Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79.
The Vatican
By James Thomson (1834–1882)A
Deep digging, from the cavern dark and damp,
Their grave for ages, bid her marble race
Spring to new light. Joy sparkled in her eyes,
And old remembrance thrilled in every thought,
As she the pleasing resurrection saw,
In leaning site, respiring from his toils,
The well-known Hero, who delivered Greece,
His ample chest, all tempested with force,
Unconquerable reared. She saw the head,
Breathing the hero, small, of Grecian size,
Scarce more extensive than the sinewy neck:
The spreading shoulders, muscular and broad;
The whole a mass of swelling sinews, touched
Into harmonious shape; she saw, and joyed.
The yellow hunter, Meleager, raised
His beauteous front, and through the finished whole
Shows what ideas smiled of old in Greece.
Of raging aspect, rushed impetuous forth
The Gladiator: pitiless his look,
And each keen sinew braced, the storm of war,
Ruffling, o’er all his nervous body frowns.
The dying other from the gloom she drew:
Supported on his shortened arm he leans,
Prone, agonizing; with incumbent fate,
Heavy declines his head; yet dark beneath
The suffering feature sullen vengeance lowers,
Shame, indignation, unaccomplished rage,
And still the cheated eye expects his fall.
All conquest-flushed, from prostrate Python, came
The quivered god. In graceful act he stands,
His arm extended with the slackened bow:
Light flows his easy robe, and fair displays
A manly, softened form. The bloom of gods
Seems youthful o’er the beardless cheek to wave:
His features yet heroic ardor warms;
And sweet subsiding to a native smile,
Mixed with the joy elating conquest gives,
A scattered frown exalts his matchless air.
On Flora moved; her full proportioned limbs
Rise through the mantle fluttering in the breeze.
The Queen of Love arose, as from the deep
She sprung in all the melting pomp of charms.
Bashful she bands, her well-taught look aside
Turns in enchanting guise, where dubious mix
Vain conscious beauty, a dissembled sense
Of modest shame, and slippery looks of love.
The gazer grows enamored, and the stone,
As if exulting in its conquest, smiles.
So turned each limb, so swelled with softening art,
That the deluded eye the marble doubts.
At last her utmost masterpiece she found,
That Maro fired; the miserable sire,
Wrapt with his sons in fate’s severest grasp:
The serpents, twisting round, their stringent folds
Inextricable tie. Such passion here,
Such agonies, such bitterness of pain,
Seem so to tremble through the tortured stone,
That the touched heart engrosses all the view.
Almost unmarked the best proportions pass,
That ever Greece beheld; and, seen alone,
On the rapt eye the imperious passions seize:
The father’s double pangs, both for himself
And sons convulsed; to Heaven his rueful look,
Imploring aid, and half accusing, cast;
His fell despair with indignation mixed,
As the strong curling monsters from his side
His full extended fury cannot tear.
More tender touched, with varied art, his sons
All the soft rage of younger passions show.
In a boy’s helpless fate one sinks oppressed;
While, yet unpierced, the frighted other tries
His foot to steal out of the horrid twine.