University of Virginia Library

I.

Rome, are they changing thy face, and is it not such as I loved it,
Dreamy, impressive, and grand? Rome, are they making thee young?
Often I think of that winter: the rule of the Pontiffs still lasted;
Rome was the place of the past; nought of the present she knew;
Freedom she knew not, nor science, nor many a thing that ennobles;
Silent she lived, and inert, courting prosperity not.
But she possessed for the poet a magic, a drowsy enchantment:
Something elegiac and rare, due to the power of Time.
Time is the staple of elegy; Time and the multiform action,
Slow and poetic and sad, which it exerts on the world.
Rome was the city of ages, and such as the ages had made her,
Working by gentle degrees; who could be dead to the charm?
Yet it was clear unto all, that the dyke which repelled innovation,
Sapped from within and without, soon would give way to the wave.
Nature abhorreth stagnation, and raises the whirlwind to end it;
All upon earth must advance, even the Rome of the Popes.

II.

Who, that has known and loved Rome, looks not back to the first of the winters
Which in her limits he spent, thinking how happy it was?
Whether we stood on the hill that looks down on the City Eternal,
Letting the eye, far and wide, roam o'er its numberless roofs,
High o'er whose level the ruins uprise like vessels gigantic,
Stranded, half buried, forlorn, wrecked on the ocean of Time;
Or in the galleries strolled, 'mid the silent people of marble,
Gifted with beauty divine—ay, and perpetual youth,
Who so placid look on, while the world grows old, and we mortals
Pass before them and die, after a life of a day;
Whether we lingered at dusk in the churches heavy with incense,
While, o'er the organ's deep peal, rose the high voices clear;
Or in the villas in May, among masses of bay and of ilex,
Gathering, down in the dells, bunches of cyclamens pink;
Equally great was the charm, and beauty was ever around us;
Give me, ye Powers of Good, give me those days that are gone!
Give me again the delight, which a mind that was youthful and ardent
Felt, as the realms of the Past suddenly then were disclosed,
Dull and unreal no more, as they seemed in the school-books, but real,
Crowded with tangible forms—column, arch, statue, and bust!
Fondly I loved to repeople those silent parts of the city
Whence long ago life had ebbed, leaving its wrecks on the shore.
Tracts where the Goth and the Vandal seem still to be present in spirit;
Where every stone that you pass tells the Decline and the Fall;
Where the ephemeral green and the rubbish of empire mingle;
Where, in each desolate field, rises some landmark of Time.
Ah, they are fast disappearing, those spaces endeared to the poet:
Workmen already are here; see, they are laying down streets.
Work, O ye masons, in peace! ye lay the first stone of a ruin:
That which man buildeth to-day, ivy to-morrow invades.

III.

Sweet are the gardens of Rome; but one is for Englishmen sacred;
Who, that has ever been there, knows not the beautiful spot
Where our poets are laid, in the shade of the pyramid lofty,
Dark grey, tipped as with snow, close to the turreted walls?
Tall are the cypresses many, from which in the evenings of summer,
Nightingale nightingale calls, soon as the twilight descends.
Nature around is profuse; the rose and the ivy are mingled;
Fit for the poet the place, either in life or in death.
All is eternal around, nor belongeth to nation now living;
Unto the world it belongs, unto the genius of man.
Yet, with the things that are great, with the things that for ages have lasted,
Mingle the things that are small, mingle the things of a day.
Where do more daisies abound, and where do more violets nestle?
Where are the odours of spring fresher and sweeter exhaled?
Well might the poet, who now himself in this garden is buried,
Say that it made one in love even with Death to be here.

IV.

Even as men have made use of her ruins gigantic as quarries,
Forming, from out of their store, structures imposing and new,
So, as to things of the mind, is Rome th' inexhaustible quarry
Whence, as the ages have passed, nations their needs have supplied.
Languages, States and their laws, institutions enduring and splendid,
Sciences, letters and arts, out of the wreck have been formed.
Often the fanciful poet Propertius, when Rome in her glory
Stood, and the things that are dust shone in their splendour intact,
Loved to look back to the past, and paint to himself the great city
As, ere Æneas arrived, nothing but hillock and grass;
Many a spot could I show you to-day, where all has reverted:
That which a city became, grass has become once again.
Orchards deserted surround us, and patches of grass unfrequented,
Filled with the flowers of spring, scenting the air all around.
This is the Esquiline hill; and the shout of the workman whose shovel
Strikes on some treasure of art, startles at moments the air.
Something the men have discovered, and eagerly gather about it;
Something which, lit by the sun, sparkles with many a tint.
Lo, on uplifting the turf, a pavement of marble mosaic,
Rich in its varied design, near to the surface appears;
Tricked by a little frail verdure, we saw in this spot but the present,
Yet, in a world which is old, that which we trod was the past.

V.

Endless, O Rome, is thy teaching! thy sight, of itself, is a lesson:
Who can regard thee unmoved, though for an hour, not more?
Who ever tarried in vain in the shadow of temple and circus,
Where, on the ground at your feet, moulder the fragments of frieze
Where, in the earth that is hallowed, it may be that statues are hidden,
Which, at the zenith of art, Phidias or Polyclete wrought?
There, as you sit in the twilight, with Time as your only companion,
Under your eyes are displayed History's views that dissolve.
Grand is the saddening series. Faint, in the distance of ages,
Empires come into view, taking consistence and shape:
Brighter and brighter they grow, until, with a splendid effulgence,
Filling the whole of the scene, still for a moment they stand;
Then they unnoticed decline, and fainter becoming and fainter,
Melt into others away, leaving behind but a name.