Canto the Fourth (1 of 2)
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
Aught that recalls the daily drug which turnedMy sickening memory; and, though Time hath taughtMy mind to meditate what then it learned,Yet such the fixed inveteracy wroughtBy the impatience of my early thought,That, with the freshness wearing out beforeMy mind could relish what it might have sought,If free to choose, I cannot now restoreIts 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 curseTo understand, not feel, thy lyric flow,To comprehend, but never love thy verse,Although no deeper moralist rehearseOur 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 controlIn their shut breasts their petty misery.What are our woes and sufferance? Come and seeThe cypress, hear the owl, and plod your wayO’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 tenantlessOf 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 wideTemple 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 wrapAll 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 steerStumbling o’er recollections: now we clapOur hands, and cry, ‘Eureka!’ it is clear—When but some false mirage of ruin rises near.
LXXXII
Alas, the lofty city! and alasThe trebly hundred triumphs! and the dayWhen Brutus made the dagger’s edge surpassThe conqueror’s sword in bearing fame away!Alas for Tully’s voice, and Virgil’s lay,And Livy’s pictured page! But these shall beHer resurrection; all beside—decay.Alas for Earth, for never shall we seeThat 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 subdueThy country’s foes ere thou wouldst pause to feelThe wrath of thy own wrongs, or reap the dueOf hoarded vengeance till thine eagles flewO’er prostrate Asia;—thou, who with thy frownAnnihilated senates—Roman, too,With all thy vices, for thou didst lay downWith an atoning smile a more than earthly crown—
LXXXIV
The dictatorial wreath,—couldst thou divineTo what would one day dwindle that which madeThee more than mortal? and that so supineBy aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid?She who was named eternal, and arrayedHer warriors but to conquer—she who veiledEarth with her haughty shadow, and displayedUntil 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!—heToo swept off senates while he hewed the throneDown to a block—immortal rebel! SeeWhat crimes it costs to be a moment freeAnd famous through all ages! But beneathHis fate the moral lurks of destiny;His day of double victory and deathBeheld him win two realms, and, happier, yield his breath.
LXXXVI
The third of the same moon whose former courseHad all but crowned him, on the self-same dayDeposed 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 consumeOur 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 inThe 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 queenOf gods and men, great Nemesis! did he die,And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye beenVictors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene?
LXXXVIII
And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome!She-wolf! whose brazen-imaged dugs impartThe milk of conquest yet within the domeWhere, 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 yetGuard 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 rearedCities from out their sepulchres: men bledIn 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 kindOf bastard Caesar, following him of oldWith steps unequal; for the Roman’s mindWas modelled in a less terrestrial mould,With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold,And an immortal instinct which redeemedThe frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold.Alcides with the distaff now he seemedAt Cleopatra’s feet, and now himself he beamed.
XCI
And came, and saw, and conquered. But the manWho 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 beA listener to itself, was strangely framed;With but one weakest weakness—vanity:Coquettish in ambition, still he aimedAt what? Can he avouch, or answer what he claimed?
XCII
And would be all or nothing—nor could waitFor the sure grave to level him; few yearsHad fixed him with the Caesars in his fate,On whom we tread: For this the conqueror rearsThe arch of triumph! and for this the tearsAnd blood of earth flow on as they have flowed,An universal deluge, which appearsWithout 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 veilMantles the earth with darkness, until rightAnd wrong are accidents, and men grow paleLest their own judgments should become too bright,And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light.