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(From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)
FERRARA! in thy wide and grass-grown streets, | |
| Whose symmetry was not for solitude, | |
| There seems as ’t were a curse upon the seats | |
| Of former sovereigns, and the antique brood | |
| Of Este, which for many an age made good | 5 |
| Its strength within thy walls, and was of yore | |
| Patron or tyrant, as the changing mood | |
| Of petty power impelled, of those who wore | |
| The wreath which Dante’s brow alone had worn before. | |
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| And Tasso is their glory and their shame. | 10 |
| Hark to his strain! and then survey his cell! | |
| And see how dearly earned Torquato’s fame, | |
| And where Alfonso bade his poet dwell. | |
| The miserable despot could not quell | |
| The insulted mind he sought to quench, and blend | 15 |
| With the surrounding maniacs, in the hell | |
| Where he had plunged it. Glory without end | |
| Scattered the clouds away, and on that name attend | |
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| The tears and praises of all time, while thine | |
| Would rot in its oblivion, in the sink | 20 |
| Of worthless dust which from thy boasted line | |
| Is shaken into nothing; but the link | |
| Thou formest in his fortunes bids us think | |
| Of thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn: | |
| Alfonso, how thy ducal pageants shrink | 25 |
| From thee! if in another station born, | |
| Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou mad’st to mourn: | |
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| Thou! formed to eat, and be despised, and die, | |
| Even as the beasts that perish, save that thou | |
| Hadst a more splendid trough and wider sty; | 30 |
| He! with a glory round his furrowed brow, | |
| Which emanated then, and dazzles now, | |
| In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire, | |
| And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow | |
| No strain which shamed his country’s creaking lyre, | 35 |
| That whetstone of the teeth,—monotony in wire! | |
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| Peace to Torquato’s injured shade! ’t was his | |
| In life and death to be the mark where Wrong | |
| Aimed with her poisoned arrows—but to miss. | |
| O victor unsurpassed in modern song! | 40 |
| Each year brings forth its millions; but how long | |
| The tide of generations shall roll on, | |
| And not the whole combined and countless throng | |
| Compose a mind like thine? Though all in one | |
| Condensed their scattered rays, they would not form a sun. | 45 |
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