That page XLVI. 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, Of then destruction is; and now, alas! Rome Rome imperial, bows her to the storm, 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 1 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, Her corn, and wine, and oil, and Plenty leaps And buried Learning rose, redeem'd to a new morn. XLIX. There, too, the Goddess loves in stone, and fills (25) The air around with beauty; we inhale The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils Part of its immortality; the veil Of heaven is half undrawn; within the pale We stand, and in that form and face behold What Mind can make, when Nature's self would fail; 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, Where Pedantry gulls Folly-we have eyes: 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? And gazing in thy face as toward a star, Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn, Feeding on thy sweet cheek! (26) while thy lips are With lava kisses melting while they burn, Shower'd on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn! LII. Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love, That feeling to express, or to improve, The gods become as mortals, and man's fate Has moments like their brightest; but the weight 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, The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell: I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream 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 (27) Ashes which make it holier, dust which is 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, (28) The starry Galileo, with his woes; Here Machiavelli's earth, return'd to whence it rose. (29) LV. These are four minds, which, like the elements, Might furnish forth creation:—Italy! Time, which hath wrong'd thee with ten thousand rents Of thine imperial garment, shall deny, And hath denied, to every other, sky, Spirits which soar from ruin:-thy decay Which gilds it with revivifying ray; Such as the great of yore, Canova is to-day. |