The Poetical Works of Sydney Dobell With Introductory Notice and Memoir by John Nichol |
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 | The Poetical Works of Sydney Dobell |  |
The sun rose.
Forth towards me as in awful adjuration
Each ruin stretch'd appealing shades. There came
Soft lightning on my soul, and by a voice
Ineffable, and heard not with the ears,
‘Rome.’ At that sound a thousand thousand voices
Spread it through all things. Each imperial column,
Each prone grey stone, touch'd by the eloquent winds,
Heard it and gave it back. Trees, woods and fountains
In musical confusion, leaves, buds, blossoms—
Even to small flowers unseen, with voices smaller
Than treble of a fay—atoms of sound
Whereof a thousand falling on one ear,
The unwitting sense should count them troubled silence—
Birds, brooks, and waterfalls,—all tongues of dawn,
The very morning hum of summer time,
Swell'd the sweet tumult; early mists that lay
Silent on hill-tops, vocal in the sun
Roll'd off like waves of voices, the stirr'd air
Sung with bright ecstasy. Down came the thunder,
Like a vast hull cleaving the sea of sound,
That lash'd up louder; then the hills cried out,
And emulous the valleys; all the earth
Shook with the sounding ardour, and methought
My flush'd soul, drunk with zeal, leap'd high and shouted,
Rome! With that name, incomprehensible beauty
Fill'd the still gratulate air from earth to heaven,
And knowing I knew not. Even as one dead
I fell. As though that one great sight accomplish'd
All consciousness, and the progressive sense
Reaching the goal stood still.
Forth towards me as in awful adjuration
Each ruin stretch'd appealing shades. There came
Soft lightning on my soul, and by a voice
Ineffable, and heard not with the ears,
‘Rome.’ At that sound a thousand thousand voices
Spread it through all things. Each imperial column,
Each prone grey stone, touch'd by the eloquent winds,
Heard it and gave it back. Trees, woods and fountains
In musical confusion, leaves, buds, blossoms—
Even to small flowers unseen, with voices smaller
Than treble of a fay—atoms of sound
Whereof a thousand falling on one ear,
The unwitting sense should count them troubled silence—
Birds, brooks, and waterfalls,—all tongues of dawn,
107
Swell'd the sweet tumult; early mists that lay
Silent on hill-tops, vocal in the sun
Roll'd off like waves of voices, the stirr'd air
Sung with bright ecstasy. Down came the thunder,
Like a vast hull cleaving the sea of sound,
That lash'd up louder; then the hills cried out,
And emulous the valleys; all the earth
Shook with the sounding ardour, and methought
My flush'd soul, drunk with zeal, leap'd high and shouted,
Rome! With that name, incomprehensible beauty
Fill'd the still gratulate air from earth to heaven,
And knowing I knew not. Even as one dead
I fell. As though that one great sight accomplish'd
All consciousness, and the progressive sense
Reaching the goal stood still.
| The Poetical Works of Sydney Dobell | |