What mind can make, when Nature’s self would fail; | |
440 | 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 - | |
445 | 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: | |
450 | 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? | |
455 | And gazing in thy face as toward a star, |
Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn, | |
Feeding on thy sweet cheek!1 while thy lips are | |
With lava kisses melting while they burn, | |
Shower’d on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn! | |
LII | |
460 | 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 | |
465 | 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 | |
470 | 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 | |
475 | 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 | |
Ashes which make it holier, dust which is | |
480 | 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, and his, | |
485 | The starry Galileo, with his woes; |
Here Machiavelli’s earth return’d to whence it rose. | |
LV | |
These are four minds, which, like the elements, | |
Might furnish forth creation: – Italy! | |
Time, which hath wrong’d thee with ten thousand rents | |
490 | 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; | |
495 | Such as the great of yore, Canova is to-day. |
LVI | |
But where repose the all Etruscan three – | |
Dante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they, | |
The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he | |
Of the Hundred Tales of love – where did they lay | |
500 | Their bones, distinguish’d from our common clay |
In death as life? Are they resolved to dust, | |
And have their country’s marbles nought to say? | |
Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust? | |
Did they not to her breast their filial earth intrust? | |
LVII | |
505 | Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar, |
Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore; | |
Thy factions, in their worse than civil war, | |
Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore | |
Their children’s children would in vain adore | |
510 | With the remorse of ages; and the crown |
Which Petrarch’s laureate brow supremely wore, | |
Upon a far and foreign soil had grown, | |
His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled – not thine own. | |
LVIII | |
Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeath’d | |
515 | His dust, — and lies it not her Great among, |
With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed | |
O’er him who form’d the Tuscan’s siren tongue? | |
That music in itself, whose sounds are song, | |
The poetry of speech? No; – even his tomb | |
520 | Uptorn, must bear the hyæna bigot’s wrong, |
No more amidst the meaner dead find room, | |
Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for | |
LIX | |
And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust; | |
Yet for this want more noted, as of yore | |
525 | The Caesar’s pageant, shorn of Brutus’ bust, |
Did but of Rome’s best Son remind her more: | |
Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore, | |
Fortress of falling empire! honour’d sleeps | |
The immortal exile; – Arqua, too, her store | |
530 | Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps, |
While Florence vainly begs her banish’d dead and weeps. | |
LX | |
What is her pyramid of precious stones? | |
Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues | |
Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones | |
535 | Of merchant-dukes? the momentary dews |
Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse | |
Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead, | |
Whose names are mausoleums of the Muse, | |
Are gently prest with far more reverent tread | |
540 | Than ever paced the slab which paves the princely head. |
LXI | |
There be more things to greet the heart and eyes | |
In Arno’s dome of Art’s most princely shrine, | |
Where Sculpture with her rainbow sister vies; | |
There be more marvels yet – but not for mine; | |
545 | For I have been accustom’d to entwine |
My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields, | |
Than Art in galleries: though a work divine | |
Calls for my spirit’s homage, yet it yields | |
Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields | |
LXII | |
550 | Is of another temper, and I roam |
By Thrasimene’s lake, in the defiles | |
Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home; | |
For there the Carthaginian’s warlike wiles | |
Come back before me, as his skill beguiles | |
555 | The host between the mountains and the shore, |
Where Courage falls in her despairing files, | |
And torrents, swoll’n to rivers with their gore, | |
Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scatter’d o’er, | |
LXIII | |
Like to a forest fell’d by mountain winds; | |
560 | And such the storm of battle on this day, |
And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds | |
To all save carnage, that, beneath the fray, | |
An earthquake reel’d unheededly away! | |
None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet, | |
565 | And yawning forth a grave for those who lay |
Upon their bucklers for a winding sheet; | |
Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet! | |
LXIV | |
The Earth to them was as a rolling bark | |
Which bore them to Eternity; they saw | |
570 | The Ocean round, but had no time to mark |
The motions of their vessel; Nature’s law, | |
In them suspended, reck’d not of the awe | |
Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds | |
Plunge in the clouds for refuge and withdraw | |
575 | From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds |
Stumble o’er heaving plains, and man’s dread hath no words. | |
LXV | |
Far other scene is Thrasimene now; | |
Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain | |
Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough; | |
580 | Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain |
Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta’en — | |
A little rill of scanty stream and bed — | |
A name of blood from that day’s sanguine rain; | |
And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead | |
585 | Made the earth wet, and turn’d the unwilling waters red. |