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(Excerpt)
HOW raptured fancy burns, while warm in thought | |
| I trace the pictured landscape; while I kiss | |
| With pilgrim lips devout the sacred soil | |
| Stained with the blood of heroes. Cyrnus, hail! | |
| Hail to thy rocky, deep indented shores, | 5 |
| And pointed cliffs, which hear the chafing deep | |
| Incessant foaming round thy shaggy sides. | |
| Hail to thy winding bays, thy sheltering ports, | |
| And ample harbors, which inviting stretch | |
| Their hospitable arms to every sail: | 10 |
| Thy numerous streams, that bursting from the cliffs | |
| Down the steep channelled rock impetuous pour | |
| With grateful murmur: on the fearful edge | |
| Of the rude precipice, thy hamlets brown | |
| And straw-roofed cots, which from the level vale | 15 |
| Scarce seen, amongst the craggy hanging cliffs | |
| Seem like an eagle’s nest aerial built. | |
| Thy swelling mountains, brown with solemn shade | |
| Of various trees, that wave their giant arms | |
| O’er the rough sons of freedom; lofty pines, | 20 |
| And hardy fir, and ilex ever green, | |
| And spreading chestnut, with each humbler plant, | |
| And shrub of fragrant leaf, that clothes their sides | |
| With living verdure; whence the clustering bee | |
| Extracts her golden dews: the shining box | 25 |
| And sweet-leaved myrtle, aromatic thyme, | |
| The prickly juniper, and the green leaf | |
| Which feeds the spinning worm; while glowing bright | |
| Beneath the various foliage, wildly spreads | |
| The arbutus, and rears his scarlet fruit | 30 |
| Luxuriant, mantling o’er the craggy steeps; | |
| And thy own native laurel crowns the scene. | |
| Hail to thy savage forests, awful, deep; | |
| Thy tangled thickets, and thy crowded woods, | |
| The haunt of herds untamed; which sullen bound | 35 |
| From rock to rock with fierce, unsocial air, | |
| And wilder gaze, as conscious of the power | |
| That loves to reign amid the lonely scenes | |
| Of unquelled nature: precipices huge, | |
| And tumbling torrents; trackless deserts, plains | 40 |
| Fenced in with guardian rocks, whose quarries teem | |
| With shining steel, that to the cultured fields | |
| And sunny hills which wave with bearded grain, | |
| Defends their homely produce. Liberty, | |
| The mountain goddess, loves to range at large | 45 |
| Amid such scenes, and on the iron soil | |
| Prints her majestic step. For these she scorns | |
| The green enamelled vales, the velvet lap | |
| Of smooth savannahs, where the pillowed head | |
| Of luxury reposes; balmy gales, | 50 |
| And bowers that breathe of bliss. For these, when first | |
| This isle emerging like a beauteous gem | |
| From the dark bosom of the Tyrrhene main, | |
| Reared its fair front, she marked it for her own, | |
| And with her spirit warmed. Her genuine sons, | 55 |
| A broken remnant, from the generous stock | |
| Of ancient Greece, from Sparta’s sad remains, | |
| True to their high descent, preserved unquenched | |
| The sacred fire through many a barbarous age: | |
| Whom nor the iron rod of cruel Carthage, | 60 |
| Nor the dread sceptre of imperial Rome, | |
| Nor bloody Goth, nor grisly Saracen, | |
| Nor the long galling yoke of proud Liguria, | |
| Could crush into subjection. Still unquelled | |
| They rose superior, bursting from their chains, | 65 |
| And claimed man’s dearest birthright, liberty: | |
| And long, through many a hard unequal strife, | |
| Maintained the glorious conflict; long withstood, | |
| With single arm, the whole collected force | |
| Of haughty Genoa and ambitious Gaul. | 70 |
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