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Translated by Charlotte Fiske Bates
NO old cathedral here doth skyward tower, | |
| Nor ancient cloister with dark corridor, | |
| Where blazoned stones are said at midnight’s hour | |
| To rise from out the floor. | |
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| Here are no steeples fretted to the light, | 5 |
| Whose heaven-invading spires with pride upshoot; | |
| With joinéd hands here kneels no sculptured knight, | |
| At Gothic coffin’s foot. | |
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| Here no Madonna of the woods doth stand, | |
| Where for her absent lord the châtelaine prayed, | 10 |
| Nor by the herdsman, lifted cap in hand, | |
| Are Aves longer said. | |
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| And here no crenelled castle’s mossy wall | |
| Bristles with turrets and with parapets, | |
| Which ocean, with its ceaseless rise and fall, | 15 |
| Monotonously frets. | |
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| But pagan Rome still lives here, though asleep; | |
| Her flying eagle, with all-conquering wing, | |
| Left nowhere else her talons’ print so deep | |
| As in the place I sing. | 20 |
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| The palace, circus, temple here are seen, | |
| A noble monument though in decay, | |
| And everywhere the Past shows what has been, | |
| The Future to dismay. | |
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| There fallen front of some triumphal gate | 25 |
| Foreshows the destiny of bright To-day; | |
| Here gods and death now share the same estate,— | |
| Mixed in one urn are they. | |
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| The Gaul and Thracian stained the arena’s space, | |
| Content to be applauded ere their death, | 30 |
| Before this people-king who wished with grace | |
| To have them yield their breath. | |
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| Steeped in delicious perfumes came the knights; | |
| In Eastern robes that swept these stones they pressed | |
| Midst venal beauties and these fierce delights, | 35 |
| To charm the listless breast. | |
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| Brilliant effeminates! alone amused | |
| (Pleasure’s abuse had hardened so their heart) | |
| With scenes of passion where life’s blood effused, | |
| Where only Death took part. | 40 |
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| And then the basilic with splendid frieze | |
| Like to a god bronzed in the censer’s glow; | |
| And carved acanthus leaves that evening’s breeze | |
| Seems swaying to and fro. | |
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| Showing its crumbling wall through smiling bowers, | 45 |
| The triple goddess’ temple in decay; | |
| Just like a wrinkled forehead under flowers, | |
| Peep out the ruins gray. | |
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| Ruins where poets come to dream at eve, | |
| Ruins wherein are lesser ruins pent; | 50 |
| As exiled prince doth still a refuge give | |
| To those in banishment. | |
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| Diana, as she holds her nightly course, | |
| Seems seeking still with melancholy light | |
| On altar riven by the wild-fig’s force, | 55 |
| An incense taken flight. | |
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| And here the tower which into ether springs; | |
| Neighbor of lightnings is its summit bold; | |
| The aqueduct through air the water brings, | |
| Two mountains in its hold. | 60 |
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| Near to these ruins time dissolves so fast, | |
| Brilliant with splendor, the new city see;— | |
| As from a trunk shattered by lightning-blast | |
| Shoots up a thrifty tree. | |
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