Union with those primeval energies
To virtue consecrate, stoop ye from your height
Christian traditions! at my spirit's call
Descend, and, on the brow of ancient Rome
As she survives in ruin, manifest
Your glories mingled with the brightest hues
Of her memorial halo, fading, fading,
But never to be extinct while earth endures.
O come, if undishonoured by the prayer,
From all her sanctuaries! Open for my feet
Ye catacombs, give to mine eyes a glimpse
Of the devout, as, 'mid your glooms convened
For safety, they of yore enclasped the cross
On knees that ceased from trembling, or intoned
Their orisons with voices half-suppressed,
But sometimes heard, or fancied to be heard,
Even at this hour.
And thou Mamertine prison,
Into that vault receive me from whose depth
Issues, revealed in no presumptuous vision,
Albeit lifting human to divine,
A saint, the church's rock, the mystic keys
Grasped in his hand; and lo! with upright sword
Prefiguring his own impendent doom,
The apostle of the Gentiles; both prepared
To suffer pains with heathen scorn and hate
Inflicted; blessèd men, for so to Heaven
They follow their dear Lord!
Time flows; nor winds,
Nor stagnates, nor precipitates his course,
But many a benefit borne upon his breast
For human-kind sinks out of sight, is gone,
No one knows how; nor seldom is put forth
An angry arm that snatches good away,
Never perhaps to reappear. The stream
Has to our generation brought and brings
Innumerable gains; yet we, who now
Walk in the light of day, pertain full surely
To a chilled age, most pitiably shut out
From that which is and actuates, by forms,
Abstractions, and by lifeless fact to fact
Minutely linked with diligence uninspired,
Unrectified, unguided, unsustained,
By god-like insight. To this fate is doomed.
Science, wide-spread and spreading still as be
Her conquests, in the world of sense made known.
So with the internal mind it fares; and so
With morals, trusting, in contempt or fear
Of vital principle's controlling law,
To her purblind guide expediency; and so
Suffers religious faith. Elate with view
Of what is won, we overlook or scorn
The best that should keep pace with it, and must,
Else more and more the general mind will droop,
Even as if bent on perishing. There lives
No faculty within us which the soul
Can spare, and humblest earthly weal demands,
For dignity not placed beyond her reach,
Zealous co-operation of all means
Given or acquired, to raise us from the mire,
And liberate our hearts from low pursuits.
By gross utilities enslaved we need
More of ennobling impulse from the past,
If to the future aught of good must come
Sounder and therefore holier than the ends
Which, in the giddiness of self-applause,
We covet as supreme. O grant the crown
That wisdom wears, or take his treacherous staff
From knowledge! If the muse, whom I have
This day, be mistress of a single pearl
Fit to be placed in that pure diadem ;
Then, not in vain, under these chestnut boughs
Reclined, shall I have yielded up my soul
To transport from the secondary founts
Flowing of time and place, and paid to both
Due homage; nor shall fruitlessly have striven,
By love of beauty moved, to enshrine in verse
Accordant meditations, which in times
Vexed and disordered, as our own, may shed
Influence, at least among a scattered few,
To soberness of mind and peace of heart
Friendly; as here to my repose hath been
This flowering broom's dear neighbourhood, the light
And murmur issuing from yon pendent flood,
And all the varied landscape. Let us now
Rise, and to-morrow greet magnificent Rome.
THE PINE OF MONTE MARIO AT ROME
I SAW far off the dark top of a pine
Look like a cloud, a slender stem the tie
That bound it to its native earth, poised high
'Mid evening hues, along the horizon line,
Striving in peace each other to outshine.
But when I learned the tree was living there,
Saved from the sordid axe by Beaumont's care,
Oh, what a gush of tenderness was mine!
The rescued pine-tree, with its sky so bright
And cloud-like beauty, rich in thoughts of home,
Death-parted friends, and days too swift in flight,
Supplanted the whole majesty of Rome
(Then first apparent from the Pincian height)
Crowned with St. Peter's everlasting dome.
Is this, ye Gods, the Capitolian hill?
Yon petty Steep in truth the fearful rock,
Tarpeian named of yore, and keeping still
That name, a local phantom proud to mock
The traveller's expectation? Could our will
Destroy the ideal power within, 'twere done
Thro' what men see and touch, slaves wandering on,
Impelled by thirst of all but Heaven-taught skill.
Full oft, our wish obtained, deeply we sigh;
Yet not unrecompensed are they who learn,
From that depression raised, to mount on high
With stronger wing, more clearly to discern
Eternal things; and, if need be, defy
Change, with a brow not insolent, though stern.
REGRETS, IN ALLUSION TO
NIEBUHR, AND OTHER MODERN HIS
THOSE old credulities, to nature dear,
Shall they no longer bloom upon the stock
Of history, stript naked as a rock
'Mid a dry desert? What is it we hear?
The glory of infant Rome must disappear,
Her morning splendours vanish, and their place
Know them no more. If truth, who veiled her face
With those bright beams yet hid it not, must steer
Henceforth a humbler course perplexed and slow;
One solace yet remains for us who came
Into this world in days when story lacked
Severe research, that in our hearts we know
How, for exciting youth's heroic flame,
Assent is power, belief the soul of fact.
COMPLACENT fictions were they, yet the same
Involved a history of no doubtful sense,
History that proves by inward evidence
From what a precious source of truth it came.
Ne'er could the boldest eulogist have dared
Such deeds to paint, such characters to frame,
But for coeval sympathy prepared
To greet with instant faith their loftiest claim.
None but a noble people could have loved
Flattery in ancient Rome's pure-minded style:
Not in like sort the Runic Scald was moved;
He, nursed 'mid savage passions that defile
Humanity, sang feats that well might call
For the blood-thirsty mead of Odin's riotous hall.
FORBEAR to deem the chronicler unwise,
Ungentle, or untouched by seemly ruth,
Who, gathering up all that time's envious tooth
Has spared of sound and grave realities,
Firmly rejects those dazzling flatteries,
Dear as they are to unsuspecting youth,
That might have drawn down Clio from the skies
To vindicate the majesty of truth.
Such was her office while she walked with men,
A muse, who, not unmindful of her sire
All-ruling Jove, whate'er the theme might be
Revered her mother, sage Mnemosyne,
And taught her faithful servants how the lyre
Should animate, but not mislead, the pen.1
THEY, who have seen the noble Roman's scorn
Break forth at thought of laying down his head,
When the blank day is over, garreted
In his ancestral palace, where, from morn
To night, the desecrated floors are worn
By feet of purse-proud strangers; they, who have read
In one meek smile, beneath a peasant's shed,
How patiently the weight of wrong is borne;
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