XXXVI.

And Tasso is their glory and their shame.
Hark to his strain! and then survey his cell!
And see how dearly earn'd Torquato's fame,
And where Alfonso bade his poet dwell:
The miserable despot could not quell'

The insulted mind he sought to quench, and blend
With the surrounding maniacs, in the hell
Where he had plunged it. Glory without end
Scatter'd the clouds away-and on that name attend

XXXVII.

The tears and praises of all time; while thine
Would rot in its oblivion-in the sink

Of worthless dust, which from thy boasted line
Is shaken into nothing; but the link
Thou formest in his fortunes bids us think
Of thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn-
Alfonso! how thy ducal pageants shrink

From thee if in another station born,

Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou madest to mourn:

XXXVIII.

Thou! form'd to eat, and be despised, and die,
Even as the beasts that perish, save that thou
Hadst a more splendid trough and wider stye:
He! with a glory round his furrow'd brow,
Which emanated then, and dazzles now
In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire,
And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow 18
No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre,
That whetstone of the teeth-monotony in wire!

'XXXIX.

Peace to Torquato's 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.

10

XL.

Great as thou art, yet parallel'd by those,
Thy countrymen, before thee born to shine,
The bards of hell and chivalry: 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,

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

XLI.

The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust 19
The iron crown of laurel's mimick'd leaves,
Nor was the ominous element unjust,

For the true laurel-wreath which glory weaves 20

Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves,

And the false semblance but disgraced his brow;
Yet still, if fondly superstition grieves,

Know that the lightning sanctifies below

Whate'er it strikes;-yon head is doubly sacred now.

The fatal gift of beauty, which became

A funeral dower of present woes and past,

On thy sweet brow is sorrow plough'd by shame, And annals graved in characters of flame. Oh God! that thou wert in thy nakedness Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim Thy right, and awe the robbers back who press To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress;

XLIII.

Then might'st thou more appal; or, less desired,

Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored

For thy destructive charms; then, still untired,
Would not be seen the armed torrents pour'd
Down the steep Alps; nor would the hostile horde
Of many-nation'd spoilers from the Po

Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger's sword
Be thy sad weapon of defence, and so,

Victor or vanquish'd, thou the slave of friend or foe.

XLIV.

Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him, 25
The Roman friend of Rome's least mortal mind,
The friend of Tully: as my bark did skim
The bright blue waters with a fanning wind,
Came Megara before me, and behind
Ægina lay, Piræus on the right,

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:

XLV.

For time hath not rebuilt them, but uprear'd
Barbaric dwellings on their shatter'd site,
Which only make more mourn'd and more endear'd
The few last rays of their far-scatter'd 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.

That page

is now before me,

XLVI.

and on mine

His country's ruin added to the mass

Of perish'd states he mourn'd in their decline,`
And I in desolation: all that was

Of then destruction is; and now, alas!
Rome Rome imperial, bows her to the storm
In the same dust and blackness, and we pass
The skeleton of her Titanic form, 24

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;

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, and fills 25
The air around with beauty; we inhale

The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils
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

Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould:

L.

We gaze and turn away, and know not where,
Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart
Reels with its fulness; there for ever there-
Chain'd to the chariot of triumphal art,

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;

Blood-pulse-and breast, confirm the Dardan shepherd's prize.

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! 26 while thy lips are

With lava kisses melting while they burn,

Shower'd 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
Has moments like their brightest; but the weight
Of earth recoils upon us ;-let it go!

We can recal 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,
The artist and his ape, to teach and tell
How well his connoisseurship understands
The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell :
Let these describe the undescribable :

I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream
Wherein that image shall for ever dwell;

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 27

Ashes which make it holier, dust which is

Even in itself an immortality,

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, 28 and his,

The starry Galileo, with his woes;

Here Machiavelli's earth return'd to whence it rose. 29

LV.

These are four minds, which, like the elements,

Might furnish forth creation :-Italy!

Time, which hath wrong'd 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 is to-day.