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 could'st 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, For thy destructive charms; then, still untired, Victor or vanquish'd, thou the slave of friend or foe. XLIV. Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him, (23) The Roman friend of Rome's least-mortal mind, And Corinth on the left; I lay reclined Along the prow, and saw all these unite In ruin, even as he had seen the desolate sight; VOL, I.--N XLV. For Time hath not rebuilt them, but uprear'd Barbaric dwellings on their shattered site, Which only make more mourn'd and more endear'd The few last rays of their far-scatter'd light, And the crush'd relics of their vanish'd might. The Roman saw these tombs in his own age, These sepulchres of cities, which excite 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, In the same dust and blackness, and we pass The skeleton of her Titanic form, (24) 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; Parent of our Religion! whom the wide Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven! Europe, repentant of her parricide, Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven, Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven. LXVIII. But Arno wins us to the fair white walls, 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 (25) The air around with beauty; we inhale 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; And to the fond idolaters of old Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould: L. We gaze and turn away, and know not where, Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart Reels with its fulness; there for ever there-Chain'd to the chariot of triumphal Art, We stand as captives, and would not depart. Away!-there need no words, nor terms precise, The paltry jargon of the marble mart, 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? are With lava kisses melting while they burn, 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, We can recal such visions and create, From what has been, or might be, things which grow Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below. LUI. I leave to learned fingers and wise hands, I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream Wherein that image shall for ever dwell; 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 (27) Though there were nothing save the past, and this, The particle of those sublimities Which have relapsed to chaos :-here repose The starry Galileo, with his woes ; Here Machiavelli's earth, return'd to whence it rose. (29) ᏞᏙ. These are four minds, which, like the elements, Might furnish forth creation :-Italy! Time, which hath wrong'd thee with ten thousand rents Of thine imperial garment, shall deny, LVI. But where repose the all Etruscan threeDante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they, The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he Of the Hundred Tales of love-where did they lay Their bones, distinguish'd from our common clay In death as life? Are they resolved to dust, And have their country's marbles nought to say? Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust? Did they not to her breast their filial earth entrust? |