XLV. For Time hath not rebuilt them, but uprear'd Which only make more mourn'd and more endear'd The few last rays of their far-scattered 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, 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, Was then our guardian, and is still our guide; Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven, Y XLVIII. But Arno wins us to the fair white walls, Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps 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 What Mind can make, when Nature's self would fail; Envy, the innate flash which such a soul could mould: We L. gaze and turn away, and know not where, Where pedantry gulls folly-we have eyes: LI. Appear'dst thou not to Paris in this guise? Or to more deeply blest Anchises? or, In all thy perfect goddess-ship, when lies Before thee thy own vanquish'd Lord of War? And gazing in thy face as toward a star, Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn, Feeding on thy sweet cheek! while thy lips are, With lava kisses melting while they burn, Showered 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 learned 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, Which have relaps'd to chaos :-here repose The starry Galileo, with his woes; 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 And hath denied, to every other sky, Spirits which soar from ruin :-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 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 resolv'd 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? LVII. Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar, His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled-not thine own. LVIII. Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed His dust, and lies it not her Great among, LIX. 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! honoured 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. |