University of Virginia Library

URBS ROMA

I. ST. PETER'S BY MOONLIGHT.

Low hung the moon when first I stood in Rome:
Midway she seemed attracted from her sphere
On those twin Fountains shining broad and clear
Whose floods not mindless of their mountain home
Rise there in clouds of rainbow mist and foam.
That hour fulfilled the dream of many a year:
Through that thin veil with joy akin to fear
The steps I saw, the pillars, last the dome.
A spiritual Empire there embodied stood:
The Roman Church there met me face to face:
Ages sealed up of evil and of good
Slept in that circling colonnade's embrace.
Alone I stood, a stranger and alone,
Changed by that stony miracle to stone.

II. PONTIFIC MASS IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL.

Forth from their latticed and mysterious cells
The harmonies are spreading, onward rolled:
Ere long, by counter tides met and controlled,
Midway more high the gathering tumult swells;
It sinks: a breeze the incense cloud dispels:
Once more Sibylline forms, and Prophets stoled
Look down, supreme of Art's high miracles,
Upon the Church terrene. Once more, behold,
With what an awful majesty of mien
The Kingly Priest, his holy precincts rounding,
Tramples the marbles of the sacred scene:
The altar now he nears, and now the throne;
As though the Law were folded in his zone
And all the Prophets in his skirts were sounding.

III. THE PILLAR OF TRAJAN.

Degrading Art's augustest minist'rings
Yon Pillar soars with sculptured forms embost
Whose grace at that ambitious height is lost:
Lo! as the stony serpent twines its rings
Priests, coursers, heralds, warriors, slaves, and kings
Mingle, a tortuous mass confused and crost;
While Art, least honoured here where flattered most,
Deplores in vain her prostituted springs
By a fallen Angel at their source ill-stirred;
Unholy—thence unhealing! What is aid
Vouchsafed upon conditions that degrade
To one who her allegiance hath transferred?
O Attic Art brought low, that here dost stand
Full-fed, but hooded, on a tyrant's hand!

IV. THE ARCH OF TITUS.

I stood beneath the Arch of Titus long;
On Hebrew forms there sculptured long I pored;
Till fancy, by a distant clarion stung
Woke: and methought there moved that arch toward
A Roman Triumph. Lance and helm and sword
Glittered; white coursers tramped and trumpets rung:
Last came, car-borne a captive horde among
The laurelled Boast of Rome—her destined Lord.
As though by wings of unseen eagles fanned
The Conqueror's cheek when first that Arch he saw
Burned with the flush he strove in vain to quell—
Titus! a loftier arch than thine hath spanned
Rome and the world with empery and law;
Thereof each stone was hewn from Israel!

V. THE CAMPAGNA SEEN FROM ST. JOHN LATERAN.

Was it the trampling of triumphant hosts
That levelled thus yon plain, sea-like and hoary;
Armies from Rome sent forth to distant coasts
And back returning clad with spoils of glory?
Around it loom cape, ridge, and promontory:
Above it sunset shadows fleet like ghosts,
Fast-borne o'er keep and tomb whose ancient boasts
By Time confuted, name have none in story.
Fit seat for Rome! for here is ample space
Which greatness chiefly needs—severed alone
By yonder aqueducts with queenly grace
That sweep in curves concentric ever on
Bridging a world subjected as a chart
To that great City, head of earth and heart.

VI. BIRDS IN THE BATHS OF DIOCLETIAN.

Egerian warbler! unseen rhapsodist!
Whose carols antedate the Roman spring;
Who, while the old grey walls, thy playmates, ring,
Dost evermore on one deep strain insist,
Flinging thy bell-notes through the sunset mist!
Around thy haunt rich weeds and wall-flowers swing
As in a breeze, the twilight crimsoning
That sucks from them aërial amethyst—
O for a Sibyl's insight to reveal
That lore thou sing'st of! Shall I guess it? nay!
Enough to hear thy strain: enough to feel
O'er all the extended soul the freshness steal
Of those ambrosial honeydews that weigh
Down with sweet force the azure lids of day.

VII. THE ‘MISERERE’ IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL.

From sadness on to sadness, woe to woe,
Searching all depths of grief ineffable,
Those sighs of the Forsaken sink and swell
And to a piercing shrillness gathering, grow.
Now one by one, commingling now, they flow:
Now in the dark they die, a piteous knell,
Lorn as the wail of exiled Israel
Or Hagar weeping o'er her outcast. No—
Never hath loss external forced such sighs!
O ye with secret sins that inly bleed
And drift from God, search out if ye are wise
Your unrepented infelicities:
And pray, whate'er the punishment decreed,
It prove not exile from your Maker's eyes!

VIII. THE ‘MISERERE’ IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL.

Those sounds expiring on mine ear, mine eye
Was by their visual reflex strangely spelled:
A vision of the Angels who rebelled
Still hung before me, through the yielding sky
Sinking on plumes outstretched imploringly:
Their Tempter's hopes and theirs for ever quelled
They sank with hands upon their eyes close held
And longed, methought, for death yet could not die.
Down, ever down a mournful pageant streaming
Like Souls in whom Despair hath slain Endeavour
Inwoven choirs to ruin blindly tending,
They sank. I wept as one who weeps while dreaming
To see them, host on host, by doom descending
Down the dim gulfs, for ever and for ever.

IX. THE MONUMENTS OF QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN AND THE COUNTESS MATILDA IN ST. PETER'S.

Lo, here, the crownless Queen of royal heart;
The Christian Queen that, vowed to Christ, laid down
The infected sceptre and the apostate crown,
Zealous with that dear Lord to bear her part
Whom the blind North was ‘adverse to desert.’
To her what thing was Fortune's smile or frown,
Fortune that stoles the knave, and thrones the clown
Whose Church the palace is, whose Realm the mart?
Christina, and Matilda! Here they lie!
One spurned a kingdom: dying, one endowed
The meek one with the trappings of the proud
And fixed her realm, a glittering gem, on high
Star of that temporal crown by Peter worn—
Sleep well, brave sisters, till the eternal morn!

X. THE CATACOMBS.

Whoever seeks for penitential days
And vows that fitly on such days attend
A region apt, his wanderings here may end:
These caverns, winding in sepulchral maze
Are stronger than the desert's loneliest ways
Thoughts meek and sad with lofty thoughts to blend:—
Descend, great Pontiff! Sovran Priest, descend!
Let all the Princes of the Church upraise
With annual rites their sceptres here to God!
Kings of the nations, purpling those strange glooms
With robes imperial on your faces sink
Sink, and be saved, in those dread catacombs!
And deeply of the inspiring incense drink
That rises from the dust the Martyrs trod!

XI. THE APPIAN WAY.

Awe-struck I gazed upon that rock-paved way,
The Appian Road; marmorean witness still
To Rome's resistless stride and fateful Will,
Which mocked at limits, opening out for aye
Divergent paths to one imperial sway—
The Nations verily their parts fulfil;
And War must plough the fields which Law shall till;
Therefore Rome triumphed till the appointed day.
Then from the Catacombs, like waves up-burst
The Host of God, and scaled as in an hour
O'er all the earth the mountain seats of Power.
Gladly in that baptismal flood immersed
The old Empire died to live. Once more on high
It sits; now clothed with immortality.

XII. ON THE CROSS IN THE INTERIOR OF THE COLISEUM.

Far from his friends, his country, and his home,
Perhaps on that small spot—ay doubtless there—
Some Christian Martyr fell, in one wide stare
Concentrating the myriad gaze of Rome.
Now central stands beneath heaven's mighty dome
The Cross which marks that spot! Stranger, beware!
The Orb of Earth was framed that Cross to bear:
And when, slow-tottering round an Empire's tomb
These walls, within whose grey encincture vast
That Cross for ages stands as in a shrine,
Around their awful guest shall melt at last,
Each stone descending to the earth shall say
‘Empires and Nations crumble: but that Sign
Pre-eminent shall stand, and stand for aye!’

XIII. THE FOUNTAIN OF EGERIA.

For this cold fount the Sabine Saint and Sage
Wooed by high thought forsook both camp and throne:
Here on his country's weal he mused alone
Calm-visaged as the planetary page:
That murmuring spring had power his cares to assuage:
Here—dim elsewhere as noontide moon fleece-strewn—
In this religious gloom distinctly shewn,
Egeria shared his kingly hermitage.
O pure as Arethusa, and more high!
Cleaving rough seas she spurned the irreverent love;
Thine, Roman Nymph, a tenderer sanctity,
Bending like air that strong white head above
To breathe just counsel in a monarch's ear—
Those kings alone are blest to whom thy voice is dear!

XIV. THE GRAVES OF TIRCONNEL AND TYRONE ON SAN PIETRO, IN MONTORIO.

Within Saint Peter's fane, that kindly hearth
Where exiles crowned their earthly loads down cast,
The Scottish Kings repose, their wanderings past
In death more royal thrice than in their birth.
Near them, within a church of narrower girth
But, like it, with dilated memories vast,
Sad Ulster's Princes find their rest at last
Their home the holiest spot, save one, on earth.
This is that Mount which saw Saint Peter die!
Where stands yon dome stood once that Cross reversed:
On this dread Hill, a Western Calvary,
The Empire and that Synagogue accurst
Clashed two ensanguined hands—like Cain—in one.
Sleep where the Apostle slept, Tirconnel and Tyrone!

XV. TO THE PILLAR THAT STANDS BESIDE THE HIGH ALTAR AT ‘ST. PAUL'S OUTSIDE THE WALLS,’ ROME.

A Conqueror called thee from the eternal night
And said, ‘Ascend from thy dark mother's breast;
Sustain my glory on thy sunlike crest
And by mine altar watch—mine acolyte.’
A Poet, wandering from Helvellyn's height,
Beheld thee dead ere born. That Alpine guest
Adjured thee, ‘Where thou liest, for ever rest,
And freeze those hearts that trust in mortal might.’
The years went by; then, clear above that cloud
Which blinds the nations from her Roman throne
Thus spake the Universal Church aloud:
‘Arise at last, thou long-expectant stone!
For God predestined, consummate thy vow:
Advance; and where the Apostle stood stand thou!’