Part 29

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 The finny darter with the glittering scales, Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps; While, chance, some scattered water-lily sails Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales.

LXVIII.

Pass not unblest the genius of the place! 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 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; 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 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, 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 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 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,

LXXII.

Horribly beautiful! but on the verge, From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge, Like Hope upon a deathbed, and, unworn Its steady dyes, while all around is torn 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, 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--might be worshipped more; But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear 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.

The Acroceraunian mountains of old name; And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly Like spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame, For still they soared unutterably high: I've looked on Ida with a Trojan's eye; Athos, Olympus, AEtna, Atlas, made These hills seem things of lesser dignity, All, save the lone Soracte's height displayed, 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 May he who will his recollections rake, And quote in classic raptures, and awake The hills with Latian echoes; I abhorred Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake, The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record

LXXVI.

Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught My mind to meditate what then it learned, Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought 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.

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 Our little life, nor bard prescribe his art, Nor livelier satirist the conscience pierce, Awakening without wounding the touched heart, Yet fare thee well--upon Soracte's ridge we part.

LXXVIII.

O Rome! my country! city of the soul! 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 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; An empty urn within her withered hands, Whose holy dust was scattered long ago; The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now; The very sepulchres lie tenantless Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow, Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness? Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress!

LXXX.

The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire, Have dwelt upon the seven-hilled city's pride: She saw her glories star by star expire, And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride, Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide Temple and tower went down, nor left a site;-- Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void, O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light, And say, 'Here was, or is,' where all is doubly night?

LXXXI.