And now they change; a paler shadow strews The last still loveliest, till-'tis gone-and all is gray. PETRARCH (CANTO IV, Xxx-xxxii) There is a tomb in Arqua ;-rear'd in air, ΙΟ They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died; The mountain-village where his latter days Went down the vale of years; and 'tis their pride— An honest pride-and let it be their praise, To offer to the passing stranger's gaze His mansion and his sepulchre; both plain And venerably simple, such as raise A feeling more accordant with his strain Than if a pyramid form'd his monumental fane. And the soft quiet hamlet where he dwelt 20 ITALY (CANTO IV, xlii-xlvii) 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 appal; or, less desired, 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, And Corinth on the left; I lay reclined In ruin, even as he had seen the desolate sight; 1 II 20 For Time hath not rebuilt them, but uprear'd 31 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. That page is now before me, and on mine Of then destruction is; and now, alas! Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm. Yet, Italy! through every other land 40 Thy wrongs should ring, and shall, from side to side; Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven, CLITUMNUS (CANTO IV, lxvi, lxvii) 50 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 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! And on thy happy shore a Temple still, 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 scatter'd water-lily sails Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales. TERNI (CANTO IV, Ixix-lxxii) The roar of waters !-from the headlong height And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again 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, II Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent To the broad column which rolls on, and shows 20 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, Horribly beautiful! but on the verge, From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn: 30 THE APENNINES, AND HORACE (CANTO IV, lxxiii-lxxvii) 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 worshipp'd 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, Th' Acroceraunian mountains of old name; H ΙΟ |