Selected Poems (97 page)

Idlesse it seem, hath its morality.

If from society we learn to live,

295

’Tis solitude should teach us how to die;

It hath no flatterers; vanity can give

No hollow aid; alone – man with his God must strive:

XXXIV

Or, it may be, with demons, who impair
¹

The strength of better thoughts, and seek their prey

300

In melancholy bosoms, such as were

Of moody texture from their earliest day,

And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay,

Deeming themselves predestined to a doom

Which is not of the pangs that pass away;

305

Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb,

The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom.

XXXV

Ferrara! in thy wide and grass-grown streets,

Whose symmetry was not for solitude,

There seems as ’twere a curse upon the seats

310

Of former sovereigns, and the antique brood

Of Este, which for many an age made good

Its strength within thy walls, and was of yore

Patron or tyrant, as the changing mood

Of petty power impell’d, of those who wore

315

The wreath which Dante’s brow alone had worn before.

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:

320

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

325

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

330

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,

335

Even as the beasts that perish, save that thou

Hadst a more splendid trough and wider sty:

He!
with a glory round his furrow’d brow,

Which emanated then, and dazzles now,

In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire,

340

And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow

No strain which shamed his country’s creaking lyre,

That whetstone of the teeth – monotony in wire!

XXXIX

Peace to Torquato’s injured shade! ’twas his

In life and death to be the mark where Wrong

345

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

350

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: first rose

355

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,

360

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

XLI

The lightning rent from Ariosto’s bust

The iron crown of laurel’s mimic’d leaves;

Nor was the ominous element unjust,

For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves

365

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.

XLII

370

Italia! oh Italia! thou who hast

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.

375

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,

380

Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored

For thy destructive charms; then, still untired,

Would not be seen the armed torrents pour’d

Down the deep Alps; nor would the hostile horde

Of many-nation’d spoilers from the Po

385

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.
¹

XLIV

Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him,
²

The Roman friend of Rome’s least-mortal mind

390

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

395

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

400

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

405

The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage.

XLVI

That page is now before me, 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

410

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,
¹

Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm.

XLVII

415

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

420

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,

425

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.

430

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

The air around with beauty; we inhale

435

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