Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Part 20

Once more upon the woody Apennine, The infant Alps, which--had I not before Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine Sits on more s.h.a.ggy summits, and where roar The thundering lauwine--might be wors.h.i.+pped more; But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear Her never-trodden snow, and seen the h.o.a.r Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near, And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear,

LXXIV.

The Acroceraunian mountains of old name; And on Parna.s.sus seen the eagles fly Like spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame, For still they soared unutterably high: I've looked on Ida with a Trojan's eye; Athos, Olympus, AEtna, Atlas, made These hills seem things of lesser dignity, All, save the lone Soracte's height displayed, Not NOW in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid

LXXV.

For our remembrance, and from out the plain Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break, And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain May he who will his recollections rake, And quote in cla.s.sic raptures, and awake The hills with Latian echoes; I abhorred Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake, The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record

LXXVI.

Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught My mind to meditate what then it learned, Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought By the impatience of my early thought, That, with the freshness wearing out before My mind could relish what it might have sought, If free to choose, I cannot now restore Its health; but what it then detested, still abhor.

LXXVII.

Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so, Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse To understand, not feel, thy lyric flow, To comprehend, but never love thy verse, Although no deeper moralist rehea.r.s.e Our little life, nor bard prescribe his art, Nor livelier satirist the conscience pierce, Awakening without wounding the touched heart, Yet fare thee well--upon Soracte's ridge we part.

LXXVIII.

O Rome! my country! city of the soul!

The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, Lone mother of dead empires! and control In their shut b.r.e.a.s.t.s their petty misery.

What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye!

Whose agonies are evils of a day-- A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.

LXXIX.

The Niobe of nations! there she stands, Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe; An empty urn within her withered hands, Whose holy dust was scattered long ago; The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now; The very sepulchres lie tenantless Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow, Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?

Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress!

Lx.x.x.

The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire, Have dwelt upon the seven-hilled city's pride: She saw her glories star by star expire, And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride, Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide Temple and tower went down, nor left a site;-- Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void, O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light, And say, 'Here was, or is,' where all is doubly night?

Lx.x.xI.

The double night of ages, and of her, Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt, and wrap All round us; we but feel our way to err: The ocean hath its chart, the stars their map; And knowledge spreads them on her ample lap; But Rome is as the desert, where we steer Stumbling o'er recollections: now we clap Our hands, and cry, 'Eureka!' it is clear-- When but some false mirage of ruin rises near.

Lx.x.xII.

Alas, the lofty city! and alas The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpa.s.s The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away!

Alas for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay, And Livy's pictured page! But these shall be Her resurrection; all beside--decay.

Alas for Earth, for never shall we see That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free!

Lx.x.xIII.

O thou, whose chariot rolled on Fortune's wheel, Triumphant Sylla! Thou, who didst subdue Thy country's foes ere thou wouldst pause to feel The wrath of thy own wrongs, or reap the due Of h.o.a.rded vengeance till thine eagles flew O'er prostrate Asia;--thou, who with thy frown Annihilated senates--Roman, too, With all thy vices, for thou didst lay down With an atoning smile a more than earthly crown--

Lx.x.xIV.

The dictatorial wreath,--couldst thou divine To what would one day dwindle that which made Thee more than mortal? and that so supine By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid?

She who was named eternal, and arrayed Her warriors but to conquer--she who veiled Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed Until the o'er-canopied horizon failed, Her rus.h.i.+ng wings--Oh! she who was almighty hailed!

Lx.x.xV.

Sylla was first of victors; but our own, The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell!--he Too swept off senates while he hewed the throne Down to a block--immortal rebel! See What crimes it costs to be a moment free And famous through all ages! But beneath His fate the moral lurks of destiny; His day of double victory and death Beheld him win two realms, and, happier, yield his breath.

Lx.x.xVI.

The third of the same moon whose former course Had all but crowned him, on the self-same day Deposed him gently from his throne of force, And laid him with the earth's preceding clay.

And showed not Fortune thus how fame and sway, And all we deem delightful, and consume Our souls to compa.s.s through each arduous way, Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb?

Were they but so in man's, how different were his doom!

Lx.x.xVII.

And thou, dread statue! yet existent in The austerest form of naked majesty, Thou who beheldest, mid the a.s.sa.s.sins' din, At thy bathed base the b.l.o.o.d.y Caesar lie, Folding his robe in dying dignity, An offering to thine altar from the queen Of G.o.ds and men, great Nemesis! did he die, And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene?

Lx.x.xVIII.

And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome!

She-wolf! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart The milk of conquest yet within the dome Where, as a monument of antique art, Thou standest:--Mother of the mighty heart, Which the great founder sucked from thy wild teat, Scorched by the Roman Jove's ethereal dart, And thy limbs blacked with lightning--dost thou yet Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget?

Lx.x.xIX.

Thou dost;--but all thy foster-babes are dead-- The men of iron; and the world hath reared Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled In imitation of the things they feared, And fought and conquered, and the same course steered, At apish distance; but as yet none have, Nor could, the same supremacy have neared, Save one vain man, who is not in the grave, But, vanquished by himself, to his own slaves a slave,

XC.

The fool of false dominion--and a kind Of b.a.s.t.a.r.d Caesar, following him of old With steps unequal; for the Roman's mind Was modelled in a less terrestrial mould, With pa.s.sions fiercer, yet a judgment cold, And an immortal instinct which redeemed The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold.

Alcides with the distaff now he seemed At Cleopatra's feet, and now himself he beamed.

XCI.

And came, and saw, and conquered. But the man Who would have tamed his eagles down to flee, Like a trained falcon, in the Gallic van, Which he, in sooth, long led to victory, With a deaf heart which never seemed to be A listener to itself, was strangely framed; With but one weakest weakness--vanity: Coquettish in ambition, still he aimed At what? Can he avouch, or answer what he claimed?

XCII.

And would be all or nothing--nor could wait For the sure grave to level him; few years Had fixed him with the Caesars in his fate, On whom we tread: For THIS the conqueror rears The arch of triumph! and for this the tears And blood of earth flow on as they have flowed, An universal deluge, which appears Without an ark for wretched man's abode, And ebbs but to reflow!--Renew thy rainbow, G.o.d!

XCIII.

What from this barren being do we reap?

Our senses narrow, and our reason frail, Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep, And all things weighed in custom's falsest scale; Opinion an omnipotence, whose veil Mantles the earth with darkness, until right And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale Lest their own judgments should become too bright, And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light.

XCIV.

And thus they plod in sluggish misery, Rotting from sire to son, and age to age, Proud of their trampled nature, and so die, Bequeathing their hereditary rage To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage War for their chains, and rather than be free, Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage Within the same arena where they see Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree.

XCV.