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,
And hath denied, to every other sky, Spirits which soar from ruin: thy decay Is still impregnate with divinity, Which gilds it with revivifying ray;
Such as the great of yore, Canova is to-day.
But where repose the all Etruscan three- Dante, 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 intrust?
Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,
Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore: Thy factions, in their worse than civil war, Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore Their children's children would in vain adore With the remorse of ages; and the crown Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore, Upon a far and foreign soil had grown,
His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled-not thine own.
Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeath'd His dust, and lies it not her great among,
With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed O'er him who form'd the Tuscan's siren tongue ? That music in itself, whose sounds are song, The poetry of speech? No ;-even his tomb Uptorn, must bear the hyaena bigot's wrong, No more amidst the meaner dead find room, Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for whom!
And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust; Yet for this want more noted, as of yore The Caesar's pageant, shorn of Brutus' bust, Did but of Rome's best Son remind her more: Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore, Fortress of falling empire! honour'd sleeps The immortal exile ;-Arqua, too, her store Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps,
While Florence vainly begs her banish'd dead and weeps.
What is her pyramid of precious stones? Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues Of gem and marble, to incrust 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 mausoleums of the Muse,
Are gently prest with far more reverent tread
Than ever paced the slab which paves the princely head. 540
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 mine; 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
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, swoll'n to rivers with their gore, Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scatter'd o'er,
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 unheededly away! 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!
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 Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdraw From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds Stumble o'er heaving plains, and man's dread hath no words.
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
Made the earth wet, and turn'd the unwilling waters red.
But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave
Of the most living crystal that was e'er
The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave
Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear
Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters!
And most serene of aspect, and most clear;
Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters,
A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters!
And on thy happy shore a Temple still, Of small and delicate proportion, keeps, Upon a mild declivity of hill,
Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps
Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps The finny darter with the glittering scales, Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps; While, chance, some scatter'd water-lily sails Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales.
Pass not unblest the Genius of the place! If through the air a zephyr more serene Win to the brow, 'tis his; and if ye trace Along his margin a more eloquent green, If on the heart the freshness of the scene Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust Of weary life a moment lave it clean With Nature's baptism,-'tis to him ye must Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust.
The roar of waters !-from the headlong height Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice; The fall of waters! rapid as the light The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss ; The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet That guard the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,
And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,
With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,
Is an eternal April to the ground,
Making it all one emerald:-how profound The gulf! and how the giant element
From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,
Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent! 630
To the broad column which rolls on, and shows More like the fountain of an infant sea
Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes Of a new world, than only thus to be
Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,
With many windings, through the vale :-Look back! Lo! where it comes like an eternity,
As if to sweep down all things in its track,
Charming the eye with dread,-a matchless cataract,
Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,
From side to side, beneath the glittering morn An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,
Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn Its steady dyes, while all around is torn By the distracted waters, bears serene
Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn : Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene, Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.
Once more upon the woody Apennine, The infant Alps, which-had I not before
Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar
The thundering lauwine-might be worshipp'd more; But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near, And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear,
Th' Acroceraunian mountains of old name; And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly Like spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame, For still they soared unutterably high: I've look'd on Ida with a Trojan's eye; Athos, Olympus, Aetna, Atlas, made These hills seem things of lesser dignity, All, save the lone Soracte's height, display'd
Not now in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid
For our remembrance, and from out the plain Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break, And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain May he, who will, his recollections rake, And quote in classic raptures, and awake The hills with Latian echoes; I abhorr'd Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake, The drill'd dull lesson, forced down word by word In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record
Aught that recalls the daily drug which turn'd My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught My mind to meditate what then it learn'd, Yet such the fix'd inveteracy wrought
By the impatience of my early thought,
That, with the freshness wearing out before
My mind could relish what it might have sought, If free to choose, I cannot now restore
Its health; but what it then detested, still abhor.
Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so, Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse To understand, not feel thy lyric flow, To comprehend, but never love thy verse: Although no deeper Moralist rehearse Our little life, nor Bard prescribe his art, Nor livelier Satirist the conscience pierce, Awakening without wounding the touch'd heart, Yet fare thee well-upon Soracte's ridge we part.
Oh Rome! my country! city of the soul! The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, Lone mother of dead empires! and control In their shut breasts their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye! Whose agonies are evils of a day-
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.
The Niobe of nations! there she stands, Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe; An empty urn within her wither'd hands, Whose holy dust was scatter'd long ago; The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now; The very sepulchres lie tenantless
Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow, Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?
Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress.
« EdellinenJatka » |