Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: A Romaunt Canto IV

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 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

Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles,

Where Venice sate in state, thron'd 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

Pour'd in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.

In purple was she rob'd, and of her feast

Monarchs partook, and deem'd their dignity increas'd.

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 vanish'd 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 repeopl'd were the solitary shore.

V.

The beings of the mind are not of clay;

Essentially immortal, they create

And multiply in us a brighter ray

And more belov'd 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, maybe, 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 dream'd of such -- but let them go;

They came like truth -- and disappear'd 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 fantasies 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 lov'd 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 remember'd 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

X.

My name from out the temple where the dead

Are honour'd 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 reap'd 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 renew'd,

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 wither'd power,

Over he proud Place where an Emperor sued,

And monarchs gaz'd and envied in the hour

When Venice was a queen with an unequall'd 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 loosen'd from the mountain's belt;

Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo!

Th' 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 sea-weed, into whence she rose!

Better be whelm'd 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 by-word 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 shiver'd -- the long file

Of her dead Doges are declin'd 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 enthralls,

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

XVI.

When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse,

And fetter'd 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'ermaster'd 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, Shakespeare's art,

Had stamp'd her image in me, and even so,

Although I found her thus, we did not part;

Perchance even 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 chasten'd 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 shelter'd 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, gray 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

The bare and desolated bosoms: mute

The camel labours with the heaviest load,

And the wolf dies in silence, -- not bestow'd

In vain should such example 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 destroy'd,

Even by the sufferer; and, in each event,

Ends: -- Some, with hope replenish'd and rebuoy'd,

Return to whence they came -- with like intent,

And weave their web again; some, bow'd and bent,

Wax gray 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 form'd 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 renew'd, nor can efface

The blight and blackening which it leaves behind,

Which out of things familiar, undesign'd,

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 mourn'd, 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

Roll'd o'er the peak of the far Rhætian hill,

As Day and Night contending were, until

Nature reclaim'd 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 glass'd within it glows,

XXIX

Fill'd 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 gray.

XXX

There is a tomb at Arqua; -- rear'd in air,

Pillar'd 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 train

Than if a pyramid form'd 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 decay'd

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

Which shows a distant prospect far away

Of busy cities, now in vain display'd,

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, whereby,

Clear as its current, glide the sauntering hours

With a calm languor, which, though to the eye

Idlesse it seem, hath its mortality.

If from society we learn to live,

'Tis solitude should teach us how to die;

It hath no flatters; 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 seats

Of former sovereigns, and the antique brood

Of Este, which for many an age made good

Its strength within thy walls, ad was of yore

Patron or tyrant, as the changing mood

Of petty power impell'd, 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 earn'd 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

Scatter'd 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 madest to mourn:

XXXVIII

Thou! form'd 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 furrow'd 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

Aim'd with her poison'd arrows, but to miss.

O, victor unsurpass'd 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 scatter'd rays, they would not form a sun.

XL

Great as thou art, yet parallel'd 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 call'd 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 mimick'd 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! oh 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 plough'd 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 might'st 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 pour'd

Down the deep Alps; nor would the hostile horde

Of many-nation'd spoilers from the Po

Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger's sword

Be thy sad weapon of defence, and so,

Victor or vanquish'd, 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

Ægina lay, Piræus 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 uprear'd

Barbaric dwellings on their shatter'd site,

Which only make more mourn'd and more endear'd

The few last rays of their far-scatter'd light,

And the crush'd relics of their vanish'd 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 perish'd states he mourn'd 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, repentent 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, redeem'd to 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 idolators of old

Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould:

L

We gaze and turn away, and know not where,

Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart

Reels with its fulness; there -- for ever there --

Chain'd to the chariot of triumphal Art,

We stand as captives, and would not depart.

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

The paltry jargon of the marble mart,

Where Pedantry gulls Folly -- we have eyes:

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

LI

Appear'dst thou not to Paris in this guise?

Or to more deeply blest Anchises? or,

In all thy perfect Goddess-ship, when lies

Before thee thy own vanquish'd 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,

Shower'd 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

Even in itself an immortality,

Though there were nothing save the past, and this,

The particle of those sublimities

Which have relapsed to chaos: here repose

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

The starry Galileo, with his woes;

Here Machiavelli's earth return'd to whence it rose.

LV

These are four minds, which, like the elements,

Might furnish forth creation: -- Italy!

Time, which hath wrong'd thee with ten thousand rents

Of thine imperal 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 today.

LVI

But where repose the all Etruscan three --

Dante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less thatn they,

The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he

Of the Hundred Tales of love -- where did they lay

Their bones, distinguish'd 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 forevermore

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 bequeath'd

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

With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed

O'er him who form'd 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 hyæna bigot's wrong,

No more amidst the meaner dead find room,

Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for whom!

LIX

And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust;

Yet for this want more noted, as of yore

The Cæsar'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! honour'd sleeps

The immortal exile; -- Arqua, too her store

Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps,

While Florence vainly begs her banish'd 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 accustom'd 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 the 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 scatter'd o'er,

LXIII

Like to a forest fell'd 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 reel'd 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 not time to mark

The motions of their vessel; Nature's law,

In them suspended, reck'd 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 turn'd 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 scatter'd waterlily sails

Down were 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 guard 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, yields 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 glow 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 death-bed, and, unworn

Its steady dyes, while all around is torn

By the distracted waters, bears serene

Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn:

Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene,

Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.

LXXIII

Once more upon the woody Apennine,

The infant Alps, which -- had I not before

Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine

Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar

The thundering Lauwine -- might be worshipp'd 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

Th' Acroceraunian mountains of old name;

And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly

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

For still they soared unutterably high:

I've look'd on Ida with a Trojan's eye;

Athos, Olympus, Ætna, Atlas, made

These hills seem things of lesser dignity,

All, save the lone Soracte's height, display'd

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 abhorr'd

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

The drill'd dull lesson, forced down word by word

In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record

LXXVI

Aught that recalls the daily drug which turn'd

My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught

My mind to meditate what then it learn'd,

Yet such the fix'd 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 touch'd heart,

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

LXXVIII

Oh Rome! my country! city of the soul!

The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,

Lone mother of dead empires! and control

In their shut breasts their petty misery.

What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see

The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way

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

Whose agonies are evils of 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 wither'd hands,

Whose holy dust was scatter'd 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 dealt upon the seven-hill'd city's pride;

She saw her glories star by star expire,

And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride,

Where the car climb'd 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 his chart, and 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 or 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 roll'd 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 array'd

Her warriors but to conquer -- she who veil'd

Earth with her haughty shadow, and display'd,

Until the o'er-canopied horizon fail'd,

Her rushing wings -- Oh! she who was Almighty hail'd!

LXXXV

Sylla was first of victors; but our own,

The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell! -- he

Too swept off senates while he hew'd 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 crown'd him, on the selfsame day

Deposed him gently from his throne of force,

And laid him with the earth's preceding clay.

And show'd 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 Cæsar 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 suck'd from thy wild teat,

Scorch'd by the Roman Jove's ethereal dart,

And thy limbs black with lightning -- dost thou yet

Guard thine immoral cubs, nor thy fond charge forget?

LXXXIX

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

The men of iron: and the world hath rear'd

Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled

In imitation of the things they fear'd,

And fought and conquer'd, and the same course steer'd,

At apish distance; but as yet none have,

Nor could the same supremacy have near'd,

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

But, vanquish'd by himself, to his own slaves a slave --

XC

The fool of false dominion -- and a kind

Of bastard Cæsar, following him of old

With steps unequal; for the Roman's mind

Was modell'd in a less terrestrial mould,

With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold,

And an immortal instinct which redeem'd

The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold,

Alcides with the distaff now he seem'd

At Cleopatra's feet, -- and now himself he beam'd,

XCI

And came -- and saw -- and conquer'd ! But the man

Who would have tamed his eagles down to flee,

Like a train'd falcon, in the Gallic van,

Which he, in sooth, long led to victory

With a deaf heart, which never seem'd to be

A listener to itself, was strangely framed;

With but one weakest weakness -- vanity,

Coquettish in ambition, still he aim'd --

At what? can he avouch, or answer what he claim'd?

XCII

And would be all or nothing -- nor could wait

For the sure grave to level him; few years

Had fix'd him with the Cæsars 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 flow'd,

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 weigh'd 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 allow'd,

Averr'd, and known, and daily, hourly seen --

The yoke that is upon us doubly bow'd,

And the intent of tyranny avow'd,

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 conquer'd be,

And Freedom find no champion and no child

Such as Columbia saw arise when she

Sprung forth a Pallas, arm'd and undefiled?

Or must such minds be nourish'd 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 an 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,

Chopp'd 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 better 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'er thrown; --

Where was this tower of strength? within its case

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

C

But who was she, the lady of the dead,

Tomb'd 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 she 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, bow'd

With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb

That weigh'd 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 gray

On her long tresses, which might yet recall,

It may be, still a something of the day

When they were braided, and her proud array

And lovely form were envied, praised, and eyed

By Rome -- But whither would Conjecture stray?

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 set 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 shatter'd 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 founder'd 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 owlets' cry,

As I now hear them, in the fading light

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

Answering each other on the Palatine,

With their large eyes, all glistening gray and bright,

And sailing pinions. -- Upon such a shrine

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

CVII

Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower grown,

Matted and mass'd together, hillocks heap'd

On what were chambers, arch crush'd, column strown

In fragments, choked up vaults, and frescos steep'd

In subterranean damps, where the owl peep'd,

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

Pronounce who can; for all that Learning reap'd

From her research hath been, that these are walls --

Behold thee 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 amass'd

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 fill'd!

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 Cæsar'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 contain'd

A spirit which with thee would find a home,

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

The Roman globe, for after none sustain'd,

But yielded back his conquests: -- he was more

Than a mere Alexander, and unstain'd

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 faction 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 fail'd;

But long before had Freedom's face been veil'd,

And Anarchy assumed her attributes;

Till every lawless soldier who assail'd

Trod on the trembling senate's slavish mutes,

Or raised the venal voice of baser prostitutes.

CXIV

Then turn we to her latest tribune's name,

From her ten thousand tyrants turn to thee,

Redeemer of dark centuries of shame --

The friend of Petrarch -- hope of Italy --

Rienzi! last of Romans! While the tree

Of freedom's wither'd 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,

Prison'd 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,

Kiss'd by the breath of heaven, seems colour'd 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 veil'd 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 enamour'd 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 poisons; such the plants

Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies

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

For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants.

CXXI

Oh, Love! no habitant of earth thou art --

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 unquench'd soul -- parch'd, 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 seiz'd?

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 unreach'd 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 oftsown 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 we 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,

Envenom'd 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 chain'd and tortured -- cabin'd, cribb'd, confined,

And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine

Too brightly on the unpreparèd 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 ruin'd battlement,

For which the palace of the present hour

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

CXXX

Oh Time! the beautifier of the dead,

Adorner of the ruin, 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 ancient paid thee homage long --

Thou who didst call the Furies from the abyss,

And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss

For that unnatural retribution -- just,

Had it but been from hands less near -- in this

Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust!

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

CXXXIII

It is not that I may not have incurr'd

For my ancestral faults or mine the wound

I bleed withal, and, had it been conferr'd

With a just weapon, it had flow'd 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 suffer'd: 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 suffer'd things to be forgiven?

Have I not had my brain sear'd, my heart riven,

Hopes sapp'd, 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 sign,

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 remember'd tone of a mute lyre,

Shall on their soften'd 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 murmur'd pity, or loud-roar'd applause,

As man was slaughter'd by his fellow-man.

And wherefore slaughter'd? 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 droop'd 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 hail'd the wretch who won.

CXLI

He heard it, but he heeded not -- his eyes

Were with his heart, and that was far away;

He reck'd not of the life he lost nor prize,

But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,

There where his young barbarians all at play,

There was their Dacian mother -- he, their sire,

Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday --

All this rush'd 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 roar'd or murmur'd 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 crush'd -- walls bow'd --

And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.

CXLIII

A ruin -- yet what a ruin! from its mass

Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been rear'd;

Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,

And marvel where the spoil could have appear'd.

Hath it indeed been plunder'd, or but clear'd?

Alas! developed, opens the decay,

When the colossal fabric's form is near'd:

It will not bear the brightness of the day,

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

CXLIV

But when the rising moon begins to climb

Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;

When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,

And the low night-breeze waves along the air

The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear,

Like laurels on the bald first Cæsar'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 unalter'd 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!

Despoil'd 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 honour'd 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 shadow'd 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 rear'd on high,

Imperial mimic of old Egypt's piles,

Colossal copyist of deformity

Whose travell'd phantasy from the far Nile's

Enormous model, doom'd the artist's toils

To build for giants, and for his vain earth,

His shrunken ashes, raise this dome: How smiles

The gazer's eyes 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 hyæna and the jackal in their shade;

I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell

Their glittering mass i' the sun, and have survey'd

Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem pray'd;

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 lessen'd; 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 the 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 view

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; even 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.

CLVIX

Then pause, and be enlighten'd; 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

Laocoön'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 unvenom'd 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 array'd, 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 once glance the Deity.

CLXII

But in his delicate form -- a dream of Love,

Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast

Long'd for a deathless lover from above,

And madden'd in that vision -- are exprest

All that ideal beauty ever bless'd

The mind with in its most unearthly mood,

When each conception was a heavenly guest --

A ray of immortality -- and stood

Starlike, around, until they gather'd 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 array'd

With an eternal glory -- which, if made

By human hands, is not of human thought;

And Time himself hath hallow'd 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 class'd

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

Through which all things grow phantoms; and the cloud

Between us sinks and all which ever glow'd,

Till Glory's self is twilight, and displays

A melancholy halo scarce allow'd

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 discrown'd,

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 hush'd that pang for ever: with thee fled

The present happiness and promised joy

Which fill'd the imperial isles so full it seem'd to cloy.

CLXIX

Peasants bring forth in safety. -- Can it be,

Oh 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 pour'd

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-hair'd Daughter of the Isles is laid,

The love of millions! How we did intrust

Futurity to her! and, though it must

Darken above our bones, yet fondly deem'd

Our children should obey her child, and bless'd

Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seem'd

Like stars to shepherds' eyes: -- 'twas but a meteor beam'd.

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 run

Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstung

Nations have arm'd 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 link'd the electric chain of that despair,

Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and opprest

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

CLXXIII

Lo, Nemi! navell'd 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 cherish'd hate, its surface wears

A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake,

All coil'd 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 re-ascending 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 till'd, 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 follow'd on till the dark Euxine roll'd

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 gladden'd 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 enobling 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, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, 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 leviathons, 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 wash'd 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 wanton'd 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 extinguish'd 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.

BACK TO CANTO 3 -- http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/show/3828-Lord-George-Gordon-Byron-Childe-Harold-s-Pilgrimage--A-Romaunt--Canto-III-BACK TO CANTO 1 -- http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/59138-Lord-George-Gordon-Byron-Childe-Harold-s-Pilgrimage--A-Romaunt---Canto-I--Form: ababbcbcc. For related views of Venice see Shelley's Lines Written among the Euganean Hills and Julian and Maddalo.'(stanza i. lines 1 and 2. I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;...): The communication between the Ducal palace and the prisons of Venice is by a gloomy bridge, or covered gallery, high above the water, and divided by a stone wall into a passage and a cell. The state dungeons, called "pozzi," or wells, were sunk in the thick walls of the palace; and the prisoner when taken out to die was conducted across the gallery to the other side, and being then led back into the other compartment, or cell, upon the bridge, was there strangled. The low portal through which the criminal was taken into this cell is now walled up; but the passage is still open, and is still known by the name of the Bridge of Sighs. The pozzi are under the flooring of the chamber at the foot of the bridge. They were formerly twelve, but on the first arrival of the French, the Venetians hastily blocked or broke up the deeper of these dungeons. You may still, however, descend by a trap-door, and crawl down through holes, half choked by rubbish, to the depth of two stories below the first range. If you are in want of consolation for the extinction of partician power, perhaps you may find it there; scarcely a ray of light glimmers into the narrow gallery which leads to the cells, and the plaecs of confinement themselves are totally dark. A small hole in the wall admitted the damp air of the passages, and served for the introduction of the prisoner's food. A wooden pallet, raised a foot from the ground, was the only furniture. The conductors tell you that a light was not allowed. The cells are about five paces in length, two and a half in width, and seven feet in height. They are directly beneath one another, and respiration is somewhat difficult in the lower holes. Only one prisoner was found when the republicans descended into these hideous recesses, and he is said to have been confined sixteen years. But the inmates of the dungeons beneath had left traces of their repentance, or of their despair, which are still visible, and may perhaps owe something to recent ingenuity. Some of the detained appear to have offended against, and others to have belonged to, the sacred body, not only from their signatures, but from the churches and belfries which they have scratched upon the walls. (stanza ii lines 1 and 2. She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean....): Cybele: the mother of the gods, generally depicted with a turreted crown. An old writer, describing the appearance of Venice, has made use of the above image, which could not be poetical were it not true. "Quo fit ut qui superne urbem contempletur, turritam telluris imaginem medio Oceano figuratam se putet inspicere." --Marci Antonii Sabelli de Venetae Urbis situ narratio, edit. Taurin. 1527, lib. i. fol. 202.(stanza iii. line 1. In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more. ): The well known song of the gondoliers, of alternate stanzas, from Tasso's Jerusalem, has died with the independence of Venice. Editions of the poem, with the original on one column, and the Venetian variations on the other, as sung by the boatmen, were once common, and are still to be found. (stanza iv. line 4. Above the dogeless city's vanish'd sway...): Napoleon deposed Venice's last doge in 1797.(stanza iv. line 6. With the Rialto;.......): The financial centre of Venice.(stanza iv. line 7. And Pierre, cannot be swept......): Pierre: a character in Venice Preserved by Otway, the Restoration tragic dramatist.(stanza x. line 5. And be the Spartan's epitaph on me -- ): The answer of the mother of Brasidas to the strangers who praised the memory of her son. (as reported by Plutarch).(stanza xi. line 3. The Bucentaur lies rotting...): The Doge's state galley, from which the ring was annually cast into the Adriatic, had been destroyed by the French in 1797.(stanza xi. line 5. St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood...): The lion has lost nothing by his journey to the Invalides, but the gospel which supported the paw that is now on a level with the other foot. The horses also are returned to the ill-chosen spot whence they set out, and are, as before, half hidden under the porch window of St. Mark's church.(stanza xi. line 7. -------- Place where an Emperor sued): The Place of St. Mark, where Frederick Barbarossa ("the Suabian" of the next stanza) submitted to Pope Alexander III. in 1171.(stanza xii. lines 1 and 2. The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns--): After many vain efforts on the part of the Italians entirely to throw off the yoke of Frederic Barbarossa, and as fruitless attempts of the Emperor to make himself absolute master throughout the whole of his Cisalpine dominions, the bloody struggles of four and twenty years were happily brought to a close in the city of Venice. The articles of a treaty had been previously agreed upon between Pope Alexander III. and Barbarossa, and the former having received a safe conduct, had already arrived at Venice from Ferrara, in company with the ambassadors of the king of Sicily and the consuls of the Lombard league. (stanza xii. line 7. ------ lauwine ------): Avalanche (German).(stanza xii. lines 8 and 9. Oh, for one hour of blind old Dandolo! &c.): The reader will recollect the exclamation of the highlander [at the battle of Sheriffmuir (1715)]: "Oh for one hour of Dundee!" Henry Dandolo, when elected Doge, in 1192, was eighty-five years of age. When he commanded the Venetians at the taking of Constantinople, he was consequently ninety-seven years old. At this age he annexed the fourth and a half of the whole empire of Romania, for so the Roman empire was then called, to the title and to the territories of the Venetian Doge. The three-eighths of this empire were preserved in the diplomas until the dukedom of Giovanni Dolfino, who made use of the above designation in the year 1357. Dandolo led the attack on Constantinople in person: two ships, the Paradise and the Pilgrim, were tied together, and a drawbridge or ladder let down from their higher yards to the walls. Then was completed, said the Venetians, the prophecy of the Erythraean sybil. "A gathering together of the powerful shall be made amidst the waves of the Adriatic, under a blind leader; they shall beset the goat -- they shall profane Byzantium -- they shall blacken her buildings -- her spoils shall be dispersed; a new goat shall bleat until they have measured out and run over fifty-four feet, nine inches, and a half." Dandolo died in the first day of June, 1205, having reigned thirteen years, six months, and five days, and was buried in the church of St. Sophia, at Constantinople. Strangely enough it must sound, that the name of the rebel apothecary who received the Doge's sword, and annihilated the ancient government in 1796-7, was Dandolo. Pietro Doria, a fifteenth-century Genoese admiral, was reputed to have threatened not to make peace with Venice until he had bridled the four bronze horses over St. Mark's portal.(stanza xiv. line 3. The "Planter of the Lion."...): That is, the Lion of St. Mark, the standard of the republic, which is the origin of the word Pantaloon -- Piantaleone, Pantaleon, Pantaloon.(stanza xiv. line 6. ------------ Ottomite ): Used in Othello for Ottoman or Turk.(stanza xiv. line 7. --------- Troy's rival, Candia! ): The capital of Crete, which did not fall to the Turk until 1669.(stanza xiv. line 8. -------- Lepanto's fight! ): A battle (1571) in which the Venetians were mainly responsible for defeating the Turks.(stanza xvi. line 3. Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse.): The story is told in Plutarch's life of Nicias.Plutarch tells how the recital of passages from Euripides won the release of some captives when the Athenians were defeated in Sicily, 413 B.C.(stanza xviii. line 5. And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakspeare's art.): Venice preserved; Mysteries of Udolpho; the Ghost-seer, or Armenian; the Merchant of Venice; Othello.(stanza xx. lines 1 and 2. But from their nature will the tannen grow ... &c.): Tannen is the plural of tanne, a species of fir peculiar to the Alps, which only thrives in very rocky parts, where scarcely soil sufficient for its nourishment can be found. On these spots it grows to a greater height than any other mountain tree.(stanza xxviii. lines 1 and 2. A single star is at her side, and reigns ... &c. ): The above description may seem fantastical or exaggerated to those who have never seen an Oriental or an Italian sky, yet it is but a literal and hardly sufficient delineation of an August evening (the eighteenth) as contemplated in one of many rides along the banks of the Brenta near La Mira.(stanza xxx. lines 8 and 9. Watering the tree which bears his lady's name ... &c.): Thanks to the critical acumen of a Scotchman, we now know as little of Laura as ever. It seems, then, first, that Laura was born, lived, died, and was buried, not in Avignon, but in the country. Secondly, Laura was never married, and was a haughty virgin rather than that tender and prudent wife who honoured Avignon by making that town the theatre of an honest French passion, and played off for one and twenty years her little machinery of alternate favours and refusals upon the first poet of the age. (stanza xxxi. line 1. They keep his dust in Arquà, where he died .): Petrarch retired to Arquà immediately on his return from the unsuccessful attempt to visit Urban V. at Rome, in the year 1370, and, with the exception of his celebrated visit to Venice in company with Francesco Novello da Carrara, he appears to have passed the four last years of his life between that charming solitude and Padua. For four months previous to his death he was in a state of continual languor, and in the morning of July the 19th, in the year 1374, was found dead in his library chair with his head resting upon a book. The chair is still shown amongst the precious relics of Arquà, which, from the uninterrupted veneration that has been attached to every thing relative to this great man from the moment of his death to the present hour, have, it may be hoped, a better chance of authenticity than the Shakesperian memorials of Stratford upon Avon.(stanza xxxiv. line 1. Or, it may be, with demons.): The struggle is to the full as likely to be with daemons as with our better thoughts. Satan chose the wilderness for the temptation of our Saviour. And our unsullied John Locke preferred the presence of a child to complete solitude. (stanza xli. lines 1 and 2. The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust ...): Before the remains of Ariosto were removed from the Benedictine church to the library of Ferrara, his bust, which surmounted the tomb, was struck by lightning, and a crown of iron laurels melted away. The event has been recorded by a writer of the last century. The transfer of these sacred ashes on the 6th of June 1801 was one of the most brilliant spectacles of the short-lived Italian Republic, and to consecrate the memory of the ceremony, the once famous fallen Intrepidi were revived and re-formed into the Ariostean academy. (stanza xli. lines 4 and 5. For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves ... &c.): The eagle, the sea calf, the laurel, and the white vine, were amongst the most approved preservatives against lightning: Jupiter chose the first, Augustus Caesar the second, and Tiberius never failed to wear a wreath of the third when the sky threatened a thunder-storm. These superstitions may be received without a sneer in a country where the magical properties of the hazel twig have not lost all their credit; and perhaps the reader may not be much surprised to find that a commentator on Suetonius has taken upon himself gravely to disprove the imputed virtues of the crown of Tiberius, by mentioning that a few years before he wrote a laurel was actually struck by lightning at Rome.(stanza xli. line 8. Know that the lightning sanctifies below.): The Curtian lake and the Ruminal fig-tree in the Forum, having been touched by lightning, were held sacred, and the memory of the accident was preserved by a puteal, or altar, resembling the mouth of a well, with a little chapel covering the cavity supposed to be made by the thunderbolt. Bodies scathed and persons struck dead were thought to be incorruptible; and a stroke not fatal conferred perpetual dignity upon the man so distinguished by heaven. Those killed by lightning were wrapped in a white garment, and buried where they fell. The superstition was not confined to the worshippers of Jupiter: the Lombards believed in the omens furnished by lightning, and a Christian priest confesses that, by a diabolical skill in interpreting thunder, a seer foretold to Agilulf, duke of Turin, an event which came to pass, and have him a queen and a crown. There was, however, something equivocal in this sign, which the ancient inhabitants of Rome did not always consider propitious; and as the fears are likely to last longer than the consolations of superstition, it is not strange that the Romans of the age of Leo X. should have been so much terrified at some misinterpreted storms as to require the exhortations of a scholar who arrayed all the learning on thunder and lightning to prove the omen favourable: beginning with the flash which struck the walls of Velitrae, and including that which played upon a gate at Florence, and foretold the pontificate of one of its citizens.(stanza xlii. line 1. Italia! oh Italia! &c.): The two stanzas, XLII. and XLIII. are, with the exception of a line or two, a translation of the famous sonnet of Filicaja:"Italia, Italia, O tu cui feo la sorte."(stanza xliv. lines 1 and 2. Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him,...&c.): The celebrated letter of Servius Sulpicius to Cicero on the death of his daughter, describes as it then was, and now is, a path which I often traced in Greece, both by sea and land, in different journeys and voyages."On my return from Asia, as I was sailing from Ægina towards Megara, I began to contemplate the prospect of the countries around me: Ægina was behind, Megara before me; Piræus on the right, Corinth on the left; all which towns, once famous and flourishing, now lie overturned and buried in their ruins. Upon this sight, I could not but think presently within myself, Alas! how do we poor mortals fret and vex ourselves if any of our friends happen to die or be killed, whose life is yet so short, when the carcases of so many noble cities lie here exposed me in one view."(stanza xlvi. lines 7 and 8. The skeleton of her Titanic form.): It is Poggio who, looking from the Capitoline hill upon ruined Rome, breaks forth into the exclamation, "ut nunc omni decore nudata, prostrata jacet, instar gigantei cadaveris corrupti atque undique exesi." (stanza xlix. line 1. There, too, the Goddess loves in stone.):The view of the Venus of Medicis isntantly suggests the lines in the Seasons, and the comparison of the object with the description proves, not only the correctness of the portrait, but the peculiar turn of thought, and, if the term may be used, the sexual imagination of the descriptive poet. The same conclusion may be deduced from another hint in the same episode of Musidora; for Thomson's notion of the privileges of favoured love must have been either very primitive, or rather deficient in delicacy, when he made his grateful nymph inform her discreet Damon that in some happier moment he might perhaps be the companion of her bath:"The time may come you need not fly."(stanza liv. lines 6 and 7. Angelo's, Alfieri's bones. ):Alfieri is the great name of this age. The Italians, without waiting for the hundred years, consider hmi as "a poet good in law." -- His memory is the more dear to them because he is the bard of freedom; and because, as such, his tragedies can receive no countenance from any of their sovereigns. They are but very seldom, and but very few of them, allowed to be acted. (stanza lvii. line 1. Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar .): Dante was born in Florence in the year 1261. He fought in two battles, was fourteen times ambassador, and once prior of the republic. When the party of Charles of Anjou triumphed over the Bianchi, he was absent on an embassy to Pope Boniface VIII., and was condemned to two years banishment, and to a fine of 8000 lire; on the non-payment of which he was further punished by the sequestration of all his property. The republic, however, was not content with this satisfaction, for in 1772 was discovered in the archives at Florence a sentence in which Dante is the eleventh of a list of fifteen condemned in 1302 to be burnt alive.He was buried at Ravenna, in a handsome tomb, which was erected by Guido, restored by Bernardo Bembo in 1483, pretor for that republic which had refused to hear him, again restored by Cardinal Corsi in 1692, and replaced by a more magnificent sepulchre, constructed in 1780 at the expense of Cardinal Luigi Valenti Gonzaga.(stanza lvii. lines 2,3,4. Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore ; &c. ): The elder Scipio Africanus had a tomb if he was not buried at Liternum, whither he had retired to voluntary banishment. This tomb was near the sea-shore, and the story of an inscription upon it, Ingrata Patria, having given a name to a modern tower, is, if not true, an agreeable fiction. If he was not buried, her certainly lived there.(stanza lvii. lines 6,7,8. Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore ... &.c): The Florentines did not take the opportunity of Petrarch's short visit to their city in 1350 to revoke the decree which confiscated the property of his father, who had been banished shortly after the exile of Dante. (stanza lviii. lines 1 and 2. Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed / His dust ): Boccaccio was buried in the church of St. Michael and St. James, at Certalo, a small town in the Valdelsa, which was by some supposed the place of his birth. There he passed the latter part of his life in a course of laborious study, which shortened his existence; and there might his ashes have been secure, if not of honour, at least of repose. But the "hyaena bigots" of Certaldo tore up the tombstone of Boccaccio, and ejected it from the holy precincts of St. Michael and St. James.(stanza lxiii. line 5. An earthquake reel'd unheededly away.): "And such was their mutual animosity, so intent were they upon the battle, that the earthquake, which overthrew in great part many of the cities of Italy, which turned the course of rapid streams, poured back the sea upon the rivers, and tore down the very mountains, was not felt by one of the combatants." Such is the description of Livy. It may be doubted whether modern tactics would admit of such an abstraction. The site of the battle of Thrasimene is not to be mistaken. The traveller from the village under Cortonna to Casa di Piano, the next stage on the way to Rome, has for the first two or three miles, around him, but more particularly to the right, that flat land which Hannibal laid waste in order to induce the Consul Flaminius to move from Arezzo. (stanza lxvi. line 1. But thou, Clitumnus.):No book of travels has omitted to expatiate on the temple of the Clitumnus, between Foligno and Spoleto; and no site, or scenery, even in Italy, is more worthy a description. (stanza lxxxvi. line 4. And laid him with the earth's preceding clay.): On the third of September Cromwell gained the victory of Dunbar; a year afterwards he obtained "his crowning mercy" of Worcester; and a few years after, on the same day, which he had ever esteemed the most fortunate for him, died.(stanza xc. lines 3 and 4. For the Roman's mind / Was modell'd in a less terrestrial mould ... &c.):It is possible to be a very great man and to be still very inferior to Julius Caesar, the most complete character, so Lord Bacon thought, of all antiquity. Nature seems incapable of such extraordinary combinations as composed his versatile capacity, which was the wonder even of the Romans themselves. (stanza cvii. line 9. Behold the Imperial Mount! 'tis thus the mighty falls. ): The Palatine is one mass of ruins, particularly on the side towards the Circus Maximus. The very soil is formed of crumbled brick-work. (stanza cx. lines 8 and 9. And apostolic statues climb ...&c.):The column of Trajan is surmounted by St. Peter; that of Aurelius by St. Paul. (stanza cxi. line 9. Still we Trajan's name adore .): Trajan was proverbially the best of the Roman princes. (stanza cxli. lines 6 and 7. Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday &c.): Gladiators were of two kinds, compelled and voluntary; and were supplied from several conditions; from slaves sold for that purpose; from culprits; from barbarian captives either taken in war, and, after being led in triumph, set apart for the games, or those seized and condemned as rebels; also from free citizens, some fighting for hire (auctorati), others from a depraved ambition: at last even knights and senators were exhibited, a disgrace of which the first tyrant was naturally the first inventor. In the end, dwarfs, and even women, fought; an enormity prohibited by Severus. Of these the most to be pitied undoubtedly were the barbarian captives; and to this species a Christian writer justly applies the epithet "innocent", to distinguish them from the professional gladiators. (stanza cxlii. lines 5 and 6. Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise ... &c.):When one gladiator wounded another, he shouted, "he has it," "hoc habet," or "habet." The wounded combatant dropped his weapon, and advancing to the edge of the arena, supplicated the spectators. If he had fought well, the people saved him; if otherwise, or as they happened to be inclined, they turned down their thumbs, and he was slain. They were occasionally so savage that they were impatient if a combat lasted longer than ordinary without wounds or death. The emperor's presence generally saved the vanquished: and it is recorded as an instance of Caracalla's ferocity, that he sent those who supplicated him for life, in a spectacle at Nicomedia, to ask the people; in other words, handed them over to be slain. (stanza cxliv. line 6. Like laurels on the bald Caesar's head .): Suetonius informs us that Julius Caesar was particularly gratified by that decree of the senate, which enabled him to wear a wreath of laurel on all occasions. He was anxious, not to show that he was the conqueror of the world, but to hide that he was bald. A stranger at Rome would hardly have guessed at the motive, nor should we without the help of the historian. (stanza cxlvii. lines 8 and 9. And they who feel for genius may repose Their eyes on honour'd forms, whose busts... &c.): The Pantheon has been made a receptacle for the busts of modern great, or, at least, distinguished, men. The flood of light which once fell through the large orb above on the whole circle of divinities, now shines on a numerous assemblage of mortals, some one or two of whom have been almost deified by the veneration of their countrymen.(stanza cxlviii. line 1. There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light ...): This and the three next stanzas allude to the story of the Roman daughter, which is recalled to the traveller, by the site or pretended site of that adventure now shown at the church of St. Nicholas in carcere. (stanza cliii.): This and the six next stanzas have a reference to the church of St. Peter's. For a measurement of the comparative length of this basilica, and the other great churches of Europe, see the pavement of St. Peter's, and the Classical Tour through Italy, vol. ii. page 125. et seq. chap. iv. (stanza clxxi. lines 6 and 7. ---- Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns ...&c.): Mary died on the scaffold; Elizabeth of a broken heart; Charles V. a hermit; Louis XIV. a bankrupt in means and glory; Cromwell of anxiety; and, "the greatest is behind," Napoleon lives a prisoner. To these sovereigns a long but superfluous list might be added of names equally illustrious and unhappy.(stanza clxxiii. line 1. Lo, Nemi! navell'd in the woody hills .): The village of Nemi was near the African retreat of Egeria, and, from the shades which embosomed the temple of Diana, has preserved to this day its distinctive appellation of The Grove. Nemi is but an evening's ride from the comfortable inn of Albano.'~ The Works of Lord Byron, vol. 1., 1819.