PADUA, thou within whose walls
Those mute guests at festivals, Son and Mother, Death and Sin, Played at dice for Ezzelin,
Till Death cried, "I win, I win!"
And Sin cursed to lose the wager,
But Death promised, to assuage her,
That he would petition for
Her to be made Vice-Emperor,
When the destined years were o'er,
Over all between the Po
And the eastern Alpine snow,
Under the mighty Austrian.
Sin smiled so as Sin only can,
And since that time, ay, long before,
Both have ruled from shore to shore,
That incestuous pair, who follow
Tyrants as the sun the swallow,
As repentance follows crime,
And as changes follow time.
In thine halls the lamp of learning,
Padua, now no more is burning;
Like a meteor, whose wild way
Is lost over the grave of day,
It gleams betrayed and to betray:
Once remotest nations came
To adore that sacred flame,
When it lit not many a hearth
On this cold and gloomy earth;
Now new fires from antique light
Spring beneath the wide world's might,
But their spark lies dead in thee,
Trampled out by tyranny.
As the Norway woodman quells,
In the depth of piny dells,
One light flame among the brakes,
While the boundless forest shakes,
And its mighty trunks are torn
By the fire thus lowly born;
The spark beneath his feet is dead,
He starts to see the flames it fed
Howling through the darkened sky
With a myriad tongues victoriously,
And sinks down in fear; so thou,
O tyranny, beholdest now
Light around thee, and thou hearest
The loud flames ascend, and fearest:
Grovel on the earth; ay, hide
In the dust thy purple pride!
Percy Bysshe Shelley.
IS said a stranger in the days of old
(Some say a Dorian, some a Sybarite;
But distant things are ever lost in clouds), —
"T is said a stranger came, and, with his plough,
Traced out the site; and Posidonia rose,
Severely great, Neptune the tutelar god;
A Homer's language murmuring in her streets,
And in her haven many a mast from Tyre.
Then came another, an unbidden guest.
He knocked and entered with a train in arms;
And all was changed, her very name and language!
The Tyrian merchant, shipping at his door
Ivory and gold and silk and frankincense,
Sailed as before, but, sailing, cried, "For Pæstum!"
And now a Virgil, now an Ovid, sung
Pæstum's twice-blowing roses; while, within,
Parents and children mourned, and every year
('T was on the day of some old festival)
Met to give way to tears, and once again
Talk in the ancient tongue of things gone by.
At length an Arab climbed the battlements,
Slaying the sleepers in the dead of night,
And from all eyes the glorious vision fled,
Leaving a place lonely and dangerous,
Where whom the robber spares a deadlier foe
Strikes at unseen, and at a time when joy
Opens the heart, when summer skies are blue,
And the clear air is soft and delicate:
For then the demon works, then with that air
The thoughtless wretch drinks in a subtle poison
Lulling to sleep; and, when he sleeps, he dies.
Samuel Rogers.
THE GRECIAN TEMPLES AT PESTUM.
Pæstum's ancient fanes I trod,
And mused on those strange men of old,
Whose dark religion could infold
So many gods, and yet no God!
Did they to human feelings own,
And had they human souls indeed,
Or did the sternness of their creed
Frown their faint spirits into stone?
The southern breezes fan my face;
I hear the hum of bees arise,
And lizards dart, with mystic eyes,
That shrine the secret of the place!
These silent columns speak of dread,
Of lovely worship without love;
And yet the warm, deep heaven above
Whispers a softer tale instead!
Rossiter W. Raymond.
THERE, down Salerno's bay,
In deserts far away,
Over whose solitudes
The dread malaria broods,
No labor tills the land, -
Only the fierce brigand,
Or shepherd, wan and lean,
O'er the wide plains is seen.
Yet there, a lovely dream,
There Grecian temples gleam,
Whose form and mellowed tone
Rival the Parthenon.
The Sybarite no more
Comes hither to adore,
With perfumed offering,
The ocean god and king.
The deity is fled
Long since, but, in his stead,
The smiling sea is seen,
The Doric shafts between;
And round the time-worn base
Climb vines of tender grace,
And Pæstum's roses still
The air with fragrance fill.
Christopher Pearse Cranch.
|