| |
| BEAUTIFUL, 1 pure and simple, there thou stand’st, | |
| Fit temple for the pure and only God, | |
| Smiling in cold severity. The heart | |
| That views thee, fills with the bright memory | |
| Of other days; the sunny lands of song, | 5 |
| In their sad, lovely silence of decay, | |
| Rise up to the remembrance in thy sight. | |
| The thoughts of other days, when Plato stood | |
| At Sunium: when the imperial one, herself, | |
| Athena, visited the Parthenon: | 10 |
| Or of the later age, when the proud Roman, | |
| Within the vast Pantheon’s walls, beheld | |
| One stream of purest lustre from above, | |
| Lighting the idol-habited Rotund. | |
| Not unacceptable was their ignorant worship | 15 |
| To him they served in darkness, but to thee | |
| A nobler precept than Colonna heard, | |
| A purer light than the Pantheon saw | |
| Is given. Thy cherub songs, and wreathed flowers, | |
| Incense and sacrifice and gifts devote, | 20 |
| Are prayer and penitence, the tearful eye, | |
| The innocent life, the broken, contrite heart. | |
| Simple in elegance, no mounting spire, | |
| Tower, minaret, nor gaily burnish’d dome | |
| Mars thy severe proportions. No device | 25 |
| Of polish’d moulding, sculptured tracery, | |
| Not e’en the soft acanthine folds are there, | |
| Like the divine magnificence of virtue, | |
| Whose ornament would not obscure its worth. | |
| Now, while yon moonbeam gently steals along | 30 |
| The columns of that simple peristyle, | |
| Silvering the massive shaft and plain volute | |
| Of yon extremest pillar, let me gaze | |
| With calm delight insatiate. There is given | |
| A moral feeling to a beautiful scene | 35 |
| Of glorious art with nature join’d, like this,— | |
| And memory crown’d with moonlight roses, lives | |
| To hover o’er the storied names of old; | |
| Heroes and sages deathless—the pure heart | |
| Of him 2 whose lip with sweetest nectar dew’d, | 40 |
| Breathed the great lesson of his godlike teacher— 3 | |
| Martyr of freedom—him 4 of Syracuse— | |
| The glorious fratricide, 5 the immortal Theban, 6 | |
| And their bright heritors of guiltless suffering, | |
| Intrepid Algernon, and youthful Russell,— | 45 |
| Till the remembrance softens. Not in vain, | |
| Oh! not in vain did the Athenians | |
| Ally the arts to freedom, and invite | |
| Blushing Pictura and her marble sister | |
| Up the stern heights of the Acropolis. | 50 |
| So be it with our country. May she stand | |
| Like thee, modell’d on wisdom of the past, | |
| Yet with the lovely gracefulness of youth. | |
