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.

In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie 27)
Ashes which make it holier, dust which is
Even in itself an immortality,

Though there were nothing save the past, and this,
The particle of those sublimities

Which have relapsed to chaos:- here repose Angelo's, Alfieri's bones, and his, 28)

The starry Galileo, with his woes; HereMachiavelli's earth return'd to whence it rose.29)

LV.

These are four minds, which, like the elements, Might furnish forth creation:- Italy!

(rents

Time, which hath wrong'd thee with ten thousand
Of thine imperial garment, shall deny,
And had denied, to every other sky,
Spirits which soar from ruin: - thy decay
Is still impregnate with divinity,
Which gilds it with revivifying ray;

Such as the great of yore, Canova is to-day.

LVI.

But where repose the all Etruscan threeDante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they, The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he

Of the Hundred Tales of love-where did they lay Their bones, distinguish'd from our common clay In death as life? Are they resolved to dust, And have their country's marbles nought to say? Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust? Did they not to her breast their filial earth intrust?

LVII.

Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar, 30) Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore; 31) Thy factions, in their worse than civil war, Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore Their children's children would in vain adore With the remorse of ages; and the crown 32) Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore, Upon a far and foreign soil had grown,

His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled- not thine

own.

LVIII.

Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeath'd 33) His dust, and lies it not her Great among, With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed O'er him who form'd the Tuscan's siren tongue? That music in itself, whose sounds are song, The poetry of speech? No; - even his tomb Uptorn, must bear the hyaena bigot's wrong, No more amidst the meaner dead find room, Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for whom!

LIX.

And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust;
Yet for this want more noted, as of yore
The Caesar's pageant, shorn of Brutus' bust,
Did but of Rome's best Son remind her more:
Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore,

1

Fortress of falling empire! honour'd sleeps The immortal exile; Arqua, too, her store Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps, While Florence vainly begs her banish'd dead and

weeps.

LX.

What is her pyramid of precious stones? 34) Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones Of merchant-dukes? the momentary dews Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead, Whose names are mausoleums of the Muse, Are gently prest with far more reverent tread Than ever paced the slab which paves the princely head.

LXI.

There be more things to greet the heart and eyes In Arno's dome of Art's most princely shrine, Where Sculpture with her rainbow sister vies; There be more marvels yet-but not for mine; For I have been accustom'd to entwine

My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields, Than Art in galleries: though a work divine Calls for my spirit's homage, yet it yields Less than it feels, because the weapon which it

wields

LXII.

Is of another temper, and I roam By Thrasimene's lake, in the defiles. Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home; For there the Carthaginian's warlike wiles Come back before me, as his skill beguiles The host between the mountains and the shore, Where Courage falls in her despairing files, And torrents, swoln to rivers with their gore, Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scatter'd o'er,

LXIII.

Like to a forest fell'd by mountain winds; And such the storm of battle on this day, And such the phrensy, whose convulsion blinds To all save carnage, that, beneath the fray, An earthquake reel'd unheededly away! 35) None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet, And yawning forth a grave for those who lay Upon their bucklers for a winding sheet; Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet!

LXIV.

The Earth to them was as a rolling bark
Which bore them to Eternity; they saw
The Ocean round, but had no time to mark
The motions of their vessel; Nature's law,
In them suspended, reck'd not of the awe (birds
Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the
Plunge in the clouds for refuge and withdraw
From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing

herds

Stumble o'er heaving plains, and man's dread hath no words.

LXV.

Far other scene is Thrasimene now;
Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain
Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough;
Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain
Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta'en-
A little rill of scanty stream and bed -

A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain;
And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead
Made the earth wet, and turn'd the unwilling waters
red.

LXVI.

But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave 36)
Of the most living crystal that was e'er
The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave
Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear
Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer
Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters!

And most serene of aspect, and most clear; Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughtersA mirror and a bath for beauty's youngest daughters!

LXVII.

And on thy happy shore a temple still,
Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,
Upon a mild declivity of hill,

Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps
Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps
The finny darter with the glittering scales,
Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;
While, chance, some scatter'd water-lily sails
Down where the shallower wave still tells its
bubbling tales.

LXVIII.

Pass not unblest the Genius of the place!
If through the air a zephyr more serene
Win to the brow, 'tis his; and if ye trace
Along his margin a more eloquent green,
If on the heart the freshness of the scene
Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust
Of weary life a moment lave it clean

With Nature's baptism,- 'tis to him ye must Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust.

LXIX.

The roar of waters! from the headlong height
Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;
The fall of waters! rapid as the light

The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;
The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,
And boil in endless torture; while the sweat
Of their great agony, wrung out from this
Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet
That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,

1.XX.

And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again Returns in an unceasing shower, which round, With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,

Is an eternal April to the ground,

Making it all one emerald:

how profound The gulf! and how the giant element

From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound, Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful

vent

LXXI.

To the broad column which rolls on, and shows
More like the fountain of an infant sea
Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes.
Of a new world, than only thus to be
Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,
With many windings, through the vale: Look

back!

Lo! where it comes like an eternity,

As if to sweep down all things in its track, Charming the eye with dread, a matchless ca. taract, 37)

LXXII.

Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,

From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,
An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge, 38)
Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn
Its steady dyes, while all around is torn
By the distracted waters, bears serene

Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn: Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene, Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.