The tears and praises of all time, while thine Would rot in its oblivion--in the sink 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 From thee! if in another station born,[mi]
Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou mad"st to mourn:
x.x.xVIII.
_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:-- _He!_ with a glory round his furrowed brow, Which emanated then, and dazzles now, In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire,[418][10.H.]
And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow[mj]
No strain which shamed his country"s creaking lyre, That whetstone of the teeth--Monotony in wire![mk][419]
x.x.xIX.
Peace to Torquato"s injured shade! "twas his In life and death to be the mark where Wrong Aimed with her poisoned arrows,--but to miss.
Oh, Victor unsurpa.s.sed in modern song!
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[ml]
Condensed their scattered rays--they would not form a Sun.[mm]
XL.
Great as thou art, yet paralleled by those, Thy countrymen, before thee born to shine, The Bards of h.e.l.l and Chivalry: first rose The Tuscan Father"s Comedy Divine; Then, not unequal to the Florentine, The southern Scott, the minstrel who called forth A new creation with his magic line, And, like the Ariosto of the North,[420]
Sang Ladye-love and War, Romance and Knightly Worth.
XLI.
The lightning rent from Ariosto"s bust[11.H.]
The iron crown of laurel"s mimicked leaves; Nor was the ominous element unjust, For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves[12.H.]
Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves, And the false semblance but disgraced his brow; Yet still, if fondly Superst.i.tion grieves, Know, that the lightning sanctifies below[13.H.]
Whate"er it strikes;--yon head is doubly sacred now.
XLII.
Italia! oh, Italia! thou who hast[421]
The fatal gift of Beauty, which became A funeral dower of present woes and past-- On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame,[mn]
And annals graved in characters of flame.
Oh, G.o.d! that thou wert in thy nakedness Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress;
XLIII.
Then might"st thou more appal--or, less desired, Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored[mo]
For thy destructive charms; then, still untired, Would not be seen the armed torrents poured Down the deep Alps; nor would the hostile horde Of many-nationed spoilers from the Po Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger"s sword Be thy sad weapon of defence--and so, Victor or vanquished, thou the slave of friend or foe.
XLIV.
Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him, The Roman friend of Rome"s least-mortal mind,[422]
The friend of Tully: as my bark did skim The bright blue waters with a fanning wind, Came Megara before me, and behind aegina lay--Piraeus on the right, And Corinth on the left; I lay reclined Along the prow, and saw all these unite In ruin--even as he had seen the desolate sight;
XLV.
For Time hath not rebuilt them, but upreared Barbaric dwellings on their shattered site, Which only make more mourned and more endeared The few last rays of their far-scattered light, And the crashed relics of their vanished might.
The Roman saw these tombs in his own age, These sepulchres of cities, which excite[mp]
Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage.
XLVI.
That page is now before me, and on mine _His_ Country"s ruin added to the ma.s.s Of perished states he mourned in their decline, And I in desolation: all that _was_ Of then destruction _is_; and now, alas!
Rome--Rome imperial, bows her to the storm,[423]
In the same dust and blackness, and we pa.s.s The skeleton of her t.i.tanic form,[424]
Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm.
XLVII.
Yet, Italy! through every other land Thy wrongs should ring--and shall--from side to side;[425]
Mother of Arts! as once of Arms! thy hand Was then our Guardian, and is still our Guide; Parent of our Religion! whom the wide Nations have knelt to for the keys of Heaven!
Europe, repentant of her parricide, Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven, Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven.
XLVIII.
But Arno wins us to the fair white walls, Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps A softer feeling for her fairy halls: Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps Her corn, and wine, and oil--and Plenty leaps To laughing life, with her redundant Horn.
Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps Was modern Luxury of Commerce born,[mq][426]
And buried Learning rose, redeemed to a new Morn.
XLIX.
There, too, the G.o.ddess loves in stone, and fills[mr][427][14.H.]
The air around with Beauty--we inhale[ms]
The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils Part of its immortality--the veil Of heaven is half undrawn--within the pale We stand, and in that form and face behold What Mind can make, when Nature"s self would fail; And to the fond Idolaters of old Envy the innate flash which such a Soul could mould:
L.
We gaze and turn away, and know not where, Dazzled and drunk with Beauty,[428] till the heart Reels with its fulness; there--for ever there-- Chained to the chariot of triumphal Art, We stand as captives, and would not depart.
Away!--there need no words, nor terms precise, The paltry jargon of the marble mart, Where Pedantry gulls Folly--we have eyes: Blood--pulse--and breast confirm the Dardan Shepherd"s prize.
LI.
Appear"dst thou not to Paris in this guise?
Or to more deeply blest Anchises? or, In all thy perfect G.o.ddess-ship, when lies Before thee thy own vanquished Lord of War?
And gazing in thy face as toward a star, Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn, Feeding on thy sweet cheek![429] while thy lips are With lava kisses melting while they burn, Showered on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn!
LII.
Glowing, and circ.u.mfused in speechless love--[mt][430]
Their full divinity inadequate That feeling to express, or to improve-- The G.o.ds become as mortals--and man"s fate[mu]
Has moments like their brightest; but the weight Of earth recoils upon us;--let it go!
We can recall such visions, and create, From what has been, or might be, things which grow Into thy statue"s form, and look like G.o.ds below.
LIII.
I leave to learned fingers, and wise hands, The Artist and his Ape, to teach and tell How well his Connoisseurship understands The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell: Let these describe the undescribable: I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream Wherein that Image shall for ever dwell-- The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam.
LIV.