Boccaccio[439] to his parent earth bequeathed[my] [21.H.]
 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?[440]
 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,[441] 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[mz]
 The immortal Exile;—Arquà, too, her store
 Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps,
 While Florence vainly begs her banished dead and weeps.[442]

LX.

What is her Pyramid of precious stones? [22.H.]
Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues
 Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones
 Of merchant-dukes?[443] 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;[444]
 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,[445] 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,[na]
 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[446] reeled unheededly away! [23.H.]
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[nb]
 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 agéd 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.[nc]

LXVI.

But thou, Clitumnus[447]! 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[448]
 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[449] still,
 Of small and delicate proportion, keeps
 Upon a mild declivity of hill,[nd]
 Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps
 Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps
 The finny darter with the glittering scales,[450]
 Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;
 While, chance, some scattered water-lily sails[ne]
 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.[451]

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[nf]
 The gulf! and how the Giant Element
 From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,[ng]
 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,[452]

LXXII.

Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,
 From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,
 An Iris[453] 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[nh]
 The thundering Lauwine[454]—might be worshipped more;
 But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear[ni]
 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 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,[455]
 The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word
 In my repugnant youth,[456] 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,[nj]
 Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought[nk]
 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.[nl]

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.

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 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;[nm]
 empty urn within her withered hands,
 Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;
 The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;[457]
 The very sepulchres lie tenantless[458]
 Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,
 Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?
 Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress.[459]

LXXX.

The Goth, the Christian—Time—War—Flood, and Fire,[460]
 Have dealt upon the seven-hilled City's pride;
 She saw her glories star by star expire,[nn]
 And up the steep barbarian Monarchs ride,
 Where the car climbed the Capitol;[461] 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,[no]
 Night's daughter, Ignorance,[462] hath wrapt and wrap
 All round us; we but feel our way to err:
 The Ocean hath his 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![463] 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,[np]
 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.

Oh, thou, whose chariot rolled on Fortune's wheel,
 Triumphant Sylla![464] 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.

Thy 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?[nq]
 She who was named Eternal, and arrayed
 Her warriors but to conquer—she who veiled
 Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed,[nr]
 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,[ns]
 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.[465]

LXXXVI.

The third of the same Moon whose former course
 Had all but crowned him, on the selfsame 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![466] yet existent in [24.H.]
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![467] [25.H.]
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 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 reared
 Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled
 In imitation of the things[468] 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—[469]

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 modelled in a less terrestrial mould, [26.H.]
With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold,[470]
 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![471] But the man
 Who would have tamed his Eagles down to flee,
 Like a trained falcon, in the Gallic van,[472]
 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—[nt]
 Coquettish in ambition—still he aimed—
 And what? can he avouch, or answer what he claimed?[nu]

XCII.

And would be all or nothing—nor could wait
 For the sure grave to level him; few years
 Had fixed 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 flowed,
 An universal Deluge, which appears
 Without an Ark for wretched Man's abode,
 And ebbs but to reflow!—Renew thy rainbow, God![nv]

XCIII.

What from this barren being do we reap?[473]
 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;[474]
 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,[nw]
 Rotting from sire to son, and age to age,[475]
 Proud of their trampled nature, and so die,[nx]
 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[476]
 Such as Columbia saw arise when she
 Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefined?
 Or must such minds be nourished in the wild,
 Deep in the unpruned forest, 'midst the roar[ny]
 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;[nz]
 And fatal have her Saturnalia been[oa]
 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[477] 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.[478]

XCVIII.

Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying,
 Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind;[479]
 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[480]
 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.[ob]

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.[oc]

CII.