“Roma! Roma! Roma!
Non ? pi? come era prima!”
I
To-morrow I will be in Rome, and thou
Within thy village. I can see thee stand,
Thine eyes in the direction of this land:
Fair pillar of the past, as it is now
The refuge of its heirlooms. In my ears
I hear thee speaking as upon that day
We parted, saying—”When thou goest away
To make a golden epoch in thy years
By travel, speak not of the Rhine’s broad roll,
Mount Blanc, the Yungfrau, or the Alps that rise
Like icy Titans, nor of sunset skies;
But when thou come’st to Rome let all thy soul
Fly to the past, and as it speaks to thee
From out its temples, speak thou so to me.”
II
The one dream of our boyhood! Dost thou not
Remember how we stood in mimic fight,
And marshall’d all our legion’s puny might,
Then fann’d ourselves to ardour fierce and hot?
“Thus struck a Roman for his Rome!” we cried—
“Thus, thus into the gulf a Curtius leapt!”
And with a sudden shout and rush we swept
The foe back, till they fled on every side.
Then came the hymn of triumph, and the car
Bearing the victor to the feast and wine,
And the delights of smiling peace and home;
All this was with me of that mimic war,
As I passed through the arch of Constantine,
And stood within the centuries and Rome!
III
If thou have, for the weak, defenceless past
Aught in thee like to reverence, be dumb,
And speak not, but let thought and feeling come
As mourners, and in kindred silence cast
Their sorrow on this city, now no more
The foreground of the world, but lying dead,
While the great present with its hasty tread
Moves on, and turns not save but to deplore.
The background of our Planet! But in death
She hath that awe which broods upon the face
Of the new dead, so in her fallen place
A power is with her still, though all her faith
Is snapt like her own temples in the dust,
And fades with centuries of age and rust.
IV
I am in Rome, and underneath the spell
Of her past glory; as I tread her streets,
My soul keeps saying, as a child repeats
Its lesson—”The Eternal, here they dwell!”
I am alone, though in the busy crowd,
Yet mighty spirits keep their pace with mine:
Horace and Virgil, and those names divine
That in the world for ever speak aloud.
The past is with me, and my eyes are blind
To all the modern change on either side;
I stride a Roman, with a Roman’s stride,
And feel a Roman’s firmness fire my mind.
I even hail the victor from afar,
And join the through that shout behind his car.
V
Yet after all, when the soul finds its home,
And we look with our daily eyes, we ask
(Doubt round us like a mist) “Can this be Rome?”
And the slow answer is a mighty task.
Can this indeed be Rome, who from her heart
Sent shocks of life, like blood, through distant lands,
Whose Kings were sons to her by Roman bands
Of valour, and their tribute fill’d her mart?
The Jupiter of cities! Now, alas!
Upon her throne of seven hills, she seems
The shadow of a thousand former dreams,
Pointing to all the splendid pomp that was.
Even her columns seem to start and glow
Into Cassandras, and wail forth her woe.
VI
Where’er thou stand in ancient Rome there seems
A shadow with thee; and if thy keen thought
Turn pilgrim to the shrine of thy great dreams—
Paying continual homage as it ought—
Thou art but fool’d; and if thou rear again
Columns and gods and temples, and within
The silent Forum place her mightiest men,
Whose eloquence could calm and still the din
Of factions, lo! the Presence at thy side
Cries, “Siste, viator,” and from out the past
Thy soul comes, and instead of all the pride
And high magnificence that was, thou hast,
Like garments of the mighty flung away,
Marbles and columns in one mix’d decay.
VII
What high, great thoughts might leap within the breast
Of the stern Romulus, that day when he
Ran a light furrow round his Rome to be,
Built huts, and, for a moment, took his rest.
Would he had been a Capys then, and seen,
From the rude doorway, all the splendid power
Taking still birth from out that quiet hour,
And spreading like a shadow all between
The earth and sky, until its mighty wings
Were at full stretch, and a great empire stood
Flinging steel network over earthly things,
Till, tired of uncheck’d force and constant blood,
Turn’d like the Titans, when it thus had striven,
And dared to parcel out the rights of heaven.
VIII
I saw the mighty form of giant Time!
He stood; within his hands were balances:
He held them up; two kingdoms were in these;
One sunk; the other rose and flower’d to prime.
Around his feet his sons, the young, keen years,
Wrestled and shaped fresh worlds; as they shaped
They look’d up; through their lips a moan escaped,
And in their eyes was something like to tears.
Then with one voice they cried—”Is not the hour
Ready? Put down thy balances, and lift
The nations we have foster’d as a gift
For thee.” And Time, frowning till eyebrows met,
Shook his white locks in sternly potent power,
Then whisper’d back to them—”Not yet, not yet!”
IX
St Peter’s! how thy soul within thee grows
And widens out in worship, as if God
Had made this dome a moment His abode;
Then left His awful shadow to repose
Within its walls for ages. Let no speech,
Or aught of earth be with thee, in this hour
When the full past falls, like a sudden shower
Upon thee, bringing into all thy reach
The sacredness of what it hallows, till
Thou standest not on marble but on air,
Feeling thyself uplifted by the will
Of some great Presence dwelling everywhere;
Then, looking up, see right before thine eyes
God’s very threshold to the bending skies.
X
The first brief hour within the Vatican
Is one in which thy soul can find no speech;
But dumbly yearns to gain those points to which
Climb the great possibilities of man.
Frescoes, mosaics, statues; all that speaks
Of the creative and refining power—
God’s share in man—that ever like a dower
Falls on him, and in fruitful silence seeks
High forms to build it forth, is here; and we,
Who pilgrimage to all our greater kind,
Know not the force that leads us, but must bow
Before the eternal Roman sway of mind,
Blind with the same clear light which now I see
Upon the beautiful Meleager’s brow.
XI
To shape, when the pure thought was high and free,
Some mighty god, that, ever as we look,
We feel its godhead with a stern rebuke
Claim worship, and we almost bend the knee—
This is the task of those grand souls who stand
A thousand years between them; for the given
Fire, burning at the very core of heaven,
Cannot be flung broadcast from out the hand;
But where it lights, ay, there it ever burns,
A clear flame on the ember’d hearth of Time,
Quenchless but with himself. Lo! how it turns
From the high Greek and all his higher glow,
And, shooting onward to a sister clime,
Crowns with no stint a later Angelo.
XII
The thoughts that only mate with gods alone,
And all that high conception when the mind
Looks heavenward for a model to its kind
Of what a god may be, meet here in stone.
The Sun God! Dost thou not behold him now
With head thrown back, as if his native sky
Had come, in some wild moment, all to nigh,
Then fled, but left its splendours on his brow?
Thou glorious Archer! In that awful hour,
Granted by heaven, did the sculptor kneel
Before his chisel touch’d the virgin block,
Feeling thy presence give consent and power?
We know not. We can only see and feel
That heaven’s fire with his sped every stroke.
XIII
Back to the grand Apollo! Tell me not
A mortal had to do with this. I know
That if a god content him here below,
A mightier god must bind him to the spot.
Can this be genius that can so enthral,
And lift us, Mahomet-like, until we feel
The very heaven around us, and we reel
In the delight of worship? Who can call
This splendid triumph stone? Say rather we
Behold a god who came to men, and met
His punishment in marble; yet he lives
While we, with all our throbbing being set,
Worship with the bold thought that it may be
Idolatry that heaven itself forgives.
XIV
I turn’d from the Apollo with my mind
Back to the Venus. I can see her now
Looking at me with that divine-like brow
Round which the adoring world will ever bind
Its love for ages. All that hath been sung
Since time grew up to manhood lingers round
That snowy form, that ever seems spell-bound
In its own whiteness, and for ever young.
We lose our being as we look and wear
Into her beauty, and become as naught;
We are the stone, and she the glowing thought,
Haunting us with her presence everywhere—
Goddess of Love—and we who stand but seem
To touch the confines of her endless dream!
XV
I see her yet—the glorious shape to which
The pilgrim fondly wanders! Let me kneel,
As if in that one act my soul could feel
And, all miraculously lifted, reach
The sculptor’s height in that impassioned hour
When the fair dream the world will not let die
Took shape in stone, as if a god were nigh,
Limb, breast, and brow asserting conscious power
And claiming worship. O! did she look thus
In that sweet hour, when glowing from her flight
She knelt by Endymion in delight,
Kissing his brow and lip, and tremulous
With sighs from heaven, whisper, “It is he,
The Latmian!”—and so let her passion free.
XVI
I stood before the Laoco
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Based on Topics: World Poems, Mind Poems, Death & Dying Poems, Soul Poems, War & Peace Poems, Faces Poems, Fairness Poems, Home Poems, Smiling Poems, Success Poems, Past PoemsBased on Keywords: snapt, foreground, constantine, roma, heirlooms, saying-, curtius, lesson-