Developing the mountains, leaves and flowers, And shining in the brawling brook, where-by, Clear as its current, glide the sauntering hours With a calm languor, which, though to the eye Idlesse it seem, hath its morality.

If from society we learn to live,

"Tis solitude should teach us how to die;

It hath no flatterers; vanity can give

Peace to Torquato's injured shade! 'twas his
In life and death to be the mark where Wrong
Aim'd with her poison'd arrows, but to miss.
Oh, victor unsurpass'd in modern song!
Each year brings forth its millions; but how long
The tide of generations shall roll on,

And not the whole combined and countiess throng
Compose a mind like thine? though all in one

XLII.

Italia! oh Italia! thou who hast 22 The fatal gift of beauty, which became A funeral dower of present woes and past, On thy sweet brow is sorrow plough'd by shame, And annals graved in characters of flame. Oh God! that thou wert in thy nakedness Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress:

XLIII.

Then might'st thou more appal; or, less desired,
Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored
For thy destructive charms; then, still untired,
Would not be seen the armed torrents pour'd
Down the deep Alps; nor would the hostile horde
Of many-nation'd spoilers from the Po

Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger's sword
Be thy sad weapon of defence, and so,

XLVIII.

But Arno wins us to the fair white walls, Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps A softer feeling for her fairy halls. Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps 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, redeem'd 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
And to the fond idolaters of old
[fail:

In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie 27

Ashes which make it holier, dust which is
Even 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,28

The starry Galileo, with his woes;

What is her pyramid of precious stones? 34
Of phorphyry, 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 the mausoleums of the muse,
Are gently prest with far more reverent tread

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 mind; For I have been accustom'd 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, swoln to rivers with their gore, Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scatter'd

o'er

LXIII.

Like to a forest fell'd 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 reel'd unheedingly away! 35 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, reck'd not of the awe [birds
Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the
Plunge in the clouds for refuge and withdraw
From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing
herds

Stumbling 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

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

Have dealt upon the seven-hill'd city's pride; She saw her glories star by star expire, And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride, Where the car climb'd 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 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 clearWhen but some false mirage of ruin rises near.

LXXXII.

Alas! the lofty city! and alas!

The trebly hundred triumphs! 42 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.

Oh, thou, whose chariot roll'd on Fortune's wheel,43 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 array'd
Her warriors but to conquer-she who veil'd
Earth with her haughty shadow, and display'd,
Until the o'ercanopied horizon fail'd,

Her rushing wings-Oh! she who was Almighty hail'd!

LXXXV.

Sylla was first of victors; but our own

The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell; he

Too swept off senates while he hew'd 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 nis

breath.

LXXXVI.

The third of the same moon whose former course Had all but crown'd him, on the selfsame day Deposed him gently from his throne of force, And laid him with the earth's preceding clay.44 And show'd 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 exist in 45
The austerest form of naked majesty,
Thou who beheld'st '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! 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 suck'd from thy wild teat, Scorch'd by the Roman Jove's etherial 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 deadThe men of iron; and the world hath rear'd Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled In imitation of the things they fear'd, [steer'd And fought and conquer'd, and the same course At apish distance; but as yet none have, Nor could, the same supremacy have near'd, Save one vain man, who is not in the grave, But, vanquish'd by himself, to his own slaves a slave