The poems and prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough With a selection from his letters and a memoir: Edited by his wife: In two volumes: With a portrait |
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II. Claude to Eustace.
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 | The poems and prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough |  |
II. Claude to Eustace.
Rome disappoints me still; but I shrink and adapt myself to it.Somehow a tyrannous sense of a superincumbent oppression
Still, wherever I go, accompanies ever, and makes me
Feel like a tree (shall I say?) buried under a ruin of brickwork.
Rome, believe me, my friend, is like its own Monte Testaceo,
Merely a marvellous mass of broken and castaway wine-pots.
Ye gods! what do I want with this rubbish of ages departed,
Things that nature abhors, the experiments that she has failed in?
What do I find in the Forum? An archway and two or three pillars.
Well, but St. Peter's? Alas, Bernini has filled it with sculpture!
No one can cavil, I grant, at the size of the great Coliseum.
Doubtless the notion of grand and capacious and massive amusement,
This the old Romans had; but tell me, is this an idea?
Yet of solidity much, but of splendour little is extant:
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‘Marble I thought thee, and brickwork I find thee!’ the Tourist may answer.
| The poems and prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough | |