CXLVI. Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods Of art and piety — Pantheon! pride of Rome! CXLVII. Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts! To art a model; and to him who treads Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds Her light through thy sole aperture; to those Who worship, here are altars for their beads; And they who feel for genius may repose Their eyes on honour'd forms, whose busts around them close. 65 CXLVIII. There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light 66 The blood is nectar: but what doth she there, With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare? CXLIX. Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life, What may the fruit be yet? I know not- Cain was Eve's. CL. But here youth offers to old age the food, The milk of his own gift: - it is her sire To whom she renders back the debt of blood Born with her birth. No; he shall not expire While in those warm and lovely veins the fire Of health and holy feeling can provide Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher Than Egypt's river:- from that gentle side Drink, drink and live, old man! Heaven's realm holds no such tide. CXI. The starry fable of the milky way A constellation of a sweeter ray, And sacred Nature triumphs more in this Where sparkle distant worlds: -Oh, holiest nurse! With life, as our freed souls rejoin the universe. CLII. Turn to the Mole which Hadrian rear'd on high, 67 Whose travell❜d phantasy from the far Nile's To build for giants, and for his vain earth To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth! CLIII. Butlo! the dome-the vast and wondrous dome, 68 To which Diana's marvel was a cell Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb! I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell The hyaena and the jackall in their shade; I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell Their glittering mass i' the sun, and have survey'd Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem pray'd; CLIV. But thou, of temples old, or altars new, Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled In this eternal ark of worship undefiled. CLV. Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not; |