Italy and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

The sublimest views of Nature, the Volcanos of the Andes, and the Cataract of Niagara, contrasted and compared with the Ruins of Rome:—the superior interest excited by the latter.—The grandeur and extent of the ruins, on, and around the Palatine.—The desolation of the Via Sacra: its splendour in the Triumph of Aurelian.—The Campo Vaccino reduced to the state described by Virgil in the age of Evander.—Reflections arising from the similarity of scenery at different periods in the progress of Society.— The beauty and grandeur of modern Rome.

Wanderer! who lov'st the pathless solitude,
Where, in wild grandeur, Nature dwells alone
On the bleak mountain, and th' unsculptur'd stone,
'Mid torrents, and dark range of forests rude;
Go, where, coeval with the birth of Time,
Wild woods that crest the rocky ridge sublime
Wave in the tempest's sweep:
Or on the Cordillera's icy brow
View, from a thousand rent volcanos, flow
The fire-floods blazing up from central night:
Or under shadow of the cataract,
With deep and dread delight,
Stand where Niagara's flood wears down the mountain tract.

Such scenes in all their wild magnificence
Alone hold commune with the awe-struck eye:
Year after year rolls by,
Like wave on wave o'er trackless oceans vast:
And as the ages die and recommence,
They blend not with the memory of the past.
Time strikes but one one moment, o'er and o'er:
The same same image palls th' o'er-wearied sense:
The wonder awes no more.

Ask of the savage and his solitude
The history and the record of the past:
The answer, audible on every blast,
By day, by night renew'd;
A howling of the wastes, the wilds, the woods,
And melancholy roar of unfrequented floods.

Mine be the haunt where Earth's crown'd city rose;
The solitude, where every echo brings
The voice of nations: where the teeming earth
Recalls her generations into birth:
Where every stone beneath the foot-step rings
Of glory, and its track records the car
That bore the victor 'mid the spoils of war:
There print my foot in dust, all animate
With an undying spirit, dust, where Fame
Gives to the lifeless, life, and man th'immortal name—

Oh, thou enchanting scene!
Where Truth and Fancy at one fountain head
Fill the o'erflowing urn!—Where all that lured
From summer rills, or vernal meadows green,
My boyhood, and, in after time matur'd
The spirit of the man to manly thought,
At once, in one embodied vision wrought,
Before me rose.—I stood where Brutus stood,
And sternly rising to his arduous task,
Flung from his brow feign'd Laughter's idiot mask.
The plain before me lay,
Where Cincinnatus on the unfurrow'd field
Thrice laid his laurell'd shield.
I trod on sacred ground,
Where Freedom, bending o'er her altar, saw
The second Brutus rising from the wound,
That at the base of Pompey's statue laid
Cæsar beneath his blade.
I went where Victory either Scipio crown'd:
Where Cato's foot its vestige had imprest:
And Regulus onward stept, nor deign'd to cast
On suppliant Rome his view;
But, led by death, triumphantly withdrew.
I glow'd where senates caught the living fire
From Tully's lip, that, like the lightning flame,
Fell on mute guilt, and crush'd the traitor's crest:

And where a Virgil swept th' heroic lyre,
And blending with his own a nation's fame,
Gave Rome “th' eternal name,”
The goddess of a world's idolatry,
In mailed grandeur tower'd my sight before:
And they, her sons, who rest not with the dead,
They gather'd to her rising; they, of yore
The mighty:—all, whoe'er, age after age,
Hero, and bard, and sage,
All who built up her immortality,
Burst their sepulchral bed;
And round her beam'd the godlike glow,
Light, that yet leads the world—the glory round her brow.

Fall then, as may, her ruins! vanish all!
Let Time from his o'ershadowing pennons throw
The dust of ages on the sev'n-hill'd brow,
And round the wreck of Nero's golden hall
The fox, that haunts the desert, daily prowl,
And echo answer the night-shrieking owl;
In Livia's bath, beneath the painted roof,
Let swoln bats cling aloof;
And arcs of triumph moulder into dust,
Where hissing serpents twine round Cæsar's broken bust:

Yea, let her temple perish, and her dome,
Worthiest of God, and wonder of the world,
Sink into atoms hurl'd;
Nor stone be left on stone to tell its birth:
Yet temple, tow'r, and column, are not Rome:
They laid not the foundation of her fame;
No adamantine wall built up her mighty name:
But virtues, that exalted human-kind;
But firm resolve, that gloriously achieved
The bold emprise by boundless hope conceived;
But courage, casting fate and fear behind,
And wisdom, whose irrevocable word
Subdu'd the awe-struck soul ere Valour girt the sword.

Thus Rome, from realm to realm, spread out her reign;
And still on her colossal wrecks imprest,
On all, in rival grandeur manifest,
The traces of an earthly god remain.
Lo! how her Coliseum's mountain crest
Sublimely tow'rs, and lone, 'mid Rome's wide waste,
Dwells in its strength!—Trace o'er yon measureless plain
Arches on arches, range by range extending,
That with the Latian hills blue distance blending,

Fade slow from sight, and on their marble brow
The burden of collected rivers bear;
Grey aqueducts, that drink in lands remote
Pure waters at their source, and free the waves,
In torrent floods, that from the realm of air
Rome's summer pavement float,
Gushing perpetual forth as from their native caves.

Go, where the patriot chief, the old, the blind,
O'er marsh, o'er mount, bare rock, or wooded hill,
All that oppos'd his will,
Bow'd Nature to the yoking of his mind:
And on her patient strength the causeway laid,
For Time's eternal footstep made—

Ascend the Palatine:
O'er wreck of wrecks, 'mid labyrinths of decay
Wind thy laborious way.
There in Augustus' roofless hall recline;
And, where the Cæsars in their mortal day,
Amid adoring Rome,
Vouchsafed to dwell, and in an earthly home
Assum'd with Jove supreme divided sway:
While conquer'd nations, gathering from afar,
Led on beneath their light,
Flow'd, worshipping, and hail'd the Julian star,
Behold the unimaginable sight.

All, all is desolate; lo! all around,
Death, and the funeral mound:
And all beneath, throughout the Sacred Way
A dreary waste, and wrecks on either side,
That solitude from solitude divide.

Not mournfuller that region, when of yore
Stern-bending o'er yon height's o'erhanging head,
Nero, at midnight's outrag'd hour,
Mad with impunity of pow'r,
From banquets where the Furies fed,
And masked bacchanals stagger'd round
Nymphs with zones unbound,
Watch'd the wide-blazing wreck his torch had spread,
And as the conflagration onward came,
And fiercer glow'd the firmament of fire
Crimsoning his golden lyre,
Harp'd Ilium's fall o'er Rome in flame.

Yet, underneath the mount, whereon I lay,
While with tir'd foot the pilgrim wander'd lone
In the drear silence of the Sacred Way,
'Mid wastes with weeds o'ergrown;
Onward, methought, I saw far nations flow,
As to their central home;
And the wide desert, fluctuating, glow

With restless multitudes; and one the voice
That rose from all: that voice, the shout of Rome.
Methought, before me past, in mournful weeds,
Kings, uncrown'd kings, whose link'd captivity
Made proud the Roman eye:
And ivory images aloft display'd
Of conquer'd realms; and laurell'd chiefs array'd
With victory: and in robes of snowy fold,
Priests, and their victims, that Clitumnus fed,
Jove's milk-white bullocks of gigantic mold:
And battle-breathing steeds,
Their manes in wild luxuriance floating o'er
Pards, and the brindled forms that Libya breeds:
The war-neigh mingling with the lion roar.
Here elephants, that spoils of nations bore,
'Mid clouds of dust that darkness round them roll'd,
Wreath'd up the column of their trunks on high,
In search of purer sky:
There, chariots charged with Victory, moving on
In order, under eagles, wrought in gold,
Swell'd the slow triumph; while thro' either arch,
Where burnt the battle on the breathing stone,
Aurelian wound his march.
Four milk-white coursers bore the god along,
Timing their measur'd paces to consent
Of clarions, and each loud-voic'd instrument,

And choral thunder of the Pæan song.
His trophied car, laboring along the way,
Like a war-laden vessel that divides
The rolling of the tides,
Sever'd the myriads floating round th' array.
And where a slave bore up, with outstretch'd hands,
Her fetters' galling bands,
Slow, with majestic pace, the Palmyrene,
Bright in her beauty, radiant from afar,
In blaze of jewels seen,
The Conqueror of the East, the Syrian queen,
Thro' shouting Rome led on Aurelian's car;
Grac'd the triumphal pomp, and glorified the war.

Ye! on whose sires of old the galling yoke
Lay heavy! ye, on Danube's blood-stain'd soil,
Where Victory pil'd Rome's trophy'd spoil:
Or where dark Nile her swarthy myriads fed:
Or where, 'mid gliding Euphrats' golden meads,
Sprang the couch'd lion from th' o'ershadowing reeds;
Or Tygris, like an arrow sped,
Severing the green isle from the sandy main:
Or where, athwart the Parthian plain,
The archer, flying, shower'd behind
Shafts that outstript the wind:
Or where the Briton turn'd with hunter spear

The legion's mail'd career;
Ere yet before Rome's present god
The Cambrian monarch calmly trod,
And sternly grasp'd his lion chain:
Stern, as when conqueror in his scythed car
He mow'd the ranks, and strow'd on Britain's plain
Rome's iron field of war,
And still'd her rout beneath the roaring main:
Calm, as when peaceful on the ocean's side,
At eve's slow turn of flood,
He leant upon his buckler's shaggy hide,
And saw the surge along the sea-line foam,
Heave back the golden shield, and eagle helm of Rome.
Come ye! on whose bow'd strength the iron yoke
Heavily weighed, stand on her wreck, and say,
“Was it the arm of man that dealt the blow
“Which laid the mighty low?
“Or past the angel of the Lord on way,
“And pour'd o'er yon wide wastes outstretch'd below
“The vial of his wrath:—the vengeance, and the woe?”

Stand on her wreck, and say,
“Art thou that Rome of whom our fathers spoke,
“The terrible, the thunder-bolt of war:

“The sound of whose mail'd footstep from afar
“Their gather'd battle broke?
“Sleep in thy sloth, on Tyber's level shore,
“Beneath th' abandoned hills, thy ancient reign!
“Thou, golden Eagle, sleep! ne'er drunk with gore
“Thy beak shall banquet on the battle-plain:
“The war trump shall disturb thy dream no more.
“No more the giant, renovate from rest,
“Shall, scornful of his lair,
“From slumber, from a thousand years' repose,
“Start into strength; and while around him flows
“The dark profusion of his unshorn hair,
“Strike with the lightning lance that fires the air
“The gather'd dust of ages from the shield
“That turned to flight the field.”—

At God's appointed day,
The conquerors, and their armies, that unfurl'd
The banner, whose o'ershadowing dim'd the world,
Come forth, and move in might, and pass away:
Whether his angel scatter their array;
Or pestilence, or famine waste the globe:
Or ere the wonted hour, when ice-storms meet,
Wing'd at his word,
The soft snow loosing her ethereal robe,
O'er buried armies spread one winding sheet.

At God's appointed day,
They, and the world's thron'd empires, one by one
Pass off—the work of woe—their ministration done.
But Time, that sweeps their refuse wrecks away,
To Nature and her elements, again
Restores their ancient reign.
Still, as of old, ere Tyre her merchant crown'd,
The tempests, as they lash the billows, spread
The salt foam on her rock's uncovered head:
Thro' solitude, that once was Babylon,
Euphrates in its fullness rushes on;
And still the turbid maze
Of Tyber, laboring down the Latian plain,
Thro' Rome's wide wastes, and silent Ostia strays,
Discolouring, as erst, the bright cerulean main.

I heard the echo from yon hills around
Bring back their earliest sound,
The free wind wandering round the mountain brow;
And where man's many-voiced lip was mute,
The inarticulate brute,
The lowings of the wild and wandering herd
Burst, where the world and Rome once hung on Tully's word.—

I saw the ages backward roll'd,
The scenes long-past restore:

Scenes that Evander bad his guest behold,
When first the Trojan stept on Tyber's shore—
The shepherds in the Forum pen their fold;
And the wild herdsman, on his untamed steed,
Goads with prone spear the heifer's foaming speed,
Where Rome, in second infancy, once more
Sleeps in her cradle.—But—in that drear waste,
In that rude desert, when the wild goat sprung
From cliff to cliff, and the Tarpeian rock
Lour'd o'er the untended flock,
And eagles on its crest their aery hung:
And when fierce gales bow'd the high pines, when blaz'd
The lightning, and the savage in the storm
Some unknown godhead heard, and, awe-struck, gaz'd
On Jove's imagin'd form:—
And in that desert, when swoln Tyber's wave
Went forth the Twins to save,
Their reedy cradle floating on his flood:
While yet the infants on the she-wolf clung,
While yet they fearless play'd her brow beneath,
And mingled with their food
The spirit of her blood,
As o'er them seen to breathe

With fond reverted neck she hung,
And lick'd in turn each babe, and formed with fostering tongue:
And when the founder of imperial Rome
Fix'd on the robber hill, from earth aloof,
His predatory home,
And hung in triumph round his straw-thatcht roof
The wolf skin, and huge boar tusks, and the pride
Of branching antlers wide:
And tow'r'd in giant strength, and sent afar
His voice, that on the mountain echoes roll'd,
Stern preluding the war:
And when the shepherds left their peaceful fold,
And from the wild-wood lair, and rocky den,
Round their bold chieftain rush'd strange forms of barbarous men:
Then might be seen by the presageful eye
The vision of a rising realm unfold,
And temples roof'd with gold.
And in the gloom of that remorseless time,
When Rome the Sabine seiz'd, might be foreseen
In the first triumph of successful crime,
The shadowy arm of one of giant birth
Forging a chain for earth:
And tho' slow ages roll'd their course between,
The form as of a Cæsar, when he led

His war-worn legions on,
Troubling the pastoral stream of peaceful Rubicon.

Such might o'er clay-built Rome have been fore-told
By word of human wisdom. But—what word,
Save from thy lip, Jehovah's prophet! heard,
When Rome was marble, and her temples gold,
And the globe Cæsar's foot-stool, who, when Rome
View'd th' incommunicable name divine
Link a Faustina to an Antonine
On their polluted temple; who but thou,
The prophet of the Lord! what word, save thine,
Rome's utter desolation had denounc'd?
Yet, ere that destin'd time,
The love-lute, and the viol, song, and mirth,
Ring from her palace roofs.—Hear'st thou not yet,
Metropolis of earth!
A voice borne back on every passing wind,
Wherever man has birth,
One voice, as from the lip of human-kind,
The echo of thy fame?—Flow they not yet,
As flow'd of yore, down each successive age
The chosen of the world, on pilgrimage,
To commune with thy wrecks, and works sublime,
Where genius dwells enthron'd?—Ere yet the time

When the seven hills their glory shall forget,
Fair on thy splendor laughs the azure clime,
And sun-beams dart from dome to dome their light.
Stranger! come forth; and on the o'erhanging height,
Hills, with gay groves and marble villas crown'd,
That compass her around,
Behold how Rome asserts her ancient claim,
And sole, 'mid earth's crown'd realms, assumes th' “eternal name.”