Selected Poems (98 page)

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
²

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
whom!

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.