| |
| THE GODS are gone, the temples overthrown, | |
| The storms of time the very rocks have shaken: | |
| The Past is mute, save where some mouldy stone | |
| Speaks to confuse, like speech by age o’ertaken. | |
| The pomp that crowned the winding shore | 5 |
| Has fled forevermore: | |
| Its old magnificence shall never reawaken. | |
| |
| Where once against the Grecian ships arrayed, | |
| The Oscan warriors saw their javelins hurtle, | |
| The farmer prunes his olives, and the maid | 10 |
| Trips down the lanes in flashing vest and kirtle: | |
| The everlasting laurel now | |
| Forgets Apollo’s brow, | |
| And, dedicate no more to Venus, blooms the myrtle. | |
| |
| Yet still, as long ago, when this high coast | 15 |
| Phœnician strangers saw, and flying Dardans, | |
| The bounteous earth fulfils her ancient boast | |
| In mellow fields which winter never hardens; | |
| And daisy, lavender, and rose | |
| Perpetual buds unclose, | 20 |
| To flood with blended balm the tiers of hanging gardens. | |
| |
| From immemorial rocks the daffodil | |
| Beckons with scented stars, an unreached wonder: | |
| On sunny banks their wine the hyacinths spill, | |
| And self-betraying violets bloom thereunder; | 25 |
| While near and threatening, dim and deep, | |
| The wave assaults the steep, | |
| Or booms in hollow caves with sound of smothered thunder. | |
| |
| Here nature, dropping once her ordered plan, | |
| Fashioned all lovely things that most might please her, | 30 |
| Hiding her playground where the greed of man | |
| Must half withhold the toiling hands that tease her: | |
| Her sweetest air, her softest wave, | |
| Reluctantly she gave | |
| To grace the wealth of Rome, to heal the languid Cæsar! | 35 |
| |
| She stationed there Vesuvius, to be | |
| Contrasted horror to her idyl tender: | |
| Across the azure pavement of the sea | |
| She raised a cape for Baïæ’s marble splendor; | |
| And westward, on the circling zone, | 40 |
| To front the seas unknown, | |
| She planted Capri’s couchant lion to defend her. | |
| |
| A mother kind, she doth but tantalize: | |
| Not from her secret gardens will she spurn us. | |
| The Roman, casting hitherward his eyes, | 45 |
| Forgot his Sybaris beside Volturnus,— | |
| Forgot the streams and sylvan charms | |
| That decked his Sabine farms, | |
| And orchards on the slopes that sink to still Avernus. | |
| |
| Here was his substance wasted: here he lost | 50 |
| The marrow that subdued the world, in leisure; | |
| Counting no days that were not feasts, no cost | |
| Too dear to purchase other forms of pleasure; | |
| Yet, while for him stood still the sun, | |
| The restless world rolled on, | 55 |
| And shook from off its skirts Cæsar and Cæsar’s treasure. | |
| |
| Less than he sought will we: a moon of peace, | |
| To feed the mind on Fancy’s airy diet; | |
| Soft airs that come like memories of Greece, | |
| Nights that renew the old Egyptian quiet: | 60 |
| Escape from yonder burning crest | |
| That stirs with new unrest, | |
| And in its lava-streams keeps hot the endless riot. | |
| |
| Here, from the wars of Gaul, the strife of Rome, | |
| May we, meek citizens, a summer screen us: | 65 |
| Here find with milder Earth a perfect home, | |
| Once, ere she puts profounder rest between us: | |
| Here break the sacred laurel bough | |
| Still for Apollo’s brow, | |
| And bind the myrtle buds to crown a purer Venus. | 70 |
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