The friend of Tully:1 as my bark did skim 390 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; 395 XLV. For Time hath not rebuilt them, but upreared Barbaric dwellings on their shattered site, Which only make more mourned and more endeared 400 And the crushed relics of their vanished might. The Roman saw these tombs in his own age, These sepulchers of cities, which excite Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage. 405 XLVI. That page is now before me, and on mine His country's ruin added to the mass Of perished states he mourned in their decline, Of then destruction is; and now, alas! 410 Rome Rome imperial, bows her to the storm, The skeleton of her Titanic form, 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; 1 Cicero. 415 Mother of Arts! as once of Arms; thy hand Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven, XLVIII. But Arno wins us to the fair white walls, 420 Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps 425 A softer feeling for her fairy halls.3 Girt by her theater of hills, she reaps Her corn, and wine, and oil, and Plenty leaps To laughing life, with her redundant horn. 430 Was modern Luxury of Commerce born, And buried Learning rose, redeemed to a new morn. XLIX. There, too, the goddess loves in stone, and fills The air around with beauty; we inhale The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instills 435 Part of its immortality; the veil 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 440 Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mold: 1 The original Christian church was fostered by Rome. 2 What has been the progress of Italy since Byron lamented her decay? 3 Florence is on the Arno. 4 The Venus de Medici. Keene says: "It is now considered an uninspired copy by some trade artist living at Rome about the time of Augustus." Byron's taste was not always equal to his enthusiasm. L. We gaze and turn away, 445 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:1 449 Blood, pulse, and breast confirm the Dardan Shepherd's prize.2 LI. Appearedst thou not to Paris in this guise? Or to more deeply blest Anchises? 3 or, In all thy perfect goddess-ship, when lies Before thee thy own vanquished Lord of War ? 4 455 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, Their full divinity inadequate That feeling to express, or to improve, The gods become as mortals, and man's fate 460 1 Does not even genius require education in order to judge correctly of the fine arts, painting, sculpture, poetry? Byron remained in Florence only a single day. 2 Paris of Troy awarded the prize for beauty to Venus. 4 Mars. 3 Anchises, the father of Æneas, was beloved by Venus. Has moments like their brightest; but the weight Of earth recoils upon us;-let it go! 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, 465 470 The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell: Let these describe the undescribable: I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream 475 The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam. LIV. In Santa Croce's 2 holy precincts lie Ashes which make it holier, dust which is Even in itself an immortality, 480 Though there were nothing save the past, and this, The particle of those sublimities Which have relapsed to chaos: here repose Angelo's, Alfieri's bones, and his, The starry Galileo,5 with his woes; 485 Here Machiavelli's 6 earth returned to whence it rose. 1 Imitator. 3 Michael Angelo Buonarroti, the master painter, sculptor, and architect (born 1475, died 1564). 5 Italian astronomer (born 1564, died 1642). 6 Famous Italian political writer, author of The Prince (born 1469, died 1527). 2 Holy Cross, a famous cathedral in Florence. 4 Italian poet (born 1749, died 1803). LV. These are four minds, which, like the elements,1 Might furnish forth creation:-Italy! Time, which hath wronged 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 2 is to-day. LVI. But where repose the all Etruscan three Dante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they, Of the Hundred Tales of love-where did they lay LVII. 490 495 500 Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,4 505 1 Earth, air, water, fire, or hot, cold, moist, dry. 2 An Italian sculptor of Byron's day (born 1757, died 1822). 3 Boccaccio, author of the Decameron, etc. He was buried near Florence. 4 In Ravenna. 5 Guelphs and Ghibellines. |