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,
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
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 cataract,
Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,
From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,
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.
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 shaggy summits, and where roar The thundering lauwine-might be worshipp'd more; But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar Glaciers of bleak Mont-Blanc both far and near, And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear,
The Acroceraunian mountains of old name; And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly Like spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame, For still they soar'd unutterably high: I've look'd on Ida with a Trojan's eye; Athos, Olympus, Ætna, Atlas, made These hills seem things of lesser dignity, All, save the lone Soracte's height, display'd Not now in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid
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 classic raptures, and awake The hills with Latian echoes; I abhorr'd
Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake,
The drill'd dull lesson, forced down word by word
In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record
Aught that recals the daily drug which turn'd
My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught My mind to meditate what then it learn'd, Yet such the fix'd 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.
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 rehearse Our little life, nor Bard prescribe his art, Nor livelier Satirist the conscience pierce, Awakening without wounding the touch'd heart, Yet fare thee well-upon Soracte's ridge we part.
Oh 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 breasts 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.
The Niobe of nations! there she stands, Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe; An empty urn within her wither'd hands, Whose holy dust was scatter'd 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!
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