Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79.
The Belvedere Apollo
By Henry Hart Milman (1791–1868)H
Heard ye the dragon monster’s deathful cry?
In settled majesty of calm disdain,
Proud of his might, yet scornful of the slain,
The heavenly archer stands,—no human birth,
No perishable denizen of earth:
Youth blooms immortal in his beardless face,
A god in strength, with more than godlike grace;
All, all divine,—no struggling muscle glows,
Through heaving vein no mantling life-blood flows,
But animate with deity alone,
In deathless glory lives the breathing stone.
His keen eye tracks the arrow’s fateful flight;
Burns his indignant cheek with vengeful fire,
And his lip quivers with insulting ire:
Firm fixed his tread, yet light, as when on high
He walks the impalpable and pathless sky:
The rich luxuriance of his hair, confined
In graceful ringlets, wantons on the wind,
That lifts in sport his mantle’s drooping fold
Proud to display that form of faultless mould.
Thy proud soul mounted through the fields of light,
Viewed the bright conclave of Heaven’s blest abode,
And the cold marble leapt to life a god:
Contagious awe through breathless myriads ran,
And nations bowed before the work of man.
For mild he seemed, as in Elysian bowers,
Wasting in careless ease the joyous hours;
Haughty, as bards have sung, with princely sway
Curbing the fierce flame-breathing steeds of day;
Beauteous as vision seen in dreamy sleep
By holy maid on Delphi’s haunted steep,
Mid the dim twilight of the laurel grove,
Too fair to worship, too divine to love.
With more than reverence gazed the maid of France,
Day after day the love-sick dreamer stood
With him alone, nor thought it solitude!
To cherish grief, her last, her dearest care,
Her one fond hope,—to perish of despair.
Oft as the shifting light her sight beguiled,
Blushing she shrunk, and thought the marble smiled:
Oft breathless listening heard, or seemed to hear,
A voice of music melt upon her ear.
Slowly she waned, and cold and senseless grown,
Closed her dim eyes, herself benumbed to stone.
Yet love in death a sickly strength supplied:
Once more she gazed, then feebly smiled and died.