 | The Conversion of Winckelmann and Other Poems |  |
“At last! the Camerlengo doth accept
Visconti for my vicar while I sail
For Sunium, and along the unfathomed soil
Of Elis, Phocis, Attica, I sound
For submerged treasures. If not sooner, blame
The inconsiderate gods, who send us here
So ill-provided! First, to Brandenburg.
Homesickness drives me thither, for the heart
Is biassed in the womb, and yearneth back
Toward the mother-land, grown greater now
That Frederick steals what others stole before,
Tracing his kingdom's boundary with his sword,
And, not unmindful of that wider realm
All sceptres can annex, would have me share,
If scantily, his thalers, so I bide
A minion at his Court. Impossible.
But half the offer and all my liberty
Haply I shall secure. Vienna too,
Where the male Empress and Prince Kaunitz scan
A gem as shrewdly as a protocol,
Perchance will plump my purse:—Then, then, to Greece!
But Romeward still returning. After Rome,
Florence itself were exile!
Visconti for my vicar while I sail
For Sunium, and along the unfathomed soil
46
For submerged treasures. If not sooner, blame
The inconsiderate gods, who send us here
So ill-provided! First, to Brandenburg.
Homesickness drives me thither, for the heart
Is biassed in the womb, and yearneth back
Toward the mother-land, grown greater now
That Frederick steals what others stole before,
Tracing his kingdom's boundary with his sword,
And, not unmindful of that wider realm
All sceptres can annex, would have me share,
If scantily, his thalers, so I bide
A minion at his Court. Impossible.
But half the offer and all my liberty
Haply I shall secure. Vienna too,
Where the male Empress and Prince Kaunitz scan
47
Perchance will plump my purse:—Then, then, to Greece!
But Romeward still returning. After Rome,
Florence itself were exile!
“Ere I go,
Let me once more, untended, wander where
'Mid prostrate columns, splintered capitals,
The buffaloes in Sabine wine-carts crouch,
Dreamily blinking, while their shaggy guides
Drowse by the shafts, imperial pedestal
The mid-day pillow of their peasant sleep.
Where Caesar strode to triumph, bearded goats
Browse on the myrtle of the Palatine,
And all the sepulchred centuries lie around,
Tumbled in tombs, without an epitaph!
What was Evander's, Caesar's then, is now
Evander's yet once more; and if again
Aeneas left the Latian shore to search
For crib of future Rule, he still would find
The white sow's farrow nosing fallen mast,
The Tiber tawnily twisting past the sedge,
Straw-wattled walls and wolfish wilderness.
It is the Past that, from its crumbling tomb
Unswathing lethal bandages, hath stretched
Its shadowy sceptre o'er the vanished sway
Of Tribune and Triumvirate, and crowned
The seven-hilled desolation with the spell
Of its own quietude. The Past is peace.
Elsewhere let that confused amalgam, Man,
Battle and wrangle; here he broods and prays,
Ready to go where Rome hath gone before,
Down to the dust of ages.
Let me once more, untended, wander where
'Mid prostrate columns, splintered capitals,
The buffaloes in Sabine wine-carts crouch,
Dreamily blinking, while their shaggy guides
Drowse by the shafts, imperial pedestal
The mid-day pillow of their peasant sleep.
Where Caesar strode to triumph, bearded goats
Browse on the myrtle of the Palatine,
And all the sepulchred centuries lie around,
Tumbled in tombs, without an epitaph!
48
Evander's yet once more; and if again
Aeneas left the Latian shore to search
For crib of future Rule, he still would find
The white sow's farrow nosing fallen mast,
The Tiber tawnily twisting past the sedge,
Straw-wattled walls and wolfish wilderness.
It is the Past that, from its crumbling tomb
Unswathing lethal bandages, hath stretched
Its shadowy sceptre o'er the vanished sway
Of Tribune and Triumvirate, and crowned
The seven-hilled desolation with the spell
Of its own quietude. The Past is peace.
Elsewhere let that confused amalgam, Man,
Battle and wrangle; here he broods and prays,
Ready to go where Rome hath gone before,
Down to the dust of ages.
49
“It is well
I hence should go awhile. Achinto tripped
In hurrying up Saint Peter's stair, and passed
Was by Rezzonico, whereby I missed
A Pope for patron. Though Albani buys
As ardently as ever, buys and builds,
The brightest torch burns itself out at last,
And, if that light were once extinguishëd,
What darkness would be mine! How great he is
Who knows, till death shall focus him aright?
In life he is too near. But worst of all
Is Mengs's treachery. Yes, Art is well;
But how about the artist? There it stands,
Writ plainly in my History; and now,
The Ganymede embraced by Jupiter
I lauded as antique, is Mengs's own!
Out on these painted canvasses wherethrough
Deception filters! Marble doth not lie:
You cannot forge the Gods. Olympia!
Athens! and Delphi! In your fallen fanes,
They bide untravestied!
I hence should go awhile. Achinto tripped
In hurrying up Saint Peter's stair, and passed
Was by Rezzonico, whereby I missed
A Pope for patron. Though Albani buys
As ardently as ever, buys and builds,
The brightest torch burns itself out at last,
And, if that light were once extinguishëd,
What darkness would be mine! How great he is
Who knows, till death shall focus him aright?
In life he is too near. But worst of all
Is Mengs's treachery. Yes, Art is well;
But how about the artist? There it stands,
Writ plainly in my History; and now,
The Ganymede embraced by Jupiter
I lauded as antique, is Mengs's own!
Out on these painted canvasses wherethrough
50
You cannot forge the Gods. Olympia!
Athens! and Delphi! In your fallen fanes,
They bide untravestied!
| The Conversion of Winckelmann and Other Poems | |