Nor half thy triumph this, caft from brute fields Into the haunts of men thy ruthless eye.
There buxom Plenty never turns her horn;
The grace and virtue of exterior life,
No clean Convenience reigns; even Sleep itself,
Leaft delicate of powers, reluctant, there
Lays on the bed impure his heavy head.
Thy horrid walk! dead, empty, unadorn'd; 180
See ftreets whose echoes never know the voice
Of cheerful Hurry, Commerce many-tongu'd,
And Art mechanic at his various task,
Fervent, employ'd. Mark the defponding race,
Of occupation void, as void of hope;
185
Hope, the glad ray glanc'd from Eternal Good,
That life enlivens, and exalts its powers,
With views of fortune-madness all to them!
By thee relentless feiz'd their better joys,
To the foft aid of cordial airs they fly,
Breathing a kind oblivion o'er their woes,
And love and mufic melt their fouls away.
From feeble Juftice fee how rash Revenge,
Trembling, the balance fnatches, and the fword,
Fearful himself, to venal ruffians gives.
See where God's altar, nurfing Murder, stands
With the red touch of dark affaffins ftain'd.
But chief let Rome, the mighty City! speak
The full-exerted genius of thy reign.
Behold her rife amid the lifeless wafle,
Expiring Nature all corrupted round';
While the lone Tiber, thro' the defert plain
Winds his wafte ftores, and fullen fweeps along.
Patch'd from my fragments, in unfolid pomp,
Mark how the temple glares, and, artful dreft, 205
Amufive, draws the fuperftitious train.
Mark how the palace lifts a lying front,
Concealing often, in magnific jail,
Proud Want; a deep unanimated gloom!
And oft' adjoining to the drear abode
Of Mifery, whofe melancholy walls
Seem its voracious grandeur to reproach.
Within the City-bounds the defert fee:
See the rank vine o'er fubterranean roofs
Indecent fpread, beneath whose fretted gold
It once exulting flow'd. The people mark,
Matchlefs, while fir'd by Me; to public good
Inexorably firm, juft, generous, brave,
Afraid of nothing but unworthy life,
Elate with glory, an heroic foul
Known to the vulgar breast; behold them now
A thin defpairing number, all-fubdu'd,
The flaves of flaves, by fuperftition fool'd,
By vice unmann'd, and a licentious rule,
In guile ingenious, and in murder brave.
Such in one land, beneath the fame fair clime,
Thy fons, Oppreffion! are, and fuch were Mine.
Even with thy labour'd pomp, for whofe vain fhow
Deluded thousands ftarve, all age be-grim'd,
Torn, robb'd, and scatter'd in unnumber'd facks, 230
And by the tempeft of two thousand years
Continual fhaken, let My ruins vie,
These roads that yet the Roman hand affert,
Beyond the weak repair of modern toil;
Thefe fractured arches, that the chiding ftream 235
No more delighted hear; these rich remains
Of marbles now unknown, where fhines, imbib'd,
Each parent ray; these maffy columns, hew'd
From Afric's fartheft fhore; one granite all
These obelisks high-towering to the sky,
Mysterious mark'd with dark Egyptian lore;
These endless wonders that this * Sacred Way
Illumine ftill, and confecrate to fame;
These fountains, vafes, urns, and ftatues, charg'd
With the fine ftores of art-completing Greece: 245
Mine is, befides, thy every later boast;
Thy Buonarotis, thy Palladios, Mine;
And Mine the fair designs which Raphael's + foul
O'er the live canvass, emanating, breath'd.
What would you fay, ye Conquerors of earth! Ye Romans! could you raise the laurel'd head? 251 Could you the country fee, by feas of blood, And the dread toil of ages, won fo dear,
+ M. Angelo Buonaroti, Palladio, and Raphael D'Urbino, the three great modern mafters in fculpture, architecture, and painting.
Your pride, your triumph, your supreme delight!
For whofe defence oft', in the doubtful hour, 255
You rufh'd with rapture down the gulf of Fate,
Of death ambitious! till by awful deeds,
Virtues and courage, that amaze mankind,
The Queen of Nations rose, possest of all
Which Nature, Art, and Glory, could beftow! 260
What would you fay, deep in the last abyss
Of flavery, vice, and unambitious want,
Thus to behold her funk? Your crowded plains
Void of their cities, unadorn'd your hills,
264
Ungrac'd your lakes, your ports to ships unknown,
Your lawless floods, and your abandon'd streams,
These could you know? these could you love again ?
Thy Tiber, Horace! could it now inspire
Content, poetic ease, and rural joy,
Soon bursting into fong, while thro' the groves 270
Of headlong Anio, dashing to the vale,
In many a tortur'd ftream you mus'd along?
Yon' wild retreat, where Superstition dreams, Could, Tully! you your Tufculum * believe? And could you deem yon' naked hills, that form,275 Fam'd in old fong, the fhip-forfaken bay +, Your Formian fhore, once the delight of earth,
*Tufculum is reckoned to have ftood at a place now called Grotta Ferrata, a convent of Monks.
The bay of Mola (anciently Formiae) into which Homer brings Ulyffes and his companions. Near Formiae Cicero had a villa.
Where Art and Nature, ever-fmiling, join'd
On the gay land to lavish all their stores ?
How chang'd, how vacant, Virgil! wide around,
Would now your Naples feem? difafter'd lefs 281
By black Vefuvius thundering o'er the coast,
His midnight earthquakes and his mining fires,
Than by defpotic rage*; that inward gnaws,
A native foe; a foreign tears without.
First from your flattered Cæfars this began,
Till, doom'd to tyrants an eternal prey,
Thin-peopled fpreads, at laft, the fyren plain +
That the dire foul of Hannibal difarm'd,
And wrapt in weeds the shore of Venus lies ‡. 290
There Baiae fees no more the joyous throng,
Her banks all beaming with the pride of Rome:
No generous vines now bafk along the hills,
Where sport the breezes of the Tyrrhene main;
With baths and temples mixt, no villas rise;
Nor, art-fuftain'd amid reluctant waves,
Draw the cool murmurs of the breathing deep :
No fpreading ports their facred arms extend;
No mighty moles the big intrusive storm,
From the calm ftation, roll refounding back.
An almost total defolation fits,
Naples, then under the Auftrian government.
+ Campagna Felice, adjoining to Capua.
The coaft of Baiae, which was formerly adorned with the works mentioned in the following lines; and where, amidst many magnificent ruins, thofe of a temple erected to Venus are ftill to be feen.
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