Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

What Italy has gained by the late transfer of nations, it were useless for Englishmen to inquire, till it becomes ascertained that England has acquired something more than a permanent army and a suspended Habeas Corpus; it is enough for them to look at home. For what they have done abroad, and especially in the south, verily they will have their reward, and at no very distant period.

Wishing you, my dear Hobhouse, a safe and agreeable return to that country whose real welfare can be dearer to none than to yourself, I dedicate to you this poem in its completed state; and repeat once more how truly I am ever, your obliged and affectionate friend,

[blocks in formation]

And light the laurels on a loftier head! And be the Spartan's epitaph on me'Sparta hath many a worthier son than he." Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need; The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree I planted, they have torn me, and I bleed: I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.

XI

The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord; And, annual marriage now no more renew'd, The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored, Neglected garment of her widowhood! St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood Stand, but in mockery of his wither'd power, Over the proud Place where an Emperor sued, And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour When Venice was a queen with an unequall'd dower.

XII.

The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns

An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt;
Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains
Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt
From power's high pinnacle, when they have

felt

The sunshine for a while, and downward go Like lauwine loosen'd from the mountain's belt: Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo ! Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe.

XIII.

Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass, Their gilded collars glittering in the sun; But is not Doria's menace come to pass? Are they not bridled ?-Venice, lost and won, Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done, Sinks, like a sea-weed, into whence she rose ! Better be whelm'd beneath the waves, and shun, Even in Destruction's depth, her foreign foes, From whom submission wrings an infamous repose.

XIV.

In youth she was all glory.-a new Tyre,Her very byword sprung from victory, The 'Planter of the Lion,' which through fire And blood she bore o'er subject earth and sea; Though making many slaves, herself still free, And Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite: Witness Troy's rival, Candia! Vouch it, ye Immortal waves that saw Lepanto's fight! For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight.

XV.

Statues of glass-all shiver'd-the long file Of her dead Doges are declined to dust;

*The answer of the mother of Brasidas, the Lacedæmonian general, to the strangers who praised the memory of her son.

But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile

Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust; Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust, Have yielded to the stranger: empty halls, Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as inust Too oft remind her who and what enthrals, Have flung a desolate cloud o'er Venice' lovely walls.

XVI.

When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse,

And fetter'd thousands bore the yoke of war,
Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse,*
Her voice their only ransom from afar :
See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car
Of the o'ermaster'd victor stops, the reins
Fall from his hands-his idle scimitar

Starts from its belt-he rends his captive's chains, And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains.

XVII.

Thus, Venice, if no stronger claim were thine,
Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot,
Thy choral memory of the Bard divine,
Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot
Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot
Is shameful to the nations,-most of all,
Albion! to thee': the Ocean Queen should not
Abandon Ocean's children; in the fall

Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall.

XVIII.

I loved her from my boyhood: she to me Was as a fairy city of the heart, Rising like water-columns from the sea, Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart; And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakspeare's art, f Had stamp'd her image in me, and even so, Although I found her thus, we did not part, Perchance even dearer in her day of woe, Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show. XIX.

I can repeople with the past-and of

The present there is still for eye and thought,
And meditation chasten'd down, enough;
And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought;
And of the happiest moments which were wrought
Within the web of my existence, some

From thee, fair Venice! have their colours caught: There are some feelings Time can not benumb. Nor torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb.

XX.

But from their nature will the tannen grow Loftiest on loftiest and least shelter'd rocks,

The story is told in Plutarch's Life of Nicias.

+ Venice Preserved: Mysteries of Udolpho; The Ghost-Seer, or Armenian; The Merchant of Venice; Othello.

Tannen is the plural of tanne, a species of fir peculiar to the Alps, which only thrives in very rocky That is, the Lion of St. Mark, the standard of the parts, where scarcely soil sufficient for its nourishment republic, which is the origin of the word Pantaloon-can be found. On these spots it grows to a greater Piantaleone, Pantaleon, Pantaloon. height than any other mountain tree.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[blocks in formation]

XLIII.

Then mightst thou more appal; or, less desired,
Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored
For thy destructive charms; then, still untired,
Would not be seen the armèd torrents pour'd
Down the deep Alps; nor would the hostile horde
Of many-nation'd spoilers from the Po

Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger's sword
Be thy sad weapon of defence, and so,
Victor or vanquish'd, thou the slave of friend or foe.

XLIV.

Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him,
The Roman friend of Rome's least mortal mind,
The friend of Tully: as my bark did skim
The bright blue waters with a fanning wind,
Came Megara before me, and behind
Egina lay. Piræus on the right,
And Corinth on the left; I lay reclined
Along the prow, and saw all these unite

In ruin, even as he had seen the desolate sight;
XLV.

For time hath not rebuilt them, but uprear'd
Barbaric dwellings on their shatter'd site,
Which only make more mourn'd and more en-
dear'd

The few last rays of their far-scatter'd light,
And the crush'd relics of their vanish'd might.
The Roman saw these tombs in his own age,
These sepulchres of cities, which excite
Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page

The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage.

XLVI.

That page is now before me, and on mine
His country's ruin added to the mass

Of perish'd states he mourn'd in their decline,
And I in desolation: all that was

Of then destruction is; and now, alas!
Rome Rome imperial, bows her to the storm,
In the same dust and blackness, and we pass
The skeleton of her Titanic form,

Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are

warm.

XLVII.

Yet, Italy! through every other land

Thy wrongs should ring, and shall, from side to side;

Mother of Arts! as once of Arms; thy hand
Was then our guardian, and is still our guide;
Parent of our Religion! whom the wide
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.

XLVIII.

But Arno wins us to the fair white walls,
Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps
A softer feeling for her fairy halls.
Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps
Her corn, and wine, and oil, and Plenty leaps
To laughing life, with her redundant horn.
Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps,

[blocks in formation]
« AnteriorContinuar »