A drive to Palestrina will be pleasant; The wild fig grows where erst her turrets stood; There oft, in goat-skins clad, a sunburnt peasant Like Pan comes frisking from his ilex wood, 60 And seems to wake the past time in the present. Fair _contadina_, mark his mirthful mood, No antique satyr he. The nimble fellow Can join with jollity your _salterello_.
Old sylvan peace and liberty! The breath 65 Of life to unsophisticated man. Here Mirth may pipe, here Love may weave his wreath, _Per dar' al mio bene._ When you can, Come share their leafy solitudes. Grim Death And Time are grudging of Life's little span: 70 Wan Time speeds lightly o'er the waving corn, Death grins from yonder cynical old thorn.
I dare not speak of Michael Angelo-- Such theme were all too splendid for my pen: And if I breathe the name of Sanzio 75 (The brightest of Italian gentlemen), It is that love casts out my fear, and so I claim with him a kindredship. Ah, when We love, the name is on our hearts engraven, As is thy name, my own dear Bard of Avon! 80
Nor is the Coliseum theme of mine, 'Twas built for poet of a larger daring; The world goes there with torches, I decline Thus to affront the moonbeams with their flaring. Some day in May our forces we'll combine 85 (Just you and I), and try a midnight airing, And then I'll quote this rhyme to you--and then You'll muse upon the vanity of men!
Oh, come! I send a leaf of tender fern, 'Twas plucked where Beauty lingers round decay: 90 The ashes buried in a sculptured urn Are not more dead than Rome--so dead to-day! That better time, for which the patriots yearn, Enchants the gaze, again to fade away. They wait and pine for what is long denied, 95 And thus I wait till thou art by my side.
Thou'rt far away! Yet, while I write, I still Seem gently, Sweet, to press thy hand in mine; I cannot bring myself to drop the quill, I cannot yet thy little hand resign! 100 The plain is fading into darkness chill, The Sabine peaks are flushed with light divine, I watch alone, my fond thought wings to thee; Oh, come to Rome--oh come, oh come to me!
I do remember me, that in my youth, When I was wandering,--upon such a night I stood within the Coliseum's wall, 'Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome; The trees which grew along the broken arches 5 Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber; and More near from out the Caesar's palace came The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly, 10 Of distant sentinels the fitful song Begun and died upon the gentle wind. Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach Appeared to skirt the horizon, yet they stood Within a bowshot. Where the Caesars dwelt, 15 And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst A grove which springs through levelled battlements, And twines its roots with the imperial hearths, Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth; But the gladiators' bloody Circus stands, 20 A noble wreck in ruinous perfection, While Caesar's chambers, and the Augustan halls, Grovel on earth in indistinct decay. And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon All this, and cast a wide and tender light, 25 Which softened down the hoar austerity Of rugged desolation, and filled up, As 't were anew, the gaps of centuries; Leaving that beautiful which still was so, And making that which was not, till the place 30 Became religion, and the heart ran o'er With silent worship of the great of old,-- The dead but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule Our spirits from their urns.