'Tis solitude should teach us how to die; It hath no flatterers; vanity can give No hollow aid; alone man with his God must strive: XXXIV. Or, it may be, with demons, who impair 17) The strength of better thoughts, and seek their prey In melancholy bosoms, such as were Of moody texture from their earliest day, And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay, Deeming themselves predestined to a doom Which is not of the pangs that pass away; Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb, The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom. XXXV. Ferrara! in thy wide and grass-grown streets, Of petty power impell'd, of those who wore The wreath which Dante's brow alone had worn before. XXXVI. And Tasso is their glory and their shame. Hark to his strain! and then survey his cell! And see how dearly earn'd Torquato's fame, And where Alfonso bade his poet dwell: The miserable despot could not quell The insulted mind he sought to quench, and blend With the surrounding maniacs, in the hell Where he had plunged it. Glory without end Scatter'd the clouds away-and on that name attend XXXVII. The tears and praises of all time; while thine Would rot in its oblivion in the sink Of worthless dust, which from thy boasted line Is shaken into nothing; but the link From thee if in another station born, Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou mad'st to mourn: XXXVIII. Thou! form'd to eat, and be despised, and die, That whetstone of the teeth-monotony in wire! Peace to Torquato's injured shade! 'twas his And not the whole combined and countless throng Compose a mind like thine? though all in one Condensed their scatter'd rays, they would not form a sun. XL. Great as thon art, yet parallel'd by those, And, like the Ariosto of the North, Sang ladye-love and war, romance and knightly worth. XLI. The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust 19) For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves 20) XLII. Italia! oh Italia! thou who hast 22) The fatal gift of beauty, which became A funeral dower of present woes and past, On thy sweet brow is sorrow plough'd by shame, And annals graved in characters of flame. Oh God! that thou wert in thy nakedness Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress; XLIII. Then might'st thou more appal; or, less desired, Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger's sword XLIV. Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him, 23) And Corinth on the left; I lay reclined In ruin, even as he had seen the desolate sight; XLV. For Time hath not rebuilt them, but uprear'd Barbaric dwellings on their shatter'd site, Which only make more mourn'd and more endear'd The few last rays of their far-scatter'd light, And the crush'd relics of their vanish'd might. The Roman saw these tombs in his own age, These sepulchres of cities, which excite Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage. XLVI. That page is now before me, and ca mine Of perish'd states he mourn'd in their decline, Of then destruction is; and now, alas! Rome Rome imperial, bows her to the storm, In the same dust and blackness, and we pass The skeleton of her Titanic form, 24) Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm. XLVII. Yet, Italy! through every other land Thy wrongs should ring,and shall, from side to side; Mother of Arts! as once of arms; thy hand Was then our guardian, and is still our guide; Parent of our Religion! whom the wide Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven! Europe, repentant of her parricide, Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven, Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven. XLVIII. But Arno wins us to the fair white walls, Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps A softer feeling for her fairy halls. Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps Her corn, and wine, and oil, and Plenty leaps To laughing life, with her redundant horn. Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps Was modern Luxury of Commerce born, And buried Learning rose, redeem'd to a new morn.. XLIX. There, too, the Goddess loves in stone, and fills 25) Of heaven is half undrawn; within the pale Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould: L. We gaze and turn away, and know not where, Where Pedantry gulls Folly - we have eyes: Blood pulse and breast, confirm the Dardan Shepherd's prize. LI. Appear'dst thou not to Paris in this guise? Or to more deeply blest Anchises? or, In all thy perfect goddess-ship, when lies Before thee thy own vanquish'd Lord of War? And gazing in thy face as toward a star, Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn, Feeding on thy sweet cheek! 26) while thy lips are With lava kisses melting while they burn, Shower'd on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn! LII. Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love, Their full divinity inadequate That feeling to express, or to improve, The gods become as mortals, and man's fate From what has been, or might be, things which grow Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below. |