 | Minor Poems, including Napoleon |  |
213
TO A FRIEND, ON HIS DEPARTURE FOR ROME.
I
Yes, go! and on those ruins gaze,Whose silent, eloquent appeal
To meditation's eye displays
What spirits ton'd like thine can feel:
Go! stand by Tiber's yellow stream,
Mid crumbling columns, domes, and towers:
Behold past glory's ling'ring gleam,
And find a still exhaustless theme
For thought's sublimest powers.
214
II
Ascend the lofty Palatine!Gaze from its piny summits round:
And oh! what feelings will be thine
When treading that immortal ground:
Each sculptur'd vase, each speaking bust,
Shrine, temple, palace, tomb, and fane,
Will plead to thee their earlier trust;
To genius, greatness, goodness just,
Nor will they plead in vain.
III
For thou hast held communion longWith minds that stamp'd the Augustan age:
With Maro's but once-rivall'd song;
And, matchless still, the Sabine page:
And thou o'er many a name hast por'd
That faithful time has ne'er forgot;
As men admir'd, as gods ador'd;
And in thy inmost heart deplor'd
The “Eternal City's” lot.
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IV
Oh! I could envy thee the gushOf feeling, and of thought sublime,
When thou, beneath morn's orient blush,
Or stillest hour of eve, shalt climb
O'er ivied ruins once august,
And now in splendid fragments hurl'd:
Their haunts, who, sepulchred in dust,
Unknown except by urn or bust,
Once sway'd a subject world.
V
“And this”—(Oh friend! I hear thee say,As gazing round with proud delight,
Where reliques glorious in decay
Shall burst on thy enraptur'd sight)—
“And this was Rome! and where I tread
“The great, the wise have trod of yore:
“Whose names through every clime are spread;
“Whose minds the world itself have fed
“From their exhaustless store.
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VI
“Whose deeds are told by Hist'ry's pen,“Whose works in sculpture, colour, song,
“Still rise magnificent, as when
“Here liv'd and mov'd the exalted throng
“Of painters, sculptors, bards, whose fame
“With time successfully has striven:
“Till he, who would their worth proclaim,
“Shall find the beam that gilds his name
“Is from their glory given.”
VII
I feel,—I own thy language just;And yet a Briton, standing there,
If mindful of the sacred trust
Committed now to Albion's care,
E'en while he granted—gave to Rome
All Rome's just glory could demand;
With feelings worthy of his home
Encircled by free Ocean's foam,
Must love his native land!
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VIII
When Art arrays her magic strifeIn hues from young Aurora thrown:
In wakening forth to all but life
Each breathless form of Parian stone:
And e'en in song, whose source and aim
Demanded but an earthly lyre,
Unfed by heaven's ethereal flame;
I grant to Rome, all Rome can claim,
Or genius can admire.
IX
Yet I, in British freedom, say,That Albion even now has won
A fame less subject to decay,
Than grac'd proud Rome's meridian sun:
And, in that freedom, she contains
Of soul, sublimer, loftier powers;
Than e'er enrich'd the Latian plains,
When monarchs clash'd their captive chains
Beneath her conquering towers.
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X
And, were I what thou art, I should,E'en on the Palatine's proud height,
Or stretch'd by Tiber's golden flood,
Or where Soracte gleams in sight,
Still turn from Rome's majestic ground,
To Benhall's sweet sequester'd dome,
Her sylvan glades with beauty crown'd;
And own, that there my heart had found
Its fondly cherish'd home.
| Minor Poems, including Napoleon | |