University of Virginia Library

II Rome

The Villa Albani

“Had I but known, I might have spared my scruples.
The dreaming mind makes nightmares for itself
In broadest daylight, and mine well-nigh choked
Just before waking. What fantastic fears!
Jove on the Capitol is templed still,
Mars on his mount, and Venus everywhere.
Unabdicating Gods, they take their seats
Within the very shrines my fancy filled
With gaze of keen inquisitors to watch
My thoughts, and if I verily believed.
This clear-eyed, big-brained, pagan Papacy
Is much too busy contemplating gems,
And turning blurred intaglios to the light,
To spare the time for canonising saints,
Or worrying sinners: just the Rome for me,
And I the very man for such a Rome.
This flowing mantle, this black velvet robe,
These snow-white bands, are pleasant to the limbs,
The eye, the touch, and do, I think, become me.
But if my kith in Stendhal were to deem
That I am an Abate, save my cloak,
They would but show their Northern simpleness.
“In what a goodly company I sit!
There, Jupiter, with Empire on his brow,
But calm in self-held counsel, undisturbed
By purposes participated, or
The gusty misdirection of the crowd.
There, Hermes, not yet dwarfed to Mercury,
Winged at the head and sandalled at the heel,
Heaven's messenger alert, whose stolen strings,
Stretched deftly o'er the sluggish tortoise' shell,
Make instant music: Virgin Artemis,
Kept chaste by action and the brisk embrace
Of Morning, bright and chilly as her spear,
Her bare feet diamonded with meadow dew,
And twin-leashed boarhounds baying at her side,
Beating Arcadian covert: all the Gods
Radiant around me! No Madonnas here,
Contorted martyrs, scranny confessors,
To wean composure from the breast of joy.
And not alone the deathless denizens
Of Hades and Olympus drink the light
Of these cool corridors, but mortal men,
Almost as godlike as the gods themselves
By marble will and majesty of mind,—
The Macedonian with his manly tears
At frontier of ambition; Hannibal
Unvanquished by his victors, 'spite defeat
Foremost of those who tread the ways of war;
The Samian Sage, the vulgar travesty,
Who made himself a garden, and enjoined,
No carnal epicure, the goal of man
Is still felicity, but that the road
Lies along cleanly and imperial ways,
Not swinish by-paths; Homer, with his gaze
Surveying all, and therefore fixed on none,
The Poet outside all things, he alone,
The Reconciler, with his concords twain,
Song and ensuing Silence;—all are here,
Indulgent of my presence, claiming me
Their servitor, if faithful then their friend,
Their equal, by their grace and courtesy.
Such will I strive to be, but not to-day,
When, look! upon the fountain's marble rim
Rounding the plashing music, April doves,
Just like to Pliny's in the Capitol,
Sip and glance sideways, flutter, perch again,
And preen their purple feathers in the sun,
Ausonian sun that fills the chalices
Of tulip and anemone with light
Mellower than Montefiascone's wine.
Along the coping of the stuccoed wall
See Juno's pompous sentinels parade
The jewels of their self-supporting train.
Stirred by the very faintest breath that scarce
Would rob the roundness of the thistledown,
Flutters the olive, and with upturned leaves
Silvers the golden sunlight. At the tips
Of the pruned vine-stems glisten drops of dew,
The promise of their shortly dawning shoots.
Hark! 'twas the hoopoe! heralding the bird
Who talks to Spring of nothing but himself,
So likewise half an egoist, as is meet,
Apeing his betters, but imperfectly.
To fig-tree bole the green frog clings and croaks,
And the lithe lizard squats along the wall,
Fagged by its very restlessness, and takes
Siesta in the sunshine, not the shade.
Taught by the almond how to bloom, the peach
Hath bettered now the lesson, and the pear,
Forgoing useless rivalry, arrays
Itself in whiteness. Every ruined wall
Breaks into blossom, every shattered arch
Its wrinkled baldness now festoons with flowers,
To join the Saturnalia of the Spring.
I hear the cask-piled wine-carts creaking slow
O'er the Nomentan Way, hear them, but see not,
Save with the sight responsive to the sound,
In sweet confusion of the senses made
Kindred. There is no iris now in Heaven,
But, finding Earth yet heavenlier, it hath dropped
In coils and jewelled fragments to the ground,
And wavers over the Campagna wide.
Days are there, like to this one, when 'tis well
To lie supine in poppied vacancy,
And, passionlessly passive, to conceive
Those hovering intimations that alight
On the lulled sense, impregnating the brain
With embryonic fancies that mature
In season unto shapeliness and fruit.
And so to-day I claim from Gods and men,
And my loved Alessandro, a forenoon
Of brooding lethargy,—to bask and purr
Over my fixed felicity.
“All is nought,
All lived and loved elsewhere, when matched with Rome.
I deemed myself a student amply armed
With bookish preparation, and that here
I should but see the treasures I surmised.
The veriest catechumen, I have passed,
With Passionei, Giacomelli, Mengs,
Corsini, and Cantucci, most of all
With Cardinal Albani, step by step,
Into Art's inmost mysteries, and now,
I live their equal, I the cobbler's son,
Spurned in the insolent and servile North,
Where all are clowns together. When I wake,
My princely Master—Master, but because
I love to call him so,—doth mount and sit
Familiar in my chamber, to discuss
The missing limbs of torso late unearthed
By some unlettered spade, and bids me choose
To-morrow's excavation, just as though
I were the Cardinal, and he the clerk
To register my wish. What men are these!
He but the first, the rest so like to him
In loveliness and largeness of their lives,
And speculations spacious as the dome
That copes the Roman ether, and as free
From matters' cloudy superfluities.
The titled boors of Brandenburg that scorned
My learning as my lineage, use their gold,
Lords of unlovely luxury, to scoop
Their swine-troughs deeper, grossly surfeiting
Their nether nature. Prince and Cardinal,
Whose veins are channels for the far-off blood
Of Alba or Lanuvium, consume
Their substance, as themselves, in marble Heavens
For Gods to haunt, and all mankind to scan,
Diviner for the seeing. Never here
Is homage to the menial body paid.
The mind alone is guest. No cushioned comfort
Distracts from limbs of beauty, brows of thought,
Nor is the ostentatious banquet spread,
Circean. 'Tis the soul alone that feasts;
Unclouded by the cup.
“But let none think
The nimble spirit's sportiveness is numbed
By Art's solemnity. On festal nights,
Hither my splendid Cardinal convenes
All the renown and jewelled grace of Rome
To glisten through his Villa. Nymph and Faun,
Persistent types, in modern modes disguised,
Consort with their progenitors embalmed
In unvoluptuous marble cold and calm.
They dance before our gravity, and wit
Sparkles like alabaster. Clement's self
Hath with his presence sanctified the scene,
Retiring scandalised, or seeming so
To save his holiness, nor stayed to hear
Battoni's lovely daughters, voice with voice,
Like two waves wantoning to be one, awhile
Eluding each the other, near, apart,
Till merged at length in one smooth melody.
“Gods! what a feast was yesterday! Behold
What, 'twixt the noon and evening Angelus,
We quarried in a vineyard near the Arch
Of Gallienus. No cold copy, that!
But so authentic from Hellenic hands,
That Phidias' self, or sure some touch like his,
Ere Attic genius strained beyond the point
Of absolute perfection, and so lost
Its even balance, might have chiselled it.
See! the young Knight this very moment hath
Sprung from his steed, that, lightened of the load,
And biassed by the bridle leftways clutched,
Rears foaming into air with incurved hoofs,
Nostrils dilated, terror-shaken mane,
Ruffling the marble. Gazing from the ground
At imminence of death, the fallen foe,
Entangled in his chlamys, lifts his arm,
Shield insufficient 'gainst the upward blade,
Flashing to fall. And with what slight effects
The chisel tells its tale! The tightened lips
Bespeak the victor's purpose, and the mouth,
Half open with the coming cry of fear,
The victim's fate. How little! yet enough.
Bernini, Buonarroti's bastard son,
Might learn his trade, if copyists e'er could learn,
By gazing on its simpleness. Pure Greek,
No Roman replica. Behind the head
Of the astonished steed, the background, see,
Is deeply hollowed out, that we may feel
The fulness of its terror, yet no line
Project beyond the marble's proper plane.
Where shall we find it fitting company?
The very place! 'Twill feel at home between
Antinoüs crested with the lotus-flower,
And the bronze statue by Praxiteles,
The lizard-slaying Musagete. No hand
Must maim its splendour, mending it. The mind,
And not manipulation, can supply
What Time hath taken. Let it keep its loss,
Like yon divine sarcophagus that weds
Peleus with Thetis, the fair Seasons four
Tricked in their emblematic imagery,
Hephaestus proffering the well-tempered sword,
Pallas her spear, and tender Hesperus
With sloping torch leading the way to love,
That falters on the threshold of its joy.