| |
Anonymous translation
TIBER! my early dream, | |
| My boyhood’s vision of thy classic stream, | |
| Had taught my mind to think | |
| That over sands of gold | |
| Thy limpid waters rolled, | 5 |
| And ever-verdant laurels grew upon thy brink. | |
| |
| But in far other guise | |
| The rude reality hath met mine eyes: | |
| Here, seated on thy bank, | |
| All desolate and drear | 10 |
| Thy margin doth appear, | |
| With creeping weeds, and shrubs, and vegetation rank. | |
| |
| Fondly I fancied thine | |
| The wave pellucid, and the Naiad’s shrine, | |
| In crystal grot below; | 15 |
| But thy tempestuous course | |
| Runs turbulent and hoarse, | |
| And, swelling with wild wrath, thy wintry waters flow. | |
| |
| Upon thy bosom dark, | |
| Peril awaits the light, confiding bark, | 20 |
| In eddying vortex swamped; | |
| Foul, treacherous, and deep, | |
| Thy winding waters sweep, | |
| Enveloping their prey in dismal ruin prompt. | |
| |
| Fast in thy bed is sunk | 25 |
| The mountain pine-tree’s broken trunk, | |
| Aimed at the galley’s keel; | |
| And well thy wave can waft | |
| Upon that broken shaft | |
| The barge, whose shattered wreck thy bosom will conceal. | 30 |
| |
| The dog-star’s sultry power, | |
| The summer heat, the noontide’s fervid hour, | |
| That fires the mantling blood, | |
| Yon cautious swain can’t urge | |
| To tempt thy dangerous surge, | 35 |
| Or cool his limbs within thy dark, insidious flood. | |
| |
| I ’ve marked thee in thy pride, | |
| When struggle fierce thy disemboguing tide | |
| With Ocean’s monarch held; | |
| But quickly overcome | 40 |
| By Neptune’s masterdom, | |
| Back thou hast fled as oft, ingloriously repelled. | |
| |
| Often athwart the fields | |
| A giant’s strength thy flood redundant wields, | |
| Bursting above its brims,— | 45 |
| Strength that no dike can check; | |
| Dire is the harvest-wreck! | |
| Buoyant, with lofty horns, the affrighted bullock swims. | |
| |
| But still thy proudest boast, | |
| Tiber, and what brings honor to thee most | 50 |
| Is, that thy waters roll | |
| Fast by the eternal home | |
| Of Glory’s daughter, Rome; | |
| And that thy billows bathe the sacred Capitol. | |
| |
| Famed is thy stream for her, | 55 |
| Clœlia, thy current’s virgin conqueror; | |
| And him who stemmed the march | |
| Of Tuscany’s proud host, | |
| When, firm at honor’s post, | |
| He waved his blood-stained blade above the broken arch. | 60 |
| |
| Of Romulus the sons | |
| To torrid Africans, to frozen Huns, | |
| Have taught thy name, O flood! | |
| And to that utmost verge | |
| Where radiantly emerge | 65 |
| Apollo’s car of flame and golden-footed stud. | |
| |
| For so much glory lent, | |
| Ever destructive of some monument, | |
| Thou makest foul return; | |
| Insulting with thy wave | 70 |
| Each Roman hero’s grave, | |
| And Scipio’s dust that fills yon consecrated urn! | |
| |
