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And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay, Deeming themselves predestined to a doom Which is not of the pangs that pass away; Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb, The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom.

XXXIX

Peace to Torquato's1 injured shade! 't was his
In life and death to be the mark where Wrong
Aim'd with her poison'd arrows, but to miss.
Oh, victor unsurpass'd in modern song!
Each year brings forth its millions; but how long
The tide of generations shall roll on,

And not the whole combined and countless throng Compose a mind like thine? Though all in one Condensed their scatter'd rays, they would not form a sun.

XL

Great as thou art, yet parallel'd by those,
Thy countrymen, before thee born to shine,
The Bards of Hell and Chivalry 2: first rose
The Tuscan father's comedy divine;

Then, not unequal to the Florentine

The southern Scott, the minstrel who call'd forth
A new creation with his magic line,

And, like the Ariosto of the North,3

Sang ladye-love and war, romance and knightly worth.

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1 Torquato Tasso. See "Lament of Tasso," p. 18.

2 Dante and Ariosto.

8 Walter Scott.

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.

XLVIII

But Arno wins us to the fair white walls,
Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps
A softer feeling for her fairy halls.
Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps
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,1 and fills

The air around with beauty. We inhale

The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils

Part of its immortality; the veil

1 The Venus de' Medici.

VENUS de' Medici in Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

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"The Goddess loves in stone, and fills
within the pale

The air around with beauty;

...

We stand, and in that form and face behold

What mind can make when Nature's self would fail."

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