole from heaven

The fire which we endure, it was repaid

By him to whom the energy was given

Which this poetic marble hath arrayed

With an eternal glory - which, if made

By human hands, is not of human thought

And Time himself hath hallowed it, nor laid

One ringlet in the dust - nor hath it caught

A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 'twas wrought.

CLXIV.

But where is he, the pilgrim of my song,

The being who upheld it through the past?

Methinks he cometh late and tarries long.

He is no more - these breathings are his last;

His wanderings done, his visions ebbing fast,

And he himself as nothing: - if he was

Aught but a phantasy, and could be classed

With forms which live and suffer - let that pass -

His shadow fades away into Destruction's mass,

CLXV.

Which gathers shadow, substance, life, and all

That we inherit in its mortal shroud,

And spreads the dim and universal pall

Thro' which all things grow phantoms; and the cloud

Between us sinks and all which ever glowed,

Till Glory's self is twilight, and displays

A melancholy halo scarce allowed

To hover on the verge of darkness; rays

Sadder than saddest night, for they distract the gaze,

CLXVI.

And send us prying into the abyss,

To gather what we shall be when the frame

Shall be resolved to something less than this

Its wretched essence; and to dream of fame,

And wipe the dust from off the idle name

We never more shall hear, - but never more,

Oh, happier thought! can we be made the same:

It is enough, in sooth, that ONCE we bore

These fardels of the heart - the heart whose sweat was gore.

CLXVII.

Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds,

A long, low distant murmur of dread sound,

Such as arises when a nation bleeds

With some deep and immedicable wound;

Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground.

The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief

Seems royal still, though with her head discrowned,

And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief

She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief.

CLXVIII.

Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou?

Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead?

Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low

Some less majestic, less beloved head?

In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled,

The mother of a moment, o'er thy boy,

Death hushed that pang for ever: with thee fled

The present happiness and promised joy

Which filled the imperial isles so full it seemed to cloy.

CLXIX.

Peasants bring forth in safety. - Can it be,

O thou that wert so happy, so adored!

Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee,

And Freedom's heart, grown heavy, cease to hoard

Her many griefs for One; for she had poured

Her orisons for thee, and o'er thy head

Beheld her Iris. - Thou, too, lonely lord,

And desolate consort - vainly wert thou wed!

The husband of a year! the father of the dead!

CLXX.

Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made:

Thy bridal's fruit is ashes; in the dust

The fair-haired Daughter of the Isles is laid,

The love of millions! How we did entrust

Futurity to her! and, though it must

Darken above our bones, yet fondly deemed

Our children should obey her child, and blessed

Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seemed

Like star to shepherd's eyes; 'twas but a meteor beamed.

CLXXI.

Woe unto us, not her; for she sleeps well:

The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue

Of hollow counsel, the false oracle,

Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung

Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstrung

Nations have armed in madness, the strange fate

Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung

Against their blind omnipotence a weight

Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late, -

CLXXII.

These might have been her destiny; but no,

Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair,

Good without effort, great without a foe;

But now a bride and mother - and now THERE!

How many ties did that stern moment tear!

From thy Sire's to his humblest subject's breast

Is linked the electric chain of that despair,

Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and oppressed

The land which loved thee so, that none could love thee best.

CLXXIII.

Lo, Nemi! navelled in the woody hills

So far, that the uprooting wind which tears

The oak from his foundation, and which spills

The ocean o'er its boundary, and bears

Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares

The oval mirror of thy glassy lake;

And, calm as cherished hate, its surface wears

A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake,

All coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake.

CLXXIV.

And near Albano's scarce divided waves

Shine from a sister valley; - and afar

The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves

The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war,

'Arms and the Man,' whose reascending star

Rose o'er an empire, - but beneath thy right

Tully reposed from Rome; - and where yon bar

Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight,

The Sabine farm was tilled, the weary bard's delight.

CLXXV.

But I forget. - My pilgrim's shrine is won,

And he and I must part, - so let it be, -

His task and mine alike are nearly done;

Yet once more let us look upon the sea:

The midland ocean breaks on him and me,

And from the Alban mount we now behold

Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we

Beheld it last by Calpe's rock unfold

Those waves, we followed on till the dark Euxine rolled

CLXXVI.

Upon the blue Symplegades: long years -

Long, though not very many - since have done

Their work on both; some suffering and some tears

Have left us nearly where we had begun:

Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run,

We have had our reward - and it is here;

That we can yet feel gladdened by the sun,

And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear

As if there were no man to trouble what is clear.

CLXXVII.

Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,

With one fair Spirit for my minister,

That I might all forget the human race,

And, hating no one, love but only her!

Ye Elements! - in whose ennobling stir

I feel myself exalted - can ye not

Accord me such a being? Do I err

In deeming such inhabit many a spot?

Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.

CLXXVIII.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society where none intrudes,

By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:

I love not Man the less, but Nature more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

CLXXIX.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean - roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;

Man marks the earth with ruin - his control

Stops with the shore; - upon the watery plain

The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain

A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,

When for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,

Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

CLXXX.

His steps are not upon thy paths, - thy fields

Are not a spoil for him, - thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields

For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,

Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,

And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray

And howling, to his gods, where haply lies

His petty hope in some near port or bay,

And dashest him again to earth: - there let him lay.

CLXXXI.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls

Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,

And monarchs tremble in their capitals.

The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make

Their clay creator the vain title take

Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,

They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar

Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

CLXXXII.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee -

Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?

Thy waters washed them power while they were free

And many a tyrant since: their shores obey

The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay

Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou,

Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play -

Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow -

Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

CLXXXIII.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form

Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed - in breeze, or gale, or storm,

Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark-heaving; - boundless, endless, and sublime -

The image of Eternity - the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone

Obeys thee: thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

CLXXXIV.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy

Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be

Borne like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy

I wantoned with thy breakers - they to me

Were a delight; and if the freshening sea

Made them a terror - 'twas a pleasing fear,

For I was as it were a child of thee,

And trusted to thy billows far and near,

And laid my hand upon thy mane - as I do here.

CLXXXV.

My task is done - my song hath ceased - my theme

Has died into an echo; it is fit

The spell should break of this protracted dream.

The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit

My midnight lamp - and what is writ, is writ -

Would it were worthier! but I am not now

That which I have been - and my visions flit

Less palpably before me - and the glow

Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.

CLXXXVI.

Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been -

A sound which makes us linger; yet, farewell!

Ye, who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene

Which is his last, if in your memories dwell

A thought which once was his, if on ye swell

A single recollection, not in vain

He wore his sandal-shoon and scallop shell;

Farewell! with HIM alone may rest the pain,

If such there were - with YOU, the moral of his strain.