| |
(From Italy)
HAVE none appeared as tillers of the ground, | |
| None since they went, as though it still were theirs, | |
| And they might come and claim their own again? | |
Was the last plough a Roman’s?
From this seat, | |
| Sacred for ages, whence, as Virgil sings, | 5 |
| The Queen of Heaven, alighting from the sky, | |
| Looked down and saw the armies in array, | |
| Let us contemplate; and, where dreams from Jove | |
| Descended on the sleeper, where perhaps | |
| Some inspirations may be lingering still, | 10 |
| Some glimmerings of the future or the past, | |
| Let us await their influence; silently | |
| Revolving, as we rest on the green turf, | |
| The changes from that hour when he from Troy | |
| Came up the Tiber; when refulgent shields, | 15 |
| No strangers to the iron-hail of war, | |
| Streamed far and wide, and dashing oars were heard | |
| Among those woods where Silvia’s stag was lying, | |
| His antlers gay with flowers; among those woods | |
| Where by the moon, that saw and yet withdrew not, | 20 |
| Two were so soon to wander and be slain, | |
| Two lovely in their lives, nor in their death | |
Divided.
Then, and hence to be discerned, | |
| How many realms, pastoral and warlike, lay | |
| Along this plain, each with its schemes of power, | 25 |
| Its little rivalships! What various turns | |
| Of fortune there; what moving accidents | |
| From ambuscade and open violence! | |
| Mingling, the sounds came up; and hence how oft | |
| We might have caught among the trees below, | 30 |
| Glittering with helm and shield, the men of Tibur; | |
| Or in Greek vesture, Greek their origin, | |
| Some embassy, ascending to Præneste; | |
| How oft descried, without thy gates, Aricia, | |
| Entering the solemn grove for sacrifice, | 35 |
| Senate and people! Each a busy hive, | |
Glowing with life!
But all erelong are lost | |
| In one. We look, and where the river rolls | |
| Southward its shining labyrinth, in her strength | |
| A city, girt with battlements and towers, | 40 |
| On seven small hills is rising. Round about, | |
| At rural work, the citizens are seen, | |
| None unemployed; the noblest of them all | |
| Binding their sheaves or on their threshing-floors, | |
| As though they had not conquered. Everywhere | 45 |
| Some trace of valor or heroic toil! | |
| Here is the sacred field of the Horatii. | |
| There are the Quintian meadows. Here the Hill | |
| How holy, where a generous people, twice, | |
| Twice going forth, in terrible anger sate | 50 |
| Armed; and, their wrongs redressed, at once gave way. | |
| Helmet and shield and sword and spear thrown down, | |
| And every hand uplifted, every heart | |
Poured out in thanks to Heaven.
Once again | |
| We look; and lo, the sea is white with sails | 55 |
| Innumerable, wafting to the shore | |
| Treasures untold; the vale, the promontories, | |
| A dream of glory; temples, palaces, | |
| Called up as by enchantment; aqueducts | |
| Among the groves and glades rolling along | 60 |
| Rivers, on many an arch high overhead; | |
| And in the centre, like a burning sun, | |
| The Imperial city! They have now subdued | |
| All nations. But where they who led them forth; | |
| Who, when at length released by victory | 65 |
| (Buckler and spear hung up, but not to rust), | |
| Held poverty no evil, no reproach, | |
| Living on little with a cheerful mind, | |
| The Decii, the Fabricii? Where the spade | |
| And reaping-hook, among their household things | 70 |
| Duly transmitted? In the hands of men | |
| Made captive; while the master and his guests, | |
| Reclining, quaff in gold, and roses swim, | |
| Summer and winter, through the circling year, | |
| On their Falernian,—in the hands of men | 75 |
| Dragged into slavery with how many more | |
| Spared but to die, a public spectacle, | |
| In combat with each other, and required | |
| To fall with grace, with dignity,—to sink | |
| While life is gushing, and the plaudits ring | 80 |
| Faint and yet fainter on their failing ear, | |
As models for the sculptor.
But their days, | |
| Their hours are numbered. Hark, a yell, a shriek, | |
| A barbarous outcry, loud and louder yet, | |
| That echoes from the mountains to the sea! | 85 |
| And mark, beneath us, like a bursting cloud, | |
| The battle moving onward! Had they slain | |
| All, that the earth should from her womb bring forth | |
| New nations to destroy them? From the depth | |
| Of forests, from what none had dared explore, | 90 |
| Regions of thrilling ice, as though in ice | |
| Engendered, multiplied, they pour along, | |
| Shaggy and huge! Host after host, they come; | |
| The Goth, the Vandal, and again the Goth! | |
| Once more we look, and all is still as night, | 95 |
| All desolate! Groves, temples, palaces, | |
| Swept from the sight; and nothing visible, | |
| Amid the sulphurous vapors that exhale | |
| As from a land accurst, save here and there | |
| An empty tomb, a fragment like the limb | 100 |
| Of some dismembered giant. In the midst | |
| A city stands, her domes and turrets crowned | |
| With many a cross; but they that issue forth | |
| Wander like strangers who had built among | |
| The mighty ruins, silent, spiritless; | 105 |
| And on the road, where once we might have met | |
| Cæsar and Cato and men more than kings, | |
| We meet, none else, the pilgrim and the beggar. | |
| |
