Selected Poems (99 page)

LXVI

But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave

Of the most living crystal that was e’er

The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave

Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear

590

Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer

Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters!

And most serene of aspect, and most clear;

Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters –

A mirror and a bath for Beauty’s youngest daughters!

LXVII

595

And on thy happy shore a Temple still,

Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,

Upon a mild declivity of hill,

Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps

Thy current’s calmness; oft from out it leaps

600

The finny darter with the glittering scales,

Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;

While, chance, some scatter’d water-lily sails

Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales.

LXVIII

Pass not unblest the Genius of the place!

605

If through the air a zephyr more serene

Win to the brow, ’tis his; and if ye trace

Along his margin a more eloquent green,

If on the heart the freshness of the scene

Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust

610

Of weary life a moment lave it clean

With Nature’s baptism, — ’tis to him ye must

Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust.

LXIX

The roar of waters! – from the headlong height

Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;

615

The fall of waters! rapid as the light

The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;

The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,

And boil in endless torture; while the sweat

Of their great agony, wrung out from this

620

Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet

That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,

LXX

And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again

Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,

With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,

625

Is an eternal April to the ground,

Making it all one emerald: – how profound

The gulf! and how the giant element

From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,

Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent

630

With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent!

LXXI

To the broad column which rolls on, and shows

More like the fountain of an infant sea

Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes

Of a new world, than only thus to be

635

Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,

With many windings, through the vale: — Look back!

Lo! where it comes like an eternity,

As if to sweep down all things in its track,

Charming the eye with dread, – a matchless cataract,
¹

LXXII

640

Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,

From side to side beneath the glittering morn

An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,
¹

Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn

Its steady dyes, while all around is torn

645

By the distracted waters, bears serene

Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn:

Resembling, ’mid the torture of the scene,

Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.

LXXIII

Once more upon the woody Apennine,

650

The infant Alps, which – had I not before

Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine

Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar

The thundering lauwine
²
– might be worshipp’d more;

But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear

655

Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar

Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near,

And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear,

LXXIV

Th’ Acroceraunian mountains of old name;

And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly

660

Like spirits of the spot, as ’twere for fame,

For still they soar’d unutterably high:

I’ve look’d on Ida with a Trojan’s eye;

Athos, Olympus, Ætna, Atlas, made

These hills seem things of lesser dignity,

665

All, save the lone Soracte’s heights display’d

Not
now
in snow, which asks the lyric Roman’s aid

LXXV

For our remembrance, and from out the plain

Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,

And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain

670

May he, who will, his recollections rake

And quote in classic raptures, and awake

The hills with Latian echoes; I abhorr’d

Too much, to conquer for the poet’s sake,

The drill’d dull lesson, forced down word by word
¹

675

In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record

LXXVI

Aught that recals the daily drug which turn’d

My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught

My mind to meditate what then it learn’d,

Yet such the fix’d inveteracy wrought

680

By the impatience of my early thought,

That, with the freshness wearing out before

My mind could relish what it might have sought,

If free to choose, I cannot now restore

Its health; but what it then detested, still abhor.

LXXVII

685

Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so,

Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse

To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,

To comprehend, but never love thy verse,

Although no deeper Moralist rehearse

690

Our little life nor Bard prescribe his art,

Nor livelier Satirist the conscience pierce,

Awakening without wounding the touch’d heart,

Yet fare thee well – upon Soracte’s ridge we part.

LXXVIII

Oh Rome! my country! city of the soul!

695

The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,

Lone mother of dead empires! and control

In their shut breasts their petty misery.

What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see

The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way

700

O’er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye!

Whose agonies are evils of a day –

A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.

LXXIX

The Niobe of nations! there she stands,

Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;

705

An empty urn within her wither’d hands,

Whose holy dust was scatter’d long ago;

LXXXVI

The third of the same moon whose former course

Had all but crown’d him, on the selfsame day

Deposed him gently from his throne of force,

And laid him with the earth’s preceding clay.

770

And show’d not Fortune thus how fame and sway,

And all we deem delightful, and consume

Our souls to compass through each arduous way,

Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb?

Were they but so in man’s, how different were his doom!

LXXXVII

775

And thou, dread statue! yet existent in

The austerest form of naked majesty,

Thou who beheldest, ’mid the assassins’ din,

At thy bathed base the bloody Cæsar lie,

Folding his robe in dying dignity,

780

An offering to thine altar from the queen

Of gods and men, great Nemesis! did he die,

And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been

Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene?

LXXXVIII

And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome

785

She-wolf! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart

The milk of conquest yet within the dome

Where, as a monument of antique art,

Thou standest: – Mother of the mighty heart,

Which the great founder suck’d from thy wild teat,

790

Scorch’d by the Roman Jove’s etherial dart,