Thus far have I proceeded in a themeRenewed with no kind auspices:—to feelWe are not what we have been, and to deemWe are not what we should be, and to steelThe heart against itself; and to conceal,With a proud caution, love or hate, or aught,—Passion or feeling, purpose, grief, or zeal,—Which is the tyrant spirit of our thought,Is a stern task of soul:—No matter,—it is taught.
CXII.
And for these words, thus woven into song,It may be that they are a harmless wile,—The colouring of the scenes which fleet along,Which I would seize, in passing, to beguileMy breast, or that of others, for a while.Fame is the thirst of youth,—but I am notSo young as to regard men's frown or smileAs loss or guerdon of a glorious lot;I stood and stand alone,—remembered or forgot.
CXIII.
I have not loved the world, nor the world me;I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowedTo its idolatries a patient knee,—Nor coined my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloudIn worship of an echo; in the crowdThey could not deem me one of such; I stoodAmong them, but not of them; in a shroudOf thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.
CXIV.
I have not loved the world, nor the world me,—But let us part fair foes; I do believe,Though I have found them not, that there may beWords which are things,—hopes which will not deceive,And virtues which are merciful, nor weaveSnares for the falling: I would also deemO'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve;That two, or one, are almost what they seem,—That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream.
CXV.
My daughter! with thy name this song begun—My daughter! with thy name this much shall end—I see thee not, I hear thee not,—but noneCan be so wrapt in thee; thou art the friendTo whom the shadows of far years extend:Albeit my brow thou never shouldst behold,My voice shall with thy future visions blend,And reach into thy heart, when mine is cold,—A token and a tone, even from thy father's mould.
CXVI.
To aid thy mind's development,—to watchThy dawn of little joys,—to sit and seeAlmost thy very growth,—to view thee catchKnowledge of objects, wonders yet to thee!To hold thee lightly on a gentle knee,And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss,—This, it should seem, was not reserved for meYet this was in my nature:—As it is,I know not what is there, yet something like to this.
CXVII.
Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught,I know that thou wilt love me; though my nameShould be shut from thee, as a spell still fraughtWith desolation, and a broken claim:Though the grave closed between us,—'twere the same,I know that thou wilt love me: though to drainMY blood from out thy being were an aim,And an attainment,—all would be in vain,—Still thou wouldst love me, still that more than life retain.
CXVIII.
The child of love,—though born in bitterness,And nurtured in convulsion. Of thy sireThese were the elements, and thine no less.As yet such are around thee; but thy fireShall be more tempered, and thy hope far higher.Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea,And from the mountains where I now respire,Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee,As, with a sigh, I deem thou mightst have been to me!
I.
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 riseAs from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:A thousand years their cloudy wings expandAround me, and a dying glory smilesO'er the far times when many a subject landLooked 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 towersAt airy distance, with majestic motion,A ruler of the waters and their powers:And such she was; her daughters had their dowersFrom spoils of nations, and the exhaustless EastPoured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.In purple was she robed, and of her feastMonarchs 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 beyondHer name in story, and her long arrayOf mighty shadows, whose dim forms despondAbove the dogeless city's vanished sway;Ours is a trophy which will not decayWith 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.
V.
The beings of the mind are not of clay;Essentially immortal, they createAnd multiply in us a brighter rayAnd more beloved existence: that which FateProhibits to dull life, in this our stateOf 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 realityOutshines our fairy-land; in shape and huesMore beautiful than our fantastic sky,And the strange constellations which the MuseO'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 teemsMy mind with many a form which aptly seemsSuch as I sought for, and at moments found;Let these too go—for waking reason deemsSuch overweening phantasies unsound,And other voices speak, and other sights surround.
VIII.
I've taught me other tongues, and in strange eyesHave made me not a stranger; to the mindWhich is itself, no changes bring surprise;Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to findA country with—ay, or without mankind;Yet was I born where men are proud to be,Not without cause; and should I leave behindThe 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 layMy ashes in a soil which is not mine,My spirit shall resume it—if we mayUnbodied choose a sanctuary. I twineMy hopes of being remembered in my lineWith my land's language: if too fond and farThese aspirations in their scope incline,—If my fame should be, as my fortunes are,Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar.
X.
My name from out the temple where the deadAre 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 treeI 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 stoodStand, but in mockery of his withered power,Over the proud place where an Emperor sued,And monarchs gazed and envied in the hourWhen 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 chainsClank over sceptred cities; nations meltFrom power's high pinnacle, when they have feltThe sunshine for a while, and downward goLike 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 fireAnd blood she bore o'er subject earth and sea;Though making many slaves, herself still freeAnd Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite:Witness Troy's rival, Candia! Vouch it, yeImmortal waves that saw Lepanto's fight!For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight.
XV.
Statues of glass—all shivered—the long fileOf her dead doges are declined to dust;But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pileBespeaks 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 mustToo 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 carOf the o'ermastered victor stops, the reinsFall from his hands—his idle scimitarStarts 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 knotWhich ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lotIs shameful to the nations,—most of all,Albion! to thee: the Ocean Queen should notAbandon Ocean's children; in the fallOf Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall.
XVIII.
I loved her from my boyhood: she to meWas as a fairy city of the heart,Rising like water-columns from the sea,Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the martAnd 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 ofThe 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 wroughtWithin the web of my existence, someFrom 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 growLoftiest on loftiest and least sheltered rocks,Rooted in barrenness, where nought belowOf soil supports them 'gainst the Alpine shocksOf eddying storms; yet springs the trunk, and mocksThe howling tempest, till its height and frameAre worthy of the mountains from whose blocksOf 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 rootOf life and sufferance make its firm abodeIn bare and desolate bosoms: muteThe camel labours with the heaviest load,And the wolf dies in silence. Not bestowedIn vain should such examples be; if they,Things of ignoble or of savage mood,Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clayMay 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 subduedThere comes a token like a scorpion's sting,Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued;And slight withal may be the things which bringBack on the heart the weight which it would flingAside 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 traceHome to its cloud this lightning of the mind,But feel the shock renewed, nor can effaceThe blight and blackening which it leaves behind,Which out of things familiar, undesigned,When least we deem of such, calls up to viewThe 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 backTo meditate amongst decay, and standA ruin amidst ruins; there to trackFall'n states and buried greatness, o'er a landWhich WAS the mightiest in its old command,And IS the loveliest, and must ever beThe 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 homeOf all Art yields, and Nature can decree;Even in thy desert, what is like to thee?Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy wasteMore rich than other climes' fertility;Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin gracedWith 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 seaOf glory streams along the Alpine heightOf blue Friuli's mountains; Heaven is freeFrom 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 crestFloats through the azure air—an island of the blest!
XXVIII.
A single star is at her side, and reignsWith her o'er half the lovely heaven; but stillYon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remainsRolled o'er the peak of the far Rhaetian hill,As Day and Night contending were, untilNature reclaimed her order:—gently flowsThe deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instilThe 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 strewsIts mantle o'er the mountains; parting dayDies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbuesWith 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, reposeThe bones of Laura's lover: here repairMany familiar with his well-sung woes,The pilgrims of his genius. He aroseTo raise a language, and his land reclaimFrom the dull yoke of her barbaric foes:Watering the tree which bears his lady's nameWith his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame.
XXXI.
They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died;The mountain-village where his latter daysWent 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 gazeHis mansion and his sepulchre; both plainAnd venerably simple, such as raiseA feeling more accordant with his strain,Than if a pyramid formed his monumental fane.
XXXII.
And the soft quiet hamlet where he dweltIs one of that complexion which seems madeFor those who their mortality have felt,And sought a refuge from their hopes decayedIn the deep umbrage of a green hill's shade,Which shows a distant prospect far awayOf busy cities, now in vain displayed,For they can lure no further; and the rayOf a bright sun can make sufficient holiday.
XXXIII.
Developing the mountains, leaves, and flowersAnd shining in the brawling brook, where-by,Clear as its current, glide the sauntering hoursWith a calm languor, which, though to the eyeIdlesse 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 giveNo hollow aid; alone—man with his God must strive:
XXXIV.
Or, it may be, with demons, who impairThe strength of better thoughts, and seek their preyIn melancholy bosoms, such as wereOf moody texture from their earliest day,And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay,Deeming themselves predestined to a doomWhich 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'sOf former sovereigns, and the antique broodOf Este, which for many an age made goodIts strength within thy walls, and was of yorePatron or tyrant, as the changing moodOf petty power impelled, of those who woreThe 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 quellThe insulted mind he sought to quench, and blendWith the surrounding maniacs, in the hellWhere he had plunged it. Glory without endScattered the clouds away—and on that name attend
XXXVII.
The tears and praises of all time, while thineWould rot in its oblivion—in the sinkOf worthless dust, which from thy boasted lineIs shaken into nothing; but the linkThou formest in his fortunes bids us thinkOf thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn—Alfonso! how thy ducal pageants shrinkFrom 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 thouHadst a more splendid trough, and wider sty:HE! with a glory round his furrowed brow,Which emanated then, and dazzles nowIn face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire,And Boileau, whose rash envy could allowNo strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre,That whetstone of the teeth—monotony in wire!
XXXIX.
Peace to Torquato's injured shade! 'twas hisIn life and death to be the mark where WrongAimed with their poisoned arrows—but to miss.Oh, victor unsurpassed in modern song!Each year brings forth its millions; but how longThe tide of generations shall roll on,And not the whole combined and countless throngCompose a mind like thine? Though all in oneCondensed their scattered rays, they would not form a sun.
XL.
Great as thou art, yet paralleled by thoseThy countrymen, before thee born to shine,The bards of Hell and Chivalry: first roseThe Tuscan father's comedy divine;Then, not unequal to the Florentine,The Southern Scott, the minstrel who called forthA 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 bustThe iron crown of laurel's mimicked leaves;Nor was the ominous element unjust,For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weavesIs 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 belowWhate'er it strikes;—yon head is doubly sacred now.
XLII.
Italia! O Italia! thou who hastThe fatal gift of beauty, which becameA 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 nakednessLess lovely or more powerful, and couldst claimThy right, and awe the robbers back, who pressTo shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress;
XLIII.
Then mightst thou more appal; or, less desired,Be homely and be peaceful, undeploredFor thy destructive charms; then, still untired,Would not be seen the armed torrents pouredDown the deep Alps; nor would the hostile hordeOf many-nationed spoilers from the PoQuaff blood and water; nor the stranger's swordBe 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 skimThe bright blue waters with a fanning wind,Came Megara before me, and behindAEgina lay, Piraeus on the right,And Corinth on the left; I lay reclinedAlong the prow, and saw all these uniteIn ruin, even as he had seen the desolate sight;
XLV.
For time hath not rebuilt them, but uprearedBarbaric dwellings on their shattered site,Which only make more mourned and more endearedThe 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 exciteSad wonder, and his yet surviving pageThe moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage.
XLVI.
That page is now before me, and on mineHIS country's ruin added to the massOf perished states he mourned in their decline,And I in desolation: all that WASOf then destruction IS; and now, alas!Rome—Rome imperial, bows her to the storm,In the same dust and blackness, and we passThe skeleton of her Titanic form,Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm.
XLVII.
Yet, Italy! through every other landThy wrongs should ring, and shall, from side to side;Mother of Arts! as once of Arms; thy handWas then our Guardian, and is still our guide;Parent of our religion! whom the wideNations 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 keepsA softer feeling for her fairy halls.Girt by her theatre of hills, she reapsHer corn, and wine, and oil, and Plenty leapsTo 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 fillsThe air around with beauty; we inhaleThe ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instilsPart of its immortality; the veilOf heaven is half undrawn; within the paleWe stand, and in that form and face beholdWhat Mind can make, when Nature's self would fail;And to the fond idolaters of oldEnvy the innate flash which such a soul could mould:
L.
We gaze and turn away, and know not where,Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heartReels 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 liesBefore 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 areWith 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 inadequateThat feeling to express, or to improve,The gods become as mortals, and man's fateHas moments like their brightest! but the weightOf earth recoils upon us;—let it go!We can recall such visions, and createFrom 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 tellHow well his connoisseurship understandsThe graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell:Let these describe the undescribable:I would not their vile breath should crisp the streamWherein that image shall for ever dwell;The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dreamThat ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam.
LIV.
In Santa Croce's holy precincts lieAshes which make it holier, dust which isE'en in itself an immortality,Though there were nothing save the past, and thisThe particle of those sublimitiesWhich have relapsed to chaos:—here reposeAngelo'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 rentsOf thine imperial garment, shall deny,And hath denied, to every other sky,Spirits which soar from ruin:—thy decayIs 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! heOf the Hundred Tales of love—where did they layTheir bones, distinguished from our common clayIn 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 evermoreTheir children's children would in vain adoreWith the remorse of ages; and the crownWhich 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 bequeathedHis dust,—and lies it not her great among,With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathedO'er him who formed the Tuscan's siren tongue?That music in itself, whose sounds are song,The poetry of speech? No;—even his tombUptorn, 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 yoreThe 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 sleepsThe immortal exile;—Arqua, too, her storeOf 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 huesOf gem and marble, to encrust the bonesOf merchant-dukes? the momentary dewsWhich, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuseFreshness in the green turf that wraps the dead,Whose names are mausoleums of the Muse,Are gently prest with far more reverent treadThan ever paced the slab which paves the princely head.
LXI.
There be more things to greet the heart and eyesIn 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 entwineMy thoughts with Nature rather in the fieldsThan Art in galleries: though a work divineCalls for my spirit's homage, yet it yieldsLess than it feels, because the weapon which it wields
LXII.
Is of another temper, and I roamBy Thrasimene's lake, in the defilesFatal to Roman rashness, more at home;For there the Carthaginian's warlike wilesCome back before me, as his skill beguilesThe 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 blindsTo 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 layUpon their bucklers for a winding-sheet;Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet.
LXIV.
The Earth to them was as a rolling barkWhich bore them to Eternity; they sawThe Ocean round, but had no time to markThe motions of their vessel: Nature's law,In them suspended, recked not of the aweWhich reigns when mountains tremble, and the birdsPlunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdrawFrom their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herdsStumble 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 plainRent by no ravage save the gentle plough;Her aged trees rise thick as once the slainLay 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 deadMade the earth wet, and turned the unwilling waters red.
LXVI.
But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest waveOf the most living crystal that was e'erThe haunt of river nymph, to gaze and laveHer limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rearThy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steerGrazes; 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 sweepsThy current's calmness; oft from out it leapsThe finny darter with the glittering scales,Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;While, chance, some scattered water-lily sailsDown 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 sereneWin to the brow, 'tis his; and if ye traceAlong his margin a more eloquent green,If on the heart the freshness of the sceneSprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dustOf weary life a moment lave it cleanWith Nature's baptism,—'tis to him ye mustPay orisons for this suspension of disgust.
LXIX.
The roar of waters!—from the headlong heightVelino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;The fall of waters! rapid as the lightThe flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,And boil in endless torture; while the sweatOf their great agony, wrung out from thisTheir Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jetThat gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,
LXX.
And mounts in spray the skies, and thence againReturns 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 profoundThe gulf! and how the giant elementFrom rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rentWith his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent
LXXI.
To the broad column which rolls on, and showsMore like the fountain of an infant seaTorn from the womb of mountains by the throesOf a new world, than only thus to beParent 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, unwornIts steady dyes, while all around is tornBy the distracted waters, bears sereneIts 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 beforeGazed on their mightier parents, where the pineSits on more shaggy summits, and where roarThe thundering lauwine—might be worshipped more;But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rearHer never-trodden snow, and seen the hoarGlaciers 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 flyLike 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, madeThese 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 plainHeaves like a long-swept wave about to break,And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vainMay he who will his recollections rake,And quote in classic raptures, and awakeThe hills with Latian echoes; I abhorredToo much, to conquer for the poet's sake,The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by wordIn my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record
LXXVI.