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(From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)
O 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 | 5 |
| 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. | |
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| The Niobe of nations! there she stands, | 10 |
| Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe; | |
| An empty urn within her withered hands, | |
| Whose holy dust was scattered long ago. | |
| The Scipios’ tomb contains no ashes now; | |
| The very sepulchres lie tenantless | 15 |
| Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow, | |
| O Tiber, through a marble wilderness? | |
| Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress. | |
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| The Goth, the Christian, time, war, flood, and fire, | |
| Have dealt upon the seven-hilled city’s pride: | 20 |
| She saw her glories star by star expire, | |
| And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride, | |
| Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide | |
| Temple and tower went down, nor left a site. | |
| Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void, | 25 |
| O’er the dim fragments cast a lunar light, | |
| And say, “Here was, or is,” where all is doubly night? | |
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| The double night of ages, and of her, | |
| Night’s daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt, and wrap | |
| All round us; we but feel our way to err: | 30 |
| The ocean hath its 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,— | 35 |
| When but some false mirage of ruin rises near. | |
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| 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! | 40 |
| 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! | 45 |
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