Lord Byron - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Byron

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

  To laughing life, with her redundant horn.

  Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps,

  Was modern Luxury of Commerce born,

  And buried Learning rose, redeemed to a new morn.

  XLIX.

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

  The air around with beauty; we inhale

  The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils

  Part of its immortality; the veil

  Of heaven is half undrawn; within the pale

  We stand, and in that form and face behold

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

  And to the fond idolaters of old

  Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould:

  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 –

  Chained to the chariot of triumphal Art,

  We stand as captives, and would not depart.

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

  The paltry jargon of the marble mart,

  Where Pedantry gulls Folly – we have eyes:

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

  LI.

  Appearedst thou not to Paris in this guise?

  Or to more deeply blest Anchises? or,

  In all thy perfect goddess-ship, when lies

  Before thee thy own vanquished Lord of War?

  And gazing in thy face as toward a star,

  Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn,

  Feeding on thy sweet cheek! while thy lips are

  With lava kisses melting while they burn,

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

  LII.

  Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love,

  Their full divinity inadequate

  That feeling to express, or to improve,

  The gods become as mortals, and man’s fate

  Has moments like their brightest! but the weight

  Of earth recoils upon us; – let it go!

  We can recall such visions, and create

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

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

  LIII.

  I leave to learnèd fingers, and wise hands,

  The artist and his ape, to teach and tell

  How well his connoisseurship understands

  The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell:

  Let these describe the undescribable:

  I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream

  Wherein that image shall for ever dwell;

  The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream

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

  LIV.

  In Santa Croce’s holy precincts lie

  Ashes which make it holier, dust which is

  E’en in itself an immortality,

  Though there were nothing save the past, and this

  The particle of those sublimities

  Which have relapsed to chaos: – here repose

  Angelo’s, Alfieri’s bones, and his,

  The starry Galileo, with his woes;

  Here Machiavelli’s earth returned to whence it rose.

  LV.

  These are four minds, which, like the elements,

  Might furnish forth creation: – Italy!

  Time, which hath wronged thee with ten thousand rents

  Of thine imperial garment, shall deny,

  And hath denied, to every other sky,

  Spirits which soar from ruin: – thy decay

  Is still impregnate with divinity,

  Which gilds it with revivifying ray;

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

  LVI.

  But where repose the all Etruscan three –

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

  The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he

  Of the Hundred Tales of love – where did they lay

  Their bones, distinguished from our common clay

  In death as life? Are they resolved to dust,

  And have their country’s marbles nought to say?

  Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust?

  Did they not to her breast their filial earth entrust?

  LVII.

  Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,

  Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore;

  Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,

  Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore

  Their children’s children would in vain adore

  With the remorse of ages; and the crown

  Which Petrarch’s laureate brow supremely wore,

  Upon a far and foreign soil had grown,

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

  LVIII.

  Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed

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

  With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed

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

  That music in itself, whose sounds are song,

  The poetry of speech? No; – even his tomb

  Uptorn, must bear the hyæna bigots’ wrong,

  No more amidst the meaner dead find room,

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

  LIX.

  And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust;

  Yet for this want more noted, as of yore

  The 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! honoured sleeps

  The immortal exile; – Arqua, too, her store

  Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps,

  While Florence vainly begs her banished dead, and weeps.

  LX.

  What is her pyramid of precious stones?

  Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues

  Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones

  Of merchant-dukes? the momentary dews

  Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse

  Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead,

  Whose names are mausoleums of the Muse,

  Are gently prest with far more reverent tread

  Than ever paced the slab which paves the princely head.

  LXI.

  There be more things to greet the heart and eyes

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

  Where Sculpture with her rainbow sister vies;

  There be more marvels yet – but not for mine;

  For I have been accustomed to entwine

  My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields

  Than Art in galleries: though a work divine

  Calls for my spirit’s homage, yet it yields

  Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields

  LXII.

  Is of another temper, and I roam

  By Thrasimene’s lake, in the defiles

  Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home;

  For there the Carthaginian’s warlike wiles

  Come back before me, as his skill beguiles

  The host between the mountains and the shore,

  Where Courage falls in her despairing files,

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

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

  LXIII.

  Like to a forest felled by mountain winds;

  And such the storm of battle on this day,

&
nbsp; And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds

  To all save carnage, that, beneath the fray,

  An earthquake reeled unheededly away!

  None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet,

  And yawning forth a grave for those who lay

  Upon their bucklers for a winding-sheet;

  Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet.

  LXIV.

  The Earth to them was as a rolling bark

  Which bore them to Eternity; they saw

  The Ocean round, but had no time to mark

  The motions of their vessel: Nature’s law,

  In them suspended, recked not of the awe

  Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds

  Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdraw

  From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds

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

  LXV.

  Far other scene is Thrasimene now;

  Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain

  Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough;

  Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain

  Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta’en –

  A little rill of scanty stream and bed –

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

  And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead

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

  LXVI.

  But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave

  Of the most living crystal that was e’er

  The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave

  Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear

  Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer

  Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters!

  And most serene of aspect, and most clear:

  Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters,

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

  LXVII.

  And on thy happy shore a temple still,

  Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,

  Upon a mild declivity of hill,

  Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps

  Thy current’s calmness; oft from out it leaps

  The finny darter with the glittering scales,

  Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;

  While, chance, some scattered water-lily sails

  Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales.

  LXVIII.

  Pass not unblest the genius of the place!

  If through the air a zephyr more serene

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

  Along his margin a more eloquent green,

  If on the heart the freshness of the scene

  Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust

  Of weary life a moment lave it clean

  With Nature’s baptism, – ‘tis to him ye must

  Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust.

  LXIX.

  The roar of waters! – from the headlong height

  Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;

  The fall of waters! rapid as the light

  The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;

  The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,

  And boil in endless torture; while the sweat

  Of their great agony, wrung out from this

  Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet

  That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,

  LXX.

  And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again

  Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,

  With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,

  Is an eternal April to the ground,

  Making it all one emerald. How profound

  The gulf! and how the giant element

  From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,

  Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent

  With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent

  LXXI.

  To the broad column which rolls on, and shows

  More like the fountain of an infant sea

  Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes

  Of a new world, than only thus to be

  Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,

  With many windings through the vale: – Look back!

  Lo! where it comes like an eternity,

  As if to sweep down all things in its track,

  Charming the eye with dread, – a matchless cataract,

  LXXII.

  Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,

  From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,

  An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,

  Like Hope upon a deathbed, and, unworn

  Its steady dyes, while all around is torn

  By the distracted waters, bears serene

  Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn:

  Resembling, mid the torture of the scene,

  Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.

  LXXIII.

  Once more upon the woody Apennine,

  The infant Alps, which – had I not before

  Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine

  Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar

  The thundering lauwine – might be worshipped more;

  But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear

  Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar

  Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near,

  And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear,

  LXXIV.

  The Acroceraunian mountains of old name;

  And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly

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

  For still they soared unutterably high:

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

  Athos, Olympus, Ætna, Atlas, made

  These hills seem things of lesser dignity,

  All, save the lone Soracte’s height displayed,

  Not now in snow, which asks the lyric Roman’s aid

  LXXV.

  For our remembrance, and from out the plain

  Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,

  And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain

  May he who will his recollections rake,

  And quote in classic raptures, and awake

  The hills with Latian echoes; I abhorred

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

  The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word

  In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record

  LXXVI.

  Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned

  My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught

  My mind to meditate what then it learned,

  Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought

  By the impatience of my early thought,

  That, with the freshness wearing out before

  My mind could relish what it might have sought,

  If free to choose, I cannot now restore

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

  LXXVII.

  Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so,

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

  To understand, not feel, thy lyric flow,

  To comprehend, but never love thy verse,

  Although no deeper moralist rehearse

  Our little life, nor bard prescribe his art,

  Nor livelier satirist the conscience pierce,

  Awakening without wounding the touched heart,

  Yet fare thee well – upon Soracte’s ridge we part.

  LXXVIII.

  O Rome! my country! city of the soul!


  The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,

  Lone mother of dead empires! and control

  In their shut breasts their petty misery.

  What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see

  The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way

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

  Whose agonies are evils of a day –

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

  LXXIX.

  The Niobe of nations! there she stands,

  Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;

  An empty urn within her withered hands,

  Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;

  The Scipios’ tomb contains no ashes now;

  The very sepulchres lie tenantless

  Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,

  Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?

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

  LXXX.

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

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

  She saw her glories star by star expire,

  And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride,

  Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide

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

  Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void,

  O’er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,

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

  LXXXI.

  The double night of ages, and of her,

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

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

  The ocean hath its chart, the stars their map;

  And knowledge spreads them on her ample lap;

  But Rome is as the desert, where we steer

  Stumbling o’er recollections: now we clap

  Our hands, and cry, ‘Eureka!’ it is clear –

  When but some false mirage of ruin rises near.

  LXXXII.

  Alas, the lofty city! and alas

  The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day

  When Brutus made the dagger’s edge surpass

  The conqueror’s sword in bearing fame away!

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

  And Livy’s pictured page! But these shall be

  Her resurrection; all beside – decay.

  Alas for Earth, for never shall we see

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

  LXXXIII.

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

  Triumphant Sylla! Thou, who didst subdue

  Thy country’s foes ere thou wouldst pause to feel

  The wrath of thy own wrongs, or reap the due

  Of hoarded vengeance till thine eagles flew

  O’er prostrate Asia; – thou, who with thy frown

  Annihilated senates – Roman, too,