English Poetry III: From Tennyson to Whitman.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 648. To Virgil |
| | | Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) |
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| ROMAN VIRGIL, thou that singest Ilion’s lofty temples robed in fire, | |
| Ilion falling, Rome arising, wars, and filial faith, and Dido’s pyre; | |
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| Landscape-lover, lord of language more than he that sang the “Works and Days,” | |
| All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out from many a golden phrase; | |
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| Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd; | 5 |
| All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word; | |
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| Poet of the happy Tityrus piping underneath his beechen bowers; | |
| Poet of the poet-satyr whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers; | |
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| Chanter of the Pollio, glorying in the blissful years again to be, | |
| Summers of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earth and oarless sea; | 10 |
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| Thou that seest Universal Nature moved by Universal Mind; | |
| Thou majestic in thy sadness at the doubtful doom of human kind; | |
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| Light among the vanish’d ages; star that gildest yet this phantom shore; | |
| Golden branch amid the shadows, kings and realms that pass to rise no more; | |
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| Now thy Forum roars no longer, fallen every purple Cæsar’s dome— | 15 |
| Tho’ thine ocean-roll of rhythm sound forever of Imperial Rome— | |
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| Now the Rome of slaves hath perish’d, and the Rome of freemen holds her place, | |
| I, from out the Northern Islands sunder’d once from all the human race, | |
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| I salute thee, Mantovano, I that loved thee since my day began, | |
| Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man. | 20 |
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