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, | |
LXXII | |
640 | 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 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 | |
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 | |
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 | |
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, |