Interpret to man's ear the mingled voice That comes from her old dungeons yawning now Where the dew gathers on the mouldering stones, What then shall cleanse thy bosom, gentle Earth, From all its painful memories of guilt? The whelming flood, or the renewing fire, Or the slow change of time? that so, at last, The horrid tale of perjury and strife, Murder and spoil, which men call history, May seem a fable, like the inventions told By poets of the gods of Greece. O thou, Who sittest far beyond the Atlantic deep, Among the sources of thy glorious streams, My native Land of Groves! a newer page In the great record of the world is thine; THE KNIGHT'S EPITAPH. THIS is the church which Pisa, great and free, Reared to St. Catharine. How the time-stained walls, That earthquakes shook not from their poise, appear To shiver in the deep and voluble tones Rolled from the organ! Underneath my feet The image of an armed knight is graven Cuishes, and greaves, and cuirass, with barred helm, By feet of worshippers, are traced his name, Why should I pore upon them? This old tomb, Of this inscription, eloquently show His history. Let me clothe in fitting words The thoughts they breathe, and frame his epitaph. He whose forgotten dust for centuries Has lain beneath this stone, was one in whom Adventure, and endurance, and emprise The body's sinews. Brave he was in fight, And quick to draw the sword in private feud. As ever shaven cenobite. He loved As fiercely as he fought. He would have borne The maid that pleased him from her bower by night, To his hill-castle, as the eagle bears His victim from the fold, and rolled the rocks On his pursuers. He aspired to see His native Pisa queen and arbitress Of cities: earnestly for her he raised "He lived, the impersonation of an age That never shall return. His soul of fire Was kindled by the breath of the rude time He lived in. Now a gentler race succeeds, Shuddering at blood; the effeminate cavalier, Turning his eyes from the reproachful past, And from the hopeless future, gives to ease, And love, and music, his inglorious life." |