Chapter 8
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 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 hyaena bigots' wrong, No more amidst the meaner dead find room, Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for WHOM?
LIX.
And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust; Yet for this want more noted, as of yore 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! 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, 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, AEtna, 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, 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 arrayed Her warriors but to conquer--she who veiled Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed Until the o'er-canopied horizon failed, Her rushing wings--Oh! she who was almighty hailed!
LXXXV.
Sylla was first of victors; but our own, The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell!--he Too swept off senates while he hewed 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 crowned him, on the self-same day Deposed him gently from his throne of force, And laid him with the earth's preceding clay. And showed not Fortune thus how fame and sway, And all we deem delightful, and 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 Caesar 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 sucked from thy wild teat, Scorched by the Roman Jove's ethereal dart, And thy limbs blacked 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 reared Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled In imitation of the things they feared, And fought and conquered, and the same course steered, At apish distance; but as yet none have, Nor could, the same supremacy have neared, Save one vain man, who is not in the grave, But, vanquished by himself, to his own slaves a slave,
XC.
The fool of false dominion--and a kind Of bastard Caesar, following him of old With steps unequal; for the Roman's mind Was modelled in a less terrestrial mould, With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold, And an immortal instinct which redeemed The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold. Alcides with the distaff now he seemed At Cleopatra's feet, and now himself he beamed.
XCI.
And came, and saw, and conquered. But the man Who would have tamed his eagles down to flee, Like a trained falcon, in the Gallic van, Which he, in sooth, long led to victory, With a deaf heart which never seemed to be A listener to itself, was strangely framed; With but one weakest weakness--vanity: Coquettish in ambition, still he aimed At what? Can he avouch, or answer what he claimed?
XCII.
And would be all or nothing--nor could wait For the sure grave to level him; few years Had fixed him with the Caesars 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 flowed, 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 weighed 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 allowed, Averred, and known,--and daily, hourly seen-- The yoke that is upon us doubly bowed, And the intent of tyranny avowed, 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 conquered be, And Freedom find no champion and no child Such as Columbia saw arise when she Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefiled? Or must such minds be nourished 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 and 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, Chopped 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 bitter 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'erthrown: What was this tower of strength? within its cave What treasure lay so locked, so hid?--A woman's grave.
C.
But who was she, the lady of the dead, Tombed 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 the 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, bowed With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb That weighed 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 grey 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 seat 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 shattered 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 foundered 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 owlet's cry, As I now hear them, in the fading light Dim o'er the bird of darkness' native site, Answer each other on the Palatine, With their large eyes, all glistening grey 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 massed together, hillocks heaped On what were chambers, arch crushed, column strown In fragments, choked-up vaults, and frescoes steeped In subterranean damps, where the owl peeped, Deeming it midnight:--Temples, baths, or halls? Pronounce who can; for all that Learning reaped From her research hath been, that these are walls-- Behold the 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 amassed All treasures, all delights, that eye or ear, Heart, soul could seek, tongue ask--Away with words! draw near,
CIX.