Conversed with the gods on high, Among all the minstrels who made Sweetness 'tween Etna and Alp; Nor was any laid
With such music and tears in the tomb.
What seek ye, my comrades at Rome?
To see and be seen at the gay Meet on the Appian Way,
Or within the tall palace at eve To dance out your season at Rome? To muse on the giants of old, In the Forum at twilight to grieve? It is more that these ruins enfold! Warmer and higher beats
The Englishman's heart at the words, Shelley and Keats!
And here is the heart of our Rome.
HEREWITH I send you three pressed withered
This one was white, with golden star; this blue As Capri's cave; that, purple, shotted through With sunset-orange. Where the Duomo towers In crystal air, and on through pendent bowers The Arno glides, this faded Violet grew On Landor's grave; from Landor's heart it drew Its magic azure in the long spring hours.
Within the shadow of the Pyramid
Of Caius Cestius was the Daisy found, White as the soul of Keats in Paradise.
The Pansy, there were hundreds of them, hid In the thick grass that folded Shelley's mound, Guarding his ashes with most lovely eyes.
Rome, the Campagna.
THE CAMPAGNA OF ROME.
AVE none appeared as tillers of the ground,
None since they went, as though it still were theirs, And they might come and claim their own again? Was the last plough a Roman's?
Sacred for ages, whence, as Virgil sings,
The Queen of Heaven, alighting from the sky, Looked down and saw the armies in array,
Let us contemplate; and, where dreams from Jove Descended on the sleeper, where perhaps
Some inspirations may be lingering still, Some glimmerings of the future or the past, Let us await their influence; silently Revolving, as we rest on the green turf, The changes from that hour when he from Troy Came up the Tiber; when refulgent shields, No strangers to the iron-hail of war,
Streamed far and wide, and dashing oars were heard Among those woods where Silvia's stag was lying, His antlers gay with flowers; among those woods Where by the moon, that saw and yet withdrew not, Two were so soon to wander and be slain, Two lovely in their lives, nor in their death Divided.
Then, and hence to be discerned,
How many realms, pastoral and warlike, lay Along this plain, each with its schemes of power, Its little rivalships! What various turns
Of fortune there; what moving accidents From ambuscade and open violence !
Mingling, the sounds came up; and hence how oft We might have caught among the trees below, Glittering with helm and shield, the men of Tibur ; Or in Greek vesture, Greek their origin, Some embassy, ascending to Præneste; How oft descried, without thy gates, Aricia, Entering the solemn grove for sacrifice,
Senate and people!
Glowing with life!
In one. We look, and where the river rolls Southward its shining labyrinth, in her strength A city, girt with battlements and towers, On seven small hills is rising. Round about, At rural work, the citizens are seen,
None unemployed; the noblest of them all Binding their sheaves or on their threshing-floors, As though they had not conquered. Everywhere
Some trace of valor or heroic toil!
Here is the sacred field of the Horatii.
There are the Quintian meadows. Here the Hill How holy, where a generous people, twice,
Twice going forth, in terrible anger sate
Armed; and, their wrongs redressed, at once gave way. Helmet and shield and sword and spear thrown down, And every hand uplifted, every heart
Poured out in thanks to Heaven.
We look; and lo, the sea is white with sails Innumerable, wafting to the shore Treasures untold; the vale, the promontories, A dream of glory; temples, palaces, Called up as by enchantment; aqueducts Among the groves and glades rolling along Rivers, on many an arch high overhead; And in the centre, like a burning sun,
The Imperial city! They have now subdued All nations. But where they who led them forth; Who, when at length released by victory (Buckler and spear hung up, but not to rust), Held poverty no evil, no reproach,
Living on little with a cheerful mind,
The Decii, the Fabricii? Where the spade And reaping-hook, among their household things Duly transmitted? In the hands of men Made captive; while the master and his guests, Reclining, quaff in gold, and roses swim, Summer and winter, through the circling year, On their Falernian,—in the hands of men
Dragged into slavery with how many more Spared but to die, a public spectacle, In combat with each other, and required To fall with grace, with dignity, to sink While life is gushing, and the plaudits ring Faint and yet fainter on their failing ear, As models for the sculptor.
Their hours are numbered. Hark, a yell, a shriek, A barbarous outcry, loud and louder yet,
That echoes from the mountains to the sea!
And mark, beneath us, like a bursting cloud, The battle moving onward! Had they slain
All, that the earth should from her womb bring forth New nations to destroy them? From the depth Of forests, from what none had dared explore, Regions of thrilling ice, as though in ice Engendered, multiplied, they pour along, Shaggy and huge! Host after host, they come; The Goth, the Vandal, and again the Goth! Once more we look, and all is still as night, All desolate! Groves, temples, palaces, Swept from the sight; and nothing visible, Amid the sulphurous vapors that exhale As from a land accurst, save here and there An empty tomb, a fragment like the limb Of some dismembered giant. In the midst A city stands, her domes and turrets crowned With many a cross; but they that issue forth Wander like strangers who had built among The mighty ruins, silent, spiritless;
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