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I. IN Rome there is a glorious flight of stone, | |
| Great steps, as leading to a giant’s throne, | |
| Or to a temple of Titanic gods; | |
| This marvellous height, up which the pilgrim plods, | |
| Breathless half-way, seems like a stairway tracked | 5 |
| By myriad feet of some wild cataract; | |
| Like those where Nilus, with his flag of spray, | |
| Leads his wild Abyssinian floods away. | |
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| Below this giant stairway, in the square, | |
| There springs a cooling murmur in the air; | 10 |
| The liquid music of a tinkling rill; | |
| A stolen naiad from the Sabine hill, | |
| Still singing, in captivity, the lay | |
| Learned on her native mountains far away. | |
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| In middle of this fount a marble barge | 15 |
| Sits, overflowing with its crystal charge; | |
| Its light mast liquid silver in the sun; | |
| Its viewless rowers singing every one, | |
| Until,—so feigns the fancy,—warmly dark, | |
| Great Egypt sails in the fantastic bark; | 20 |
| Melting in languors of her own heart’s heat, | |
| A tame, bright leopard cushioning her feet! | |
| But here, with swelling heart and lordly mien, | |
| The stately swan of Avon swims between. | |
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| Crowning the flight, a porphyry column stands | 25 |
| Dark as the sphinx above the desert sands; | |
| Solemn as prophecy it points the sky, | |
| Propounding its dim riddle to the eye; | |
| And it has seen, with look as calm as Fate’s, | |
| On Nile and Tiber, the imperial states | 30 |
| Rise nobly, and fall basely; and there still | |
| Waits for new wonders, silent on yon hill. | |
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II. IN Rome there is a glorious flight of stone, | |
| Terrace o’er terrace rising, like that shown | |
| To dreaming Jacob, climbing, till on high | 35 |
| The last broad platform nobly gains the sky. | |
| On this great stairway what are these I see? | |
| Ascending and descending! They should be | |
| Angels with spotless mantles and white wings. | |
| But, look again: those sad, misshapen things, | 40 |
| They scarce seem human! Where they crawl and lay | |
| Their tattered misery in the stranger’s way, | |
| Filling the air with simulated sighs, | |
| Weeping for bread with unsuffused eyes. | |
| Would they did weep, indeed! for, stung to tears | 45 |
| Then were there hope where now no hope appears. | |
| But such the melting influence of the place, | |
| That one there was,—most abject of his race; | |
| A whining trunk,—deprived of every gift | |
| Save his misfortune; but with this did lift | 50 |
| Himself to such a height of wealth and power, | |
| That many a Roman noble at this hour | |
| Envies his hoard, and many a sinking name | |
| The beggar’s usurous gold still keeps from shame. | |
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| Here the brown Sabines, in their gay attires, | 55 |
| Whose eyes still kindle with ancestral fires, | |
| Bring down their mountain graces to the mart, | |
| And wait for bread on the demands of Art. | |
| Their Belisarius, with his patriarch hair, | |
| Sits blind and hungry. A Lucretia there | 60 |
| Winds her light distaff. Young Endymion here | |
| Sleeps, as in Latmos. Yonder, drawing near, | |
| The original of many a picture moves, | |
| And many a statue which the world approves. | |
| There sits the mother, with her soft, brown eyes | 65 |
| Bent o’er the face which on her bosom lies; | |
| Enough of mingled wonder, pride, and trust, | |
| To call the hand of Raphael from the dust. | |
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