And now they change; a paler shadow strews Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues With a new colour as it gasps away, 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, Pillar'd in their sarcophagus, repose The bones of Laura's lover: here repair Many familiar with his well-sung woes, The pilgrims of his genius. He arose To raise a language, and his land reclaim From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes: Watering the tree which bears his lady's name With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame.
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 prideAn 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 Is one of that complexion which seems made For those who their mortality have felt, And sought a refuge from their hopes decay'd In the deep umbrage of a green hill's shade, Which shows a distant prospect far away Of busy cities, now in vain display'd,
For they can lure no further; and the ray Of a bright sun can make sufficient holiday.
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, Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored For thy destructive charms; then, still untired, Would not be seen the armed 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.
Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him, The Roman friend of Rome's least-mortal mind, 20 The friend of Tully: as my bark did skim The bright blue waters with a fanning wind, Came Megara before me, and behind Aegina lay, Piraeus 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;
For Time hath not rebuilt them, but uprear'd Barbaric dwellings on their shatter'd site, Which only make more mourn'd and more endear'd The few last rays of their far-scatter'd light,
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 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.
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.
CLITUMNUS
(CANTO IV, lxvi, lxvii)
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!
UNIVERSITY ÜF LALIPUANIA LIVAMAI, In
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 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, lxix-lxxii)
The roar of waters !-from the headlong height Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice; 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 Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet That guard the gulf around, in pitiless horror set.
And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again Returns in an unceasing shower, which round, With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain, 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 With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful
vent
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
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, An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge, Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn Its steady dyes, while all around is torn 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.
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; And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly Like spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame, For still they soared unutterably high: I've look'd on Ida with a Trojan's eye; Athos, Olympus, Aetna, Atlas, made These hills seem things of lesser dignity, All, save the lone Soracte's height, display'd Not now in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid
H
UNIVERSITY OF LALIPUANIA LIGNANT, me
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