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I. I STOOD within the city disinterred, | |
| And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls | |
| Of spirits passing through the streets, and heard | |
| The Mountain’s slumberous voice at intervals | |
| Thrill through those roofless halls: | 5 |
| The oracular thunder penetrating shook | |
| The listening soul in my suspended blood; | |
| I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke,— | |
| I felt, but heard not. Through white columns glowed | |
| The isle-sustaining Ocean flood, | 10 |
| A plane of light between two heavens of azure; | |
| Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre | |
| Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure | |
| Were to spare Death, had never made erasure; | |
| But every living lineament was clear | 15 |
| As in the sculptor’s thought; and there | |
| The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy and pine, | |
| Like winter leaves o’ergrown by moulded snow, | |
| Seemed only not to move and grow | |
| Because the crystal silence of the air | 20 |
| Weighed on their life; even as the power divine, | |
| Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine. | |
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II. Then gentle winds arose, | |
| With many a mingled close | |
| Of wild Æolian sound and mountain odor keen; | 25 |
| And where the Baian ocean | |
| Welters with air-like motion, | |
| Within, above, around its bowers of starry green, | |
| Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves, | |
| Even as the ever-stormless atmosphere | 30 |
| Floats o’er the Elysian realm, | |
| It bore me; like an angel, o’er the waves | |
| Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air | |
| No storm can overwhelm. | |
| I sailed where ever flows | 35 |
| Under the calm Serene | |
| A spirit of deep emotion, | |
| From the unknown graves | |
| Of the dead kings of melody. | |
| Shadowy Aornus darkened o’er the helm | 40 |
| The horizontal ether; heaven stript bare | |
| Its depths over Elysium, where the prow | |
| Made the invisible water white as snow; | |
| From that Typhæan mount, Inarimé, | |
| There streamed a sunlit vapor, like the standard | 45 |
| Of some ethereal host; | |
| Whilst from all the coast, | |
| Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered | |
| Over the oracular woods and divine sea | |
| Prophesyings which grew articulate. | 50 |
| They seize me,—I must speak them;—be they fate! | |
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III. Naples, thou Heart of men, which ever pantest | |
| Naked, beneath the lidless eye of heaven! | |
| Elysian City, which to calm enchantest | |
| The mutinous air and sea! they round thee, even | 55 |
| As sleep round Love, are driven,— | |
| Metropolis of a ruined Paradise | |
| Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained! | |
| Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice, | |
| Which arméd Victory offers up unstained | 60 |
| To Love, the flower-enchained! | |
| Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be, | |
| Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free, | |
| If hope, and truth, and justice can avail. | |
| Hail, hail, all hail! * * * * * | 65 |
IV. Great Spirit, deepest Love! | |
| Which rulest and dost move | |
| All things which live and are, within the Italian shore; | |
| Who spreadest heaven around it, | |
| Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it; | 70 |
| Who sittest in thy star, o’er Ocean’s western floor; | |
| Spirit of beauty! at whose soft command | |
| The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison | |
| From the Earth’s bosom chill; | |
| O, bid those beams be each a blinding brand | 75 |
| Of lightning! bid those showers be dews of poison! | |
| Bid the Earth’s plenty kill! | |
| Bid thy bright Heaven above, | |
| Whilst light and darkness bound it, | |
| Be their tomb who planned | 80 |
| To make it ours and thine! | |
| Or, with thine harmonizing ardors fill | |
| And raise thy sons, as o’er the prone horizon | |
| Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire! | |
| Be man’s high hope and unextinct desire | 85 |
| The instrument to work thy will divine! | |
| Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards, | |
| And frowns and fears from thee, | |
| Would not more swiftly flee, | |
| Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds. | 90 |
| Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine | |
| Thou yieldest or withholdest, O, let be | |
| This city of thy worship, ever free! | |
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