by Byron
Of earth recoils upon us; – let it go!
We can recal 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
470
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
475
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 lie2
Ashes which make it holier, dust which is
480
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,
485
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
490
Of thine imperial garment, shall deny,
And hath denied, to every other sky,
Spirits which soar from ruin: — thy decay
Is still impregnate with divinity,
Which gilds it with revivifying ray;
495
Such as the great of yore, Canova is to-day.
LVI
But where repose the all Etruscan three –
Dante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they,
The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he
Of the Hundred Tales of love – where did they lay
500
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 intrust?
LVII
505
Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,
Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore;
Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,
Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore
Their children’s children would in vain adore
510
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
515
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
520
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
525
The Caesar’s pageant, shorn of Brutus’ bust,
Did but of Rome’s best Son remind her more:
Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore,
Fortress of falling empire! honour’d sleeps
The immortal exile; – Arqua, too, her store
530
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
535
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
540
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;
545
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
550
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
555
The host between the mountains and the shore,
Where Courage falls in her despairing files,
And torrents, swoll’n to rivers with their gore,
Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scatter’d o’er,
LXIII
Like to a forest fell’d by mountain winds;
560
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,
565
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
570
The Ocean round, but had no 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
575
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;
580
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
585
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
590
Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer
&nbs
p; 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
595
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
600
The finny darter with the glittering scales,
Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;
While, chance, some scatter’d water-lily sails
Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales.
LXVIII
Pass not unblest the Genius of the place!
605
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
610
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;
615
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
620
Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet
That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,
LXX
And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again
Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,
With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,
625
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
630
With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent!
LXXI
To the broad column which rolls on, and shows
More like the fountain of an infant sea
Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes
Of a new world, than only thus to be
635
Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,
With many windings, through the vale: — Look back!
Lo! where it comes like an eternity,
As if to sweep down all things in its track,
Charming the eye with dread, – a matchless cataract,1
LXXII
640
Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,
From side to side beneath the glittering morn
An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,1
Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn
Its steady dyes, while all around is torn
645
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,
650
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 lauwine2 – might be worshipp’d more;
But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear
655
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
660
Like spirits of the spot, as ’twere for fame,
For still they soar’d 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,
665
All, save the lone Soracte’s heights 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
670
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 word1
675
In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record
LXXVI
Aught that recals 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
680
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
685
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
690
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!
695
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
700
O’er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye!
Whose agonies are evils of a day –
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.
LXXIX
The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
705
An empty urn within her wither’d hands,
Whose holy dust was scatter’d long ago;
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.
770
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
775
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,
780
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
785
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,
790
Scorch’d by the Roman Jove’s etherial dart,
And thy limbs black with lightning – dost thou yet
Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget?
LXXXIX
Thou dost; – but all thy foster-babes are dead –
The men of iron; and the world hath rear’d
795
Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled
In imitation of the things they fear’d,
LXXXIII
Oh thou whose chariot roll’d on Fortune’s wheel
740
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
745
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
750
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,
755
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
760
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
765
Beheld him win two realms, and, happier, yield his breath.1
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,