Came Megara before me, and behind And Corinth on the left; I lay reclined In ruin, even as he had seen the desolate sight; XLV For Time hath not rebuilt them, but uprear'd Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage. XLVI That page is now before me, and on mine Of perish'd states he mourn'd in their decline, Of then destruction is; and now, alas! Rome Rome imperial, bows her to the storm, Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm. XLVII Yet, Italy! through every other land Thy wrongs should ring, and shall, from side to side; Mother of Arts! as once of Arms; thy hand Was then our guardian, and is still our guide; Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven! Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven, Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven. But Arno wins us to the fair white walls, Her corn, and wine, and oil, and Plenty leaps And buried Learning rose, redeem'd to a new morn. XLIX There, too, the Goddess loves in stone, and fills The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils 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 fail; Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mold: L We gaze and turn away, and know not where, Where Pedantry gulls Folly- we have eyes; Blood, pulse, and breast, confirm the Dardan Shepherd's prize. LI Appear'dst thou not to Paris in this guise? Shower'd on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn! LII Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love, That feeling to express, or to improve, The gods become as mortals, and man's fate We can recall such visions, and create From what has been, or might be, things which grow, Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below. LIII I leave to learnèd fingers, and wise hands, I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam. LIV In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie 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: The starry Galileo, with his woes; here repose Here Machiavelli's earth return'd to whence it rose. LV These are four minds, which, like the elements, Time, which hath wrong'd thee with ten thousand rents Of thine imperial garment, shall deny And hath denied, to every other sky, Spirits which soar from ruin: Is still impregnate with divinity, thy decay Which gilds it with revivifying ray; Such as the great of yore, Canova is to-day. LVI But where repose the all Etruscan three Of the Hundred Tales of love where did they lay LVII Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar, not thine own. |