| |
| A SOLEMN thing it is, and full of awe, | |
| Wandering long time among the lonely hills, | |
| To issue on a sudden mid the wrecks | |
| Of some fallen city, as might seem a coast | |
| From which the tide of life has ebbed away, | 5 |
| Leaving bare sea-marks only. Such there lie | |
| Among the Alban mountains,—Tusculum, | |
| Or Palestrina with Cyclopean walls | |
| Enormous: and this solemn awe we felt | |
| And knew this morning, when we stood among | 10 |
| What of the first-named city yet survives. | |
| |
| For we had wandered long among those hills, | |
| Watching the white goats on precipitous heights, | |
| Half hid among the bushes, or their young | |
| Tending new-yeaned: and we had paused to hear | 15 |
| The deep-toned music of the convent bells, | |
| And wound through many a verdant forest-path, | |
| Gathering the crocus and anemone, | |
| With that fresh gladness which, when flowers are new | |
| In the first spring, they bring us, till at last | 20 |
| We issued out upon an eminence, | |
| Commanding prospect large on every side, | |
| But largest where the world’s great city lay, | |
| Whose features, undistinguishable now, | |
| Allowed no recognition, save where the eye | 25 |
| Could mark the white front of the Lateran | |
| Facing this way, or rested on the dome, | |
| The broad stupendous dome, high over all. | |
| And as a sea around an island’s roots | |
| Spreads, so the level champaign every way | 30 |
| Stretched round the city, level all, and green | |
| With the new vegetation of the spring; | |
| Nor by the summer ardors scorched as yet, | |
| Which shot from southern suns, too soon dry up | |
| The beauty and the freshness of the plains; | 35 |
| While to the right the ridge of Apennine, | |
| Its higher farther summits all snow-crowned, | |
| Rose, with white clouds above them, as might seem | |
| Another range of more aërial hills. | |
| |
| These things were at a distance, but more near | 40 |
| And at our feet signs of the tide of life, | |
| That once was here, and now had ebbed away,— | |
| Pavements entire, without one stone displaced, | |
| Where yet there had not rolled a chariot-wheel | |
| For many hundred years; rich cornices, | 45 |
| Elaborate friezes of rare workmanship, | |
| And broken shafts of columns, that along | |
| This highway-side lay prone; vaults that were rooms, | |
| And hollowed from the turf, and cased in stone, | |
| Seats and gradations of a theatre, | 50 |
| Which emptied of its population now | |
| Shall never be refilled: and all these things, | |
| Memorials of the busy life of man, | |
| Or of his ample means for pomp and pride, | |
| Scattered among the solitary hills, | 55 |
| And lying open to the sun and showers, | |
| And only visited at intervals | |
| By wandering herds, or pilgrims like ourselves | |
| From distant lands; with now no signs of life, | |
| Save where the goldfinch built his shallow nest | 60 |
| Mid the low bushes, or where timidly | |
| The rapid lizard glanced between the stones,— | |
| All saying that the fashion of this world | |
| Passes away; that not philosophy | |
| Nor eloquence can guard their dearest haunts | 65 |
| From the rude touch of desecrating time. | |
| What marvel, when the very fanes of God, | |
| The outward temples of the Holy One, | |
| Claim no exemption from the general doom, | |
| But lie in ruinous heaps; when nothing stands, | 70 |
| Nor may endure to the end, except alone | |
| The spiritual temple built with living stones? | |
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