Պանդխտութիւն Հարոլդայ ասպետի

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 ckeek! 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
Has moments like their brightest; but the weight
Of earth recoils upon us; - let it go!
We can recal such visions, and create, 
From what has been, or might be, things which grow
Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below. 

LIII 

I leave to learned fingers and wise hands,
The artist and his ape, to teach and tell
How well his connoisseurship understands 
The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell:
Let these describe the undescribable:
I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream
Wherein that image shall for ever dwell; 
The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream
That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam. 

LIV 

In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie
Ashes which make it holier, dust which is
Even in itself an immortality,
Though there were nothing save the past, and this,
The particle of those sublimities
Which have relapsed to chaos: - here repose
Angelo's, Alfieri's bones, and his, 
The starry Galileo, with his woes;
Here Machiavelli's earth return'd to whence it rose. 

LV 

These are four minds, which, like the elements,
Might furnish forth creation : - Italy!
Time, which hath wrongd thee with ten thousand rents
Of thine imperial garment, shall deny,
And hath denied, to every other sky,
Spirits which soar from ruin: – thy decay
Is still impregnate with divinity, 
Which gilds it with revivifying ray;
Such as the great of yore, Canova is to-day. 

LVI 

But where repose the all Etruscan three
Dante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they ,
The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he
Of the Hundred Tales of love - where did they lay
Their bones, distinguish'd from our common clay
In death 'as life? Are they resolved to dust,
And have their country's marbles nought to say ? 
Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust?
Did they not to her breast their filial earth intrust? 

LVII 

Ungrateful Florence ! Dante sleeps afar,
Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore ;
Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,
Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore
Their children's children would in vain adore
With the remorse of ages; and the crown
Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore, 
Upon a far and foreign soil had grown,
His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled - not thine own. 

LVIII 

Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeath'd
His dust, - and lies it not her Great among ,
With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed
O'er him who form’d the Tuscan's siren tongue ?
That music in itself, whose sounds are song,
The poetry of speech? No; - even his tomb
Uptorn, must bear the hyæna bigot's wrong, 
No more amidst the meaner dead find room,
Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for whom ! 

LIX 

And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust ;
Yet for this want more noted, as of yore
The Cæsar's pageant, shorn of Brutus bust,
Did but of Rome's best Son remind her more:
Happier Ravenna! On thy hoary shore,
Fortress of falling empire! honour'd sleeps
The immortal exile ; - Arqua, too, her store 
Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps,
While Florence vainly begs her banish'd dead and weeps. 

LX 

What is her pyramid of precious stones?
Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues
Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones
Of merchant-dukes? the momentary dews
Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse
Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead,
Whose names are mausoleums of the Muse, 
Are gently prest with far more reverent tread
Than eyer paced the slab which paves the princely head. 

LXI 

There be more things to greet the heart and eyes
In Arno's dome of Art's most princely shrine,
Where Sculpture with her rainbow sister vies;
There be more marvels yet - but not for mine;
For I have been accustom'd to entwine
My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields,
Than Art in galleries: though a work divine 
Calls for my spirit 's homage, yet it yields
Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields 

LXII 

Is of another temper, and I roam
By Thrasimene's lake, in the defiles
Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home;
For there the Carthaginian's warlike wiles
Come back before me, as his skill beguiles
The host between the mountains and the shore,
Where Courage falls in her despairing files, 
And torrents, swoll'n to rivers with their gore,
Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scatter'd o’er, 

LXIII 

Like to a forest felld by mountain winds;
And such the storm of battle on this day,
And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds
To all save carnage, that, beneath the fray,
An earthquake reel'd unheededly away!
None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet,
And yawning forth a grave for those who lay 
Upon their bucklers for a winding - sheet;
Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet ! 

LXIV 

The Earth to them was as a rolling bark
Which bore them to Eternity; they saw 
The Ocean round, but had no time to mark
The motions of their vessel ; Nature's law,
In them suspended, reck'd not of the awe
Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds
Plunge in the clouds for refuge and withdraw
From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds
Stumble o'er heaying plains, and man's dread hath no words. 

LXV 

Far other scene is Thrasimene now;
Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain
Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough;
Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain
Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta'en -
A little rill of scanty stream and bed -
A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain; 
And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead
Made the earth wet, and turn’d the unwilling waters red. 

LXVI 

But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave
Of the most-living crystal that was e'er
The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave
Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear. 
Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer
Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters !
And most serene of aspect, and most clear; 
Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters,
A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters ! 

LXVII 

And on thy happy shore a Temple still,
Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,
Upon a mild declivity of hill,
Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps
Thy current's calmuess; oft from out it leaps
The finny darter with the glittering scales,
Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps ;
While, chance, some scatter'd water-lily sails
Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales. 

LXVIII 

Pass not unblest the Genius of the place!
If through the air a' zephyr more serene
Win to the brow, 't is his; and if ye trace
Along his margin a more eloquent green,
If on the heart the freshness of the scene
Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust
Of weary life a moment lave it clean 
With Nature's baptism, - 't is to him ye must
Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust. 

LXIX 

The roar of waters! - from the headlong height
Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;
The fall of waters ! rapid as the light
The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss ;
The hell of waters! Where they howl and hiss,
And boil in endless torture ; while the sweat
Of their great agony, wrung out from this 
Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet
That guard the gulf around, in pitiless horror set, 

LXX 

And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again
Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,
With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,
Is an eternal April to the ground,
Making it all one emerald : - how profound
The gulf! and how the giant element
From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound, 
Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent
With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent. 

LXXI 

To the broad column which rolls on, and shows
More like the fountain of an infant sea
Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes
Of a new world, than only thus to be
Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,
With many windings, through the vale : - Look back!
Lo! where it comes like an eternity, 
As if to sweep down all things in its track,
Charming the eye with dread, - a matchless cataract, 

LXXII 

Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,
From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,
An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,
Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn
Its steady dyes, while all around is torn
By the distracted waters, bears serene
Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn:
Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene,
Love watching Madness with unalterable mien. 

LXXIII 

Once more upon the woody Apennine,
The infant Alps, which — had I not before
Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine
Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar
The thundering lauwine – might be worshipp'd more ;
But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear
Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar 
Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near,
And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear, 

LXXIV 

Th’Acroceraunian mountains of old name;
And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly
Like spirits of the spot, as't were for fame,
For still they soared unutterably high:
I've look'd on Ida with a Trojan's eye;
Athos, Olympus, Ætna, Atlas, made
These hills seem things of lesser dignity, 
All, save the lone Soracte's heights display'd
Not now in snow, which asks the lyric Roman 's aid 

LXXV 

For our remembrance, and from out the plain
Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,
And on the curl hangs pausing : not in vain
May he, who will, his recollections rake,
And quote in classic raptures, and awake
The hills with Latian echoes; I abhorr’d
Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake, 
The drill'd dull lesson, forced down word by word
In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record 

LXXVI 

Aught that recalls the daily drug which turn'd
My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught
My mind to meditate what then it learn'd,
Yet such the fix'd inveteracy wrought
By the impatience of my early thought,
That, with the freshness wearing out before
My mind could relish what it might have sought, 
If free to choose, I cannot now restore
Its health ; but what it then detested, still abhor. 

LXXVII 

Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so,
Not for thy faults, but mine ; it is a curse
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,
To comprehend, but never love thy verse,
Although no deeper Moralist rehearse
Our little life, nor Bard prescribe his art,
Nor livelier Satirist the conscience pierce, 
Awakening without wounding the touch'd heart,
Yet fare thee well - upon Soracte's ridge we part. 

LXXVIII 

Oh Rome! my country ! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires! and control
In their shut breasts their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferance ? Come and see 
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye !
Whose agonies are evils of a day
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay. 

LXXIX 

The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her wither'd hands,
Whose holy dust was scatter'd long ago;
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;
The very sepulchres lie tenantless
Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow, 
Old Tiber ! through a marble wilderness?
Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress. 

LXXX 

The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire,
Have dealt upon the seven-hill'd city's pride;
She saw her glories star by star expire,
And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride,
Where the car climb'd the capitol; far and wide
Temple and tower went down, nor left a site: -
Chaos of ruins ! who shall trace the void, 
O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,
And say, « here was, or is », where all is doubly night? 

LXXXI 

The double night of ages, and of her,
Night's daughter, Ignorance, bath wrapt and wrap
All round us, we but fell our way to err:
The ocean bath his chart, the stars their map,
And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap;
But Rome is as the desert, where we steer
Stumbling o'er recollections; now we clap 
Our hands, and cry « Eureka » ! it is clear -
When but some false mirage of ruin rises near. 

LXXXII 

Alas! the lofty city! and alas !
The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass 
The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away!
Alas, for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay,
And Livy's pictured page! - but these shall be
Her resurrection; all beside - decay. 
Alas, for Earth, for never shall we see
That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free! 

LXXXIII 

Oh thou, whose chariot rollid on Fortune's wheel,
Triumphant Sylla! Thou, who didst subdue
Thy country's foes ere thou wouldst pause to feel
The wrath of thy own wrongs, or reap the dụe
Of hoarded vengeance till thine eagles flew 
O'er prostrate Asia; - thou, who with thy frown
Annihilated senates — Roman, too, 
With all thy vices, for thou didst lay down
With an atoning smile a more than earthly crown - 

LXXXIV 

The dictatorial wreath, — couldst thou divine
To what would one day dwindle that which made
Thee more than mortal? and that so supine
By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid?
She who was named Eternal, and array'd
Her warriors but to conquer — she who veild
Earth with her haughty shadow, and display'd, 
Untill the o'er-canopied horizon fail'd,
Her rushing wings- Oh! she who was Almighty hail'd ! 

LXXXV 

Sylla was first of victors; but our own,
The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell; - he
Too swept off senates while he hew'd the throne
Down to a block - immortal rebel!
See What crimes it costs to be a moment free,
And famous through all ages! but beneath
His fate the mortal lurks of destiny; 
His day of double victory and death
Beheld him win two realms, and, happier, yield his breath. 

LXXXVI 

The third of the same moon whose former course
Had all but crown'd him, on the self-same day
Deposed him gently from his throne of force,
And laid him with the earth's preceding clay.
And show'd not Fortune thus how fame and sway,
And all we deem delightful, and consume
Our souls to compass through each arduous way, 
Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb?
Were they but so in man's, how different were his doom! 

LXXXVII 

And thou, dread statue! yet existent in
The austerest form of naked majesty,
Thou who beheldest, 'mid the assassins' din,
At thy bathed base the bloody Cæsar lie, 
Folding his robe in dying dignity,
An offering to thine altar from the queen
Of gods and men, great Nemesis! did he die, 
And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been
Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene? 

LXXXVIII 

And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome!
She-wolf! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart
The milk of conquest yet within the dome
Where, as a monument of antique art,
Thou standest: - Mother of the mighty heart,
Which the great founder suck'd from thy wild teat,
Scorch'd by the Roman Jove's etherial dart, 
And thy limbs black with lightning - dost thou yet
Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget? 

LXXXIX 

Thou dost; -- but all thy foster-babes are dead -
The men of iron; and the world hath rear'd
Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled
In imitation of the things they fear'd,
And fought and conquer 'd, and the same course steerd,
At apish distance; but as yet none have,
Nor could, the same supremacy have near 'd, 
Save one vain man, who is not in the grave,
But, vanquish'd by himself, to his own slaves a slave - 

XC 

The fool of false dominion- and a kind
Of bastard Cæsar, following him of old
With steps unequal; for the Roman's mind
Was modell'd in a less terrestrial mould,
With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold,
And an immortal instinct which redeem'd
The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold, 
Alcides with the distaff now he seem'd
At Cleopatra's feet, and now himself he beam'd, 

XCI 

And came and saw — and conquer'd! But the man
Who would have tamed his eagles down to flee,
Like a train 'd falcon, in the Gallic van,
Which he, in sooth, long led to victory,
With a deaf heart which never seem'd to be
A listener to itself, was strangely framed;
With but one weakest weakness - vanity, 
Coquettish in ambition - still he aim'd
At what? can he avouch - or answer what he claim'd? 

XCII 

And would be all or nothing - nor could wait
For the sure grave to level him ; few years
Had fix'd him with the Cæsars in his fate,
On whom we tread; For this the conqueror rears
The arch of triumph! and for this the tears
And blood of earth flow on as they have flow'd,
An universal deluge, which appears
Without an ark for wretched man's abode,
And ebbs but the reflow ! Renew thy rainbow, God! 

XCIII 

What from this barren being do we reap ?
Our senses narrow, and our reason frail,
Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep,
And all things weigh'd in custom's falsest scale;
Opinion an omnipotence, — whose veil
Mantles the earth with darkness, until right
And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale 
Lest their own judgments should become too bright,
And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light. 

XCIV 

And thus they plod in sluggish misery,
Rotting from sire to son, and age to age,
Proud of their trampled nature, and so die,
Bequeathing their hereditary rage
To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage
War for their chains, and rather than be free,
Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage
Within the same arena where they see
Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree. 

XCV 

I speak not of men's creeds — they rest between
Man and his Maker - but of things allow'd,
Averr'd, and known, - and daily, hourly seen -
The yoke that is upon us doubly bow'd,
And the intent of tyranny avow'd, 
The edict of Earth's rulers, who are grown
The apes of him who humbled once the proud, 
And shook them from their slumbers on the throne;
Too glorious, were this all his mighty arm bad done. 

XCVI 

Can tyrants but by tyrants conquer'd be,
And Freedom find no champion and no child
Such as Columbia saw arise when she
Sprung forth a Pallas, arm’d and undefiled ?
Or must such minds be nourish'd in the wild,
Deep in the unpruned forest, 'midst the roar
Of cataracts, where nursing Nature smiled 
On infant Washington ? Has Earth no more
Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore ? 

XCVII 

But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime,
And fatal have her Saturnalia been
To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime;
Because the deadly days which we have seen,
And vile Ambition, that built up between
Man and his hopes an adamantine wall,
And the base pageant last upon the scene, 
Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall
Which nips life's tree, and dooms man's worst - his second fall. 

XCVIII 

Yet, Freedom ! yet thy banner, torn, but flying,
Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind;
Thy trumpet voice, though broken now and dying,
The loudest still the tempest leaves behind;
Thy tree bath lost its blossoms, and the rind,
Chopp'd by the axe, looks rough and little worth,
But the sap lasts, – and still the seed we find 
Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North;
So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth. 

XCIX 

There is a stern round tower of other days,
Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone,
Such as an army's baffled strength delays,
Standing with half its battlements alone,
And with two thousand years of ivy grown, 
The garland of eternity, where wave
The green leaves over all by time o' erthrown; - 
What was this tower of strength? within its cave
What treasure lay so lock’d, so hid? - A woman's grave. . 

C

But who was she, the lady of the dead,
Tomb'd in a palace? Was she chaste and fair?
Worthy a king's, or more-a Roman's bed?
What race of chiefs and heroes did she bear?
What daughter of her beauties was the heir?
How lived, how loved, how died she? Was she not
So honour'd - and conspicuously there,
Where meaner relics must not dare to rot,
Placed to commemorate a more than mortal lot? 

CI 

Was she as those who love their lords, or they
Who love the lords of others? such have been
Even in the olden time, Rome's annals say.
Was she a matron of Cornelia's mien,
Or the light air of Egypt's graceful queen,
Profuse of joy -- or 'gainst it did she war,
Inveterate in virtue? Did she lean 
To the soft side of the heart, or wisely bar
Love from amongst her griefs? - for such the affections are. 

CII 

Perchance she died in youth: it may be, bow'd
With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb 
That weigh'd upon her gentle dust, a cloud
Might gather o'er her beauty, and a gloom
In her dark eye, prophetic of the doom
Heaven gives its favourites - early death; yet shed
A sunset charm around her, and illume 
With hectic light, the Hesperus of the dead,
Of her consuming cheek the autumnal leaf-like red. 

CIII 

Percbance she died in age - surviving all,
Charms, kindred, children - with the silver gray
On her long tresses, which might yet recall,
It may be, still a something of the day
When they were braided, and her proud array
And lovely form were envied, praised, and eyed
By Rome - but whither would Conjecture stray? 
Thus much alone we know - Metella died,
The wealthiest Roman's wife: Behold his love or pride! 

CIV 

I know not why — but standing thus by thee
It seems as if I had thine inmate known,
Thou Tomb! and other days come back on me
With recollected music, though the tone
Is changed and solemn, like the cloudy groan
Of dying thunder on the distant wind;
Yet could I seat me by this ivied stone 
Till I had bodied forth the heated mind
Forms from the floating wreck which Ruin leaves behind; 

CV 

And from the planks, far shatter 'd o'er the rocks,
Built me a little bark of hope, once more
To battle with the ocean and the shocks
Of the loud breakers, and the ceaseless roar
Which rushes on the solitary shore
Where all lies founder'd that was ever dear:
But could I gather from the wave-worn store 
Enough for my rude boat, where should I steer?
There woos no home, nor hope, nor life, save what is here. 

CVI 

Then let the winds howl on! their harmony
Shall henceforth be my music, and the night
The sound shall temper with the owlets' cry,
As I now hear them, in the fading light
Dim o 'er the bird of darkness' native site,
Answering each other on the Palatine,
With their large eyes, all glistening gray and bright, 
And sailing pinions. — Upon such a shrine
What are our petty griefs ? -- let me not number mine. 

CVII 

Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower grown
Matted and mass'd together, billocks heap'd
On what were chambers, arch crush'd, column strown
In fragments, choked up vaults, and frescos steep'd
In subterranean damps, where the owl peep'd,
Deeming it midnight : - Temples, baths, or halls ?
Pronounce who can; for all that Learning reap'd 
From her research hath been, that these are walls -
Behold the Imperial Mount! 't is thus the mighty falls. 

CVIII 

There is the moral of all human tales;
'T is but the same rehearsal of the past,
First Freedom and then Glory - when that fails,
Wealth, vice, corruption, - barbarism at last.
And History, with all her volumes vast
Hath but one page, - 't is better written here
Where gorgeous Tyranny hath thus amass'd 
All treasures, all delights, that eye or ear,
Heart, soul could seek, tongue ask --- Away with words ! draw near, 

CIX 

Admire, exult, despise, laugh, weep, for here
There is such matter for all feeling: - Man!
Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear,
Ages and realms are crowded in this span,
This mountain, whose obliterated plan
The pyramid of empires pinnaeled,
Of Glory's gewgaws shining in the van 
Till the sun's rays with added flame were fill'd!
Where are its golden roofs? where those who dared to build? 

CX 

Tully was not so eloquent as thou,
Thou Dameless column with the buried base!
What are the laurels of the Cæsar's brow?
Crown me with ivy from his dwelling-place.
Whose arch or pillar meets me in the face, 
Titus or Trajan's? No - 't is that of Time:
Triumph, arch, pillar, all he doth displace
Scoffing, and apostolic statues climb
To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sublime, 

CXI 

Buried in air, the deep blue sky of Rome,
And looking to the stars : they bad contain'd
A spirit which with these would find a home,
The last of those who o'er the whole earth reign'd,
The Roman globe, for after none sustaind,
But yielded back his conquests: -- he was more
Than a mere Alexander, and, unstain 'd
With household blood and wine, serenely wore
His sovereign virtues - still we Trajan's name adore. 

CXII 

Where is the rock of Triumph, the high place
Where Rome embraced her heroes? where the steep 
Tarpeian? fittest goal of Treason's race,
The promontory whence the Traitor's Leap
Cured all ambition, Did the conquerors heap
Their spoils here? Yes; and in yon field below,
A thousand years of silenced factions sleep - 
The Forum, where the immortal accents glow,
And still the eloquent air breathes - burns with Cicero! 

CXIII 

The field of freedom, faclion, fame, and blood :
Here a proud people's passions were exhaled,
From the first hour of empire in the bud
To that when further worlds to conquer fail'd;
But long before had Freedom's face been-veil'd,
And Anarchy assumed her attributes ; 
Till every lawless soldier who assail'd 
Trod on the trembling senate's slavish mutes,
Or raised the venal voice of baser prostitutes. 

CXIV 

Then turn we to her latest tribune's name,
From her ten thousand tyrants turn to thee,
Redeemer of dark centuries of shame -
The friend of Petrarch - hope of Italy -
Rienzi! last of Romans! While the tree
Of freedom's wither'd trunk puts forth a leaf,
Even for thy tomb a garland let it be 
The forum's champion, and the people's chief -
Her new-born Numa thou - with reign, alas! too brief. 

CXV 

Egeria! sweet creation of some heart
Which found no mortal resling-place so fair
As thine ideal breast; whate 'er thou art
Or wert, - a young Aurora of the air,
The nympholepsy of some fond despair ;
Or, it might be, a beauty of the earth,
Who found a more than common votary there 
Too much adoring; whatsoe 'er thy birth,
Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth. 

CXVI 

The mosses of thy fountain still are sprinkled
With thine Elysian water-drops; the face
Of thy cave-guarded spring, with years unwrinkled,
Reflects the meek-eyed genius of the place,
Whose green, wild margin now no more erase
Art's works; nor must the delicate waters sleep,
Prison'd in marble, bubbling from the base 
Of the cleft statue, with a gentle leap
The rill runs o'er, and round fern, flowers, and ivy creep, 

CXVII 

Fantastically tangled; the green hills
Are clothed with early blossoms, through the grass
The quick-eyed lizard rustles, and the bills
Of summer-birds sing welcome as ye pass;
Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class,
Implore the pausing step, and with their dyes
Dance in the soft breeze in a fairy mass; 
The sweetness of the violet's deep blue eyes,
Kiss'd by the breath of heaven, seems colour'd by its skies. 

CXVIII 

Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover,
Egeria! thy all heavenly bosom beating
For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover,
The purple Midnight veiled that mystic meeting
With her most starry canopy, and seating
Thyself by thine adorer, what befell?
This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting 
Of an enamoured Goddess, and the cell
Haunted by holy Love - the earliest oracle! 

CXIX 

And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying,
Blend a celestial with a human beart;
And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing,
Share with immortal transports ? could thine art
Make them indeed immortal, and impart
The purity of heaven to earthly joys,
Expel the venom and not blunt the dart - 
The dull satiety which all destroys -
And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys? 

CXX 

Alas! our young affections run to waste,
Or water but the desert ; whence arise
But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste,
Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes,
Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies,
And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants
Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies 
O'er the world's wilderness, and vainly pants
For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants. 

CXXI 

Oh Love! no habitant of earth thou art -
An unseen seraph, we believe in thee, -
A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart, -
But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see
The naked eye, thy form, as it should be;
The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven,
Even with its own desiring phantasy, 
And to a thought such shape and image given,
As haunts the unquench'd soul — parch'd, wearied, wrung, and  riven.

CXXII 

Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,
And fevers into false creation : - where,
Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seiz'd?
In him alone. Can Nature show so fair?
Where are the charms and virtues which we dare
Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men,
The unreach'd Paradise of our despair, 
Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen,
And overpowers the page where it would bloom again? 

CXXIII 

Who loves, raves - 't is youth's frenzy - but the cure
Is bitterer still; as charm by charm unwinds
Which robed our idols, and we see too sure
Nor worth nor beauty dwells from out the mind's
Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds 
The fatal spell, and still it draws us on,
Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds;
The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun,
Seems ever near the prize - wealthiest when most undone. 

CXXIV 

We wither from our youth, we gasp away
Sick - sick; unfound the boon, unslaked the thirst,
Though to the last, in verge of our decay,
Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first
But all too late, — so are we doubly curst.
Love, fame, ambition, avarice - 't is the same,
Each idle, and all ill, and none the worst - 
For all are meteors with a different name,
And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame. 

CXXV 

Few - Done - find what they love or could have loved,
Though accident, blind contact, and the strong
Necessity of loving, have removed
Antipathies — but to recur, ere long,
Envenom'd with irrevocable wrong;
And Circumstance, that unspiritual god
And miscreator, makes and helps along 
Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,
Whose touch turns Hope to dust, the dust we all have trod. 

CXXVII 

Yet let us ponder boldly - 't is a base
Abandonment of reason to resign
Our right of thought - our last and only place
Of refuge; this, at least, shall still be mine:
Though from our birth the faculty divine
Is chain' and tortured - cabin'd, cribb’d, confined,
And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine 
Too brightly on the unprepared mind,
The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the blind. 

CXXVIII 

Arches on arches! as it were that Rome,
Collecting the chief trophies of her line,
Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,
Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine
As 't were its natural torches, for divine
Should be the light which streams here, to illume
This long-explored but still exhaustless mine 
Of contemplation, and the azure gloom
Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume 

CXXIX 

Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven,
Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument,
And shadows forth its glory. There is given
Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent,
A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant
His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power
And magic in the ruin'd battlement, 
For which the palace of the present hour
Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower. 

CXXX 

Oh Time! the beautifier of the dead,
Adorner of the ruin, comforter
And only healer when the heart hath bled ; 
Time ! the corrector where our judgments err,
The test of truth, love, - sole philosopher,
For all beside are sophists, from thy thriít,
Which never loses though it doth defer 
Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift
My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift: 

CXXXI 

Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine
And temple more divinely desolate,
Among thy mightier offerings here are mine,
Ruins of years, though few, yet full of fate :
If thou hast ever seen me too elate,
Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne
Good, and reserved my pride against the bate 
Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn
This iron in my soul in vain - shall they not mourn? 

CXXXII 

And thou, who never yet of human wrong
Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis !
Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long -
Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss,
And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss
For that unnatural retribution
Had it but beep from hands less near - in this 
Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust!
Dost thou not hear my heart? - Awake! thou shalt, and must. 

CXXXIII 

It is not that I may not have incurr'd
For my ancestral faults or mine the wound
I bleed withal, and, had it been conferr 'd
With a just weapon, it had flow'd unbound;
But now my blood shall not sink in the ground; 
To thee I do devote it - thou shalt take
The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found,
Which if I have not taken for the sake -
But let that pass - I sleep, but thou shalt yet awake. 

CXXXIV 

And if my voice break forth, 't is not that now
I shrink from what is suffer'd: let him speak
Who hath beheld decline upon my brow,
Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak;
But in this page a record will I seek.
Not in the air shall these my words disperse,
Though I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak 
The deep prophetic fulness of this verse,
And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse! 

CXXXV 

That curse shall be Forgiveness. - Have I not
Hear me, my mother Earth! behold it, Heaven! -
Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?
Have I not suffer'd things to be forgiven?
Have I not had my brain sear’d, my heart riven,
Hopes sapp'd, name blighted, Life's life lied away?
And only not to desperation driven, 
Because not altogether of such clay
As rots into the souls of those whom I survey. 

CXXXVI 

From mtghty wrongs to petty perfidy
Have I not seen what human things could do?
  From the loud roar of foaming calumny
To the small whisper of the as paltry few,
And subtler venom of the reptile crew, 
The Janus glance of whose significant eye,
Learning to lie with silence, would seem true, 
And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh,
Deal round to happy fools ils speechless obloquy. 

CXXXVII 

But I have lived, and have not lived in vain :
My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,
And my frame perish even in conquering pain ;
But there is that within me which shall tire
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire;
Something unearthly, which they deem not of,
Like the remember'd tone of a mute lyre, 
Shall on their soften'd spirits sink, and move
In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of love. 

CXXXVIII 

The seal is set. - Now welcome, thou dread power!
Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here
Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour
With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear;
Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear
Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene
Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear 
That we become a part of what has been,
And grow unto the spot, all-seeing but unseen. 

CXXXIX 

And here the buzz of eager nations ran,
In murmur'd pity, or loud-roar'd applause,
As man was slaughter'd by his fellow man.
And wherefore slaughter'd? wherefore, but because
Such were the bloody Circus' genial laws,
A nd the imperial pleasure. - Wherefore not?
What matters where we fall to fill the maws 
Of worms- on battle-plains or listed spot?
Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot.

CXL 

I see before me the Gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand — his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his droop'd head sinks gradually low
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower, and now 
The arena swims around him - he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who won. 

CXLI 

He heard it, but he heeded not-his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away:
He reck'd not of the life he lost nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother - he, their sire,
Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday - 
All this rush'd with his blood - Shall he expire
And unavenged? Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire! 

CXLII 

But here, where Murder breathed her bloody steam;
And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways,
And roar'd or murmur'd like a mountain stream
Dashing or winding as its torrent strays;
Here, where the Roman millions' blame or praise
Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd,
My voice sounds much - and fall the stars' faint rays
On the arena void -- seats crush'd walls bowd
And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud. 

CXLIII 

A ruin - yet what ruin! from its mass
Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been rear'd;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,
And marvel where the spoil could have appear'd.
Hath it indeed been plunder'd, or but clear’d?
Alas! developed, opens the decay,
When the colossal fabric's form is near's: 
It will not bear the brightness of the day,
Which streams too much on all years, man, have reft away. 

CXLIV 

But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmast arch, and gently pauses there;
When the stars twiukle through the loops of time,
And the low night breeze waves along the air
The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear,
Like laurels on the bald first Cæsar's head;
When the ligbt shines serene but doth not glare, 
Then in this magic circle raise the dead:
Heroes have trod this spot - 't is on their dust ye tread. 

CXLV 

«While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
And when Rome falls — the World». From our own land.
Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall
In Saxon times, which we are wont to call
Ancient ; and these three mortal things are still
On their foundations, and unalter'd all; 
Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill,
The World, the same wide den - of thieves, or what ye will. 

CXLVI 

Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime -
Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods,
From Jove to Jesus — spared and blest by time;
Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods
Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods,
His way through thorns to ashes - glorious dome!
Shalt thou not last ? Time's scythe and tyrant's rods 
Shiver upon thee - sanctuary and home
Of art and piety - Pantheon! - pride of Rome! - 

CXLVII 

Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts!
Despoil'd yet perfect, with thy circle spreads
A holiness appealing to all hearts -
To art a model; and to him who treads
Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds
Her light through thy sole aperture; to those
Who worship, here are altars for their beads; 
And they who feel for genius may repose
Their eyes on honour'd forms, whose busts around them close. 

CXLVIII 

There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light
What do I gaze on? Nothing : Look again!
Two forms are slowly shadow'd on my sight -
Two insulated phantoms of the brain :
It is not so; I see them full and plain
An old man, and a female young and fair,
Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein 
The blood is nectar: - but what doth she there,
With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare ? 

CXLIX 

Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life,
Where on the heart and from the heart we took
Our first and sweetest nurture, when the wife,
Blest into mother, in the innocent look,
Or even the piping cry of lips that brook
No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives
Man knows not, when from out its cradled nook 
She sees her little bud put forth its leaves —
What may the fruit be yet? I know not - Cain was Eve's. 

CL 

But here youth offers to old age the food,
The milk of his own gift : it is her sire
To whom she renders back the debt of blood
Born with her birth. No; he shall not expire
While in those warm and lovely veins the fire
Of health and holy feeling can provide
Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher 
Than Egypt's river: from that gentle side
Drink, drink and live, old man! Heaven's realm holds no such tide. 

CLI 

The starry fable of the milky way
Has not thy story's purity; it is
A constellation of a sweeter ray,
And sacred Nature triumphs more in this
Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss
Where sparkle distant worlds: - Oh, holiest nurse!
No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss 
To thy sire's heart, replenishing its source
With life, as our freed souls rejoin the universe. 

CLII 

Turn to the Mole which Hadrian reard on high,
Imperial mimic of old Egypt's piles,
Colossal copyist of deformity,
Whose travell'd phantasy from the far Nile's
Enormous model, doom'd the artist's toils
To build for giants, and for his vain earth,
His shrunken ashes, raise this dome: How smiles 
The gazer 's eye with philosophic mirth,
To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth! 

CLIII 

But lo! the dome — the vast and wondrous dome,
To which Diana's marvel was a cell —
Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb!
I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle; -
Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell
The hyæna and the jackal in their shade;
I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell 
Their glittering mass i' the sun, and have survey'd
Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem pray'd; 

CLIV 

But thou, of temples old, or altars new,
Standest alone — with nothing like to thee -
Worthiest of God, the holy and the true.
Since Zion's desolation, when that He
Forsook his former city, what could be,
Of earthly structures, in his honour piled,
Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty, 
Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled
In this eternal ark of worship undefiled. 

CLV 

Enter : its grandeur overwhelms thee not;
And why? it is not lessend; but thy mind,
Expanded by the genius of the spot,
Has grown colossal, and can only find
A fit abode wherein appear enshrined
Thy hopes of immortality, and thou
Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined, 
See thy God face to face, as thou dost now
His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by his brow. 

CLVI 

Thou movest - but increasing with the advance,
Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise,
Deceived by its gigantic elegance ;
Vastness which grows- but grows to harmonize -
All musical in its immensities;
Rich marbles - richer painting - shrines where flame
The lamps of gold — and haughty dome which vies 
In air with Earth's chief structures, though their frame
Sits on the firm-set ground - and this the clouds must claim. 

CLVII 

Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break,
To separate contemplation, the great whole ;
And as the ocean many bays will make,
That ask the eye - so here condense thy soul
To more immediate objects, and control
Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart
Its eloquent proportions, and unroll 
In mighty graduations, part by part,
The glory which at once upon thee did not dart, 

CLVIII 

Not by its fault - but thine : Our outward sense
Is but of gradual grasp - and as it is
That what we have of feeling most intense
Outstrips our faint expression; even so this
Outshining and o'erwhelmiug edifice
Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great
Defies at first our Nature's littleness, 
Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate
Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate. 

CLIX 

Then pause, and be enlighten'd; there is more
In such a survey than the sating gaze
Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore
The worship of the place, or the mere praise
Of art and its great masters, who could raise
What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan; 
The fountain of sublimity displays 
Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man
Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can. 

CLX 

Or, turning to the Vatican, go see
Laocoon's torture dignifying pain -
A father's love and mortal 's agony
With an immortal's patience blending: Vain 
The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain
And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp,
The old man's clench; the long envenom'd chain 
Rivets the living links, - the enormous asp
Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp en gasp. 

CLXI 

Or view the Lord of the unerring bow,
The God of life, and poesy, and light -
The Sun in human limbs array'd, and brow
All radiant from his triumph in the fight;
The shaft bath just been shot—the arrow bright
With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye
And nostril beautiful disdain, and might 
And majesty, flash their full lightnings by,
Developing in that one glance the Deity. 

CLXII 

But in his delicate form - a dream of Love,
Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast
Long'd for a deathless lover from above,
And madden'd in that vision - are exprest
All that ideal beauty ever bless'd
The mind with in its most unearthly mood,
When each conception was a heavenly guest -
A ray of immortality - and stood
Starlike, around, until they gather?d to a god! 

CLXIII 

And if it be Prometheus stole from Heaven
The fire which we endure, it was repaid
By him to whom the energy was given
Which this poetic marble bath array'd
With an eternal glory - wbich, if made
By human hands, is not of human thought;
And Time himself hath hallow'd it, nor laid 
One ringlet in the dust - nor hath it caught
A linge of years, but breathes the flame with which 'twas wrought. 

CLXIV 

But where is he, the Pilgrim of my song,
The being who upheld it through the past?
Methinks he cometh late and tarries long.
He is no more — these breathings are his last;
His wanderings done, his visions ebbing fast,
And he himself as nothing : - if he was
Aught but a phantasy, and could be class 'd
With forms which live and suffer — let that pass —
His shadow fades away into Destruction's mass, 

CLXV 

Which gathers shadow, substance, life, and all
That we inherit in its mortal shroud,
And spreads the dim and universal pall
Through which all things grow phantoms, and the cloud
Between us sinks and all which ever glow'd,
Till Glory's self is twilight, and displays
A melancholy halo scarce allowd 
To hover on the verge of darkness; rays
Sadder than saddest night, for they distract the gaze, 

CLXVI 

And send us prying into the abyss,
To gather what we shall be when the frame
Shall be resolved to something less than this
Its wretched essence; and to dream of fame,
And wipe the dust from off the idle name
We never more shall hear, - but never more, 
Oh, happier thought! can we be made the same : 
It is enough in sooth that once we bore
These fardels of the heart - the heart whose sweat was gore. 

CLXVII 

Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds,
A long low distant murmur of dread sound,
Such as arises when a nation bleeds
With some deep and immedicable wound;
Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground,
The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief
Seems royal still, though with her head discrown'd, 
And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief
She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief. 

CLXVIII 

Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou ?
Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead?
Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low 
Some less majestic, less beloved head?
In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled,
The mother of a moment, o'er thy bey,
Death hush'd that pang for ever: with thee fled 
The present happiness and promised joy
Which fill'd the imperial isles so full it seem'd to cloy. 

CLXIX 

Peasants bring forth in safety. - Can it be,
Oh thou that wert so happy, so adored!
Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee,
And Freedom's heart, grown heavy, cease to hoard
Her many griefs for ONE; for she had pour 'd
Her orisons for thee, and o'er thy head
Beheld her Iris. — Thou, too, lonely lord,
And desolate consort — vainly wert thou wed!
The husband of a year! the father of the dead! 

CLXX 

Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made; 
Thy bridal's fruit is ashes: in the dust
The fair-hair'd Daughter of the Isles is laid,
The love of millions! How we did intrust
Futurity to her! and, though it must
Darken above our bones, yet fondly deem 'd
Our children should obey her child, and bless'd 
Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seem'd
Like stars to shepherds' eyes : - 't was but a meteor beam'd. 

CLXXI 

Woe unto us, not her; for she sleeps well :
The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue
Of hollow counsel, the false oracle,
Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung
Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstung
Nations have arm’d in madness, the strange fate
Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung 
Against their blind omnipotence a weight
Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late, - 

CLXXII 

These might have been her destiny; but no,
Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair,
Good without effort, great without a foe;
But now a bride and mother - and now there!
How many ties did that stern moment tear!
From thy Sire's to his humblest subject's breast
Is link'd the electric chain of that despair,
Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and opprest
The land which loved thee so that none could love the best. 

CLXXIII 

Lo, Nemi! navell'd in the woody hills
So far, that the uprooting wind which tears
The oak from his foundation, and which spills
The ocean o'er its boundary, and bears
Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares
The oval mirror of thy glassy lake;
And, calm as cherish'd hate, its surface wears 
A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake,
All coil'd into itself and round, as sleeps the snake. 

CLXXIV 

And near Albano's scarce divided waves
Shine from a sister valley; and afar
The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves
The Latian coast where sprang the Epic war,
« Arms and the Man », whose re-ascending star
Rose o'er an empire: - bot beneath thy right
Tully reposed from Rome; - and where yon bar 
Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight
The Sabine farm was till'd, the weary bard's delight. 

CLXXV 

But I forget. - My Pilgrim's shrine is won,
And he and I must part, --so let it be, -
His task and mine alike are nearly done;
Yet once more let us look upou the sea;
The midland ocean breaks on him and me,
And from the Alban Mount we now behold
Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we 
Beheld it last by Calpe's roch unfold
Those waves, we follow'd on till the dark Euxine rolld, 

CLXXVI 

Upon the blue Symplegades: long years -
Long, though not very many, since have done
Their work on both; some suffering and some tears
Have left us nearly where we had begun :
Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run,
We have had our reward — and it is here; 
That we can yet feel gladden 'd by the sun, 
And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear
As if there were no man to trouble what is clear. 

CLXXVII 

Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair Spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her!
Ye Elements! - in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted - Cao ye not
Accord me such a being? Do I err
In deeming such inhabit many a spot?
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot. 

CLXXVIII 

There is pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar :
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet can not all conceal. 

CLXXIX 

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean - roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin - his control
Stops with the shore; - upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, 
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown. 

CLXXX 

His steps are not upon thy paths, - thy fields
Are not a spoil for him, thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength be wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies 
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth: - there let him lay. 

CLXXXI 

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, 
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar. 

CLXXXII 

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee -
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wash'd them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts: - not so thou; -
Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play 
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. 

CLXXXIII 

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed - in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving; - boundless, endless, and sublime -
The image of Eternity - the throne
Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime 
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. 

CLXXXIV 

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward : from a boy
I wanton'd with thy breakers - they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror — 't was a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee, 
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane- as I do here. 

CLXXXV 

My task is done - my song hath ceased - my theme
Has died into an echo; it is fit
The spell should break of this protracted dream.
The torch shall be extinguish'd which hath lit
My midnight lamp - and what is writ, is writ, -
Would it were worthier! but I am not now
That which I have been — and my visions flit 
Less palpably before me — and the glow
Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low. 

CLXXXVI 

Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been -
A sound which makes us linger; - yet — farewell!
Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell
A thought which once was his, if on ye swell
A single recollection, not in vain
He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell ; 
Farewell! with him alone may rest the pain,
If such there were with you, the moral of his strain!