But light leaves, young as joy, stands where it stood, Offering to him, and his, a populous solitude. A populous solitude of bees and birds, Who worship him with notes more sweet than words, Fearless and full of life: the gush of springs, Of stirring branches, and the bud which brings He who hath loved not, here would learn that lore, For this is Love's recess, where vain men's woes, For 't is his nature to advance or die; He stands not still, but or decays, or grows Into a boundless blessing, which may vie With the immortal lights, in its eternity. 'T was not for fiction chose Rousseau this spot, It was the scene which passion must allot And wonderful, and deep, and hath a sound, And sense, and sight of sweetness; here the Rhone Hath spread himself a couch, the Alps have rear'd a throne. ITALY. (CHILDE HAROLD, Canto iv. Stanzas 42-47.) ITALIA! oh Italia! thou who hast The fatal gift of beauty, which became A funeral dower of present woes and past, On thy sweet brow is sorrow plough'd by shame, And annals graved in characters of flame. Oh, God! that thou wert in thy nakedness Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress; Then might'st thou more appall; or, less desired, For thy destructive charms; then, still untired, Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger's sword Victor or vanquish'd, thou the slave of friend or foe. Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him,1 1 Servius Sulpicius. See Middleton's Cicero, vol. ii. p. 371. Ægina lay, Piræus on the right, And Corinth on the left; I lay reclined For Time hath not rebuilt them, but uprear'd The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage. That page is now before me, and on mine Of perish'd states he mourn'd in their decline, Of then destruction is; and now, alas! Rome - Rome imperial, bows her to the storm, The skeleton of her Titanic form, Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm. Yet, Italy! through every other land Thy wrongs should ring, and shall, from side to side; Was then our guardian, and is still our guide; Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven! Europe, repentant of her parricide, Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven, Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven. VENICE. (CHILDE HAROLD, Canto iv. Stanzas 1-4.) I STOOD in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; I saw from out the wave her structures rise O'er the far times, when many a subject land 'Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles! She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, At airy distance, with majestic motion, And such she was; her daughters had their dowers In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, The pleasant place of all festivity, But unto us she hath a spell beyond Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond VENICE IN DECAY. (CHILDE HAROLD, Canto iv. Stanzas 11-13.) THE spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord; When Venice was a queen with an unequall'd dower. |