Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79. | | | | Pisa | | The Tower of Famine | | Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) |
| | | AMID the desolation of a city, | |
| Which was the cradle, and is now the grave | |
| Of an extinguished people, so that pity | |
| Weeps o’er the shipwrecks of oblivion’s wave, | |
| There stands the Tower of Famine. It is built | 5 |
| Upon some prison-homes, whose dwellers rave | |
| For bread and gold and blood; pain, linked to guilt, | |
| Agitates the light flame of their hours, | |
| Until its vital oil is spent or spilt. | |
| There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers | 10 |
| And sacred domes; each marble-ribbéd roof, | |
| The brazen-gated temples and the bowers | |
| Of solitary wealth, the tempest-proof | |
| Pavilions of the dark Italian air, | |
| Are by its presence dimmed,—they stand aloof, | 15 |
| And are withdrawn,—so that the world is bare, | |
| As if a spectre, wrapt in shapeless terror, | |
| Amid a company of ladies fair | |
| Should glide and glow, till it became a mirror | |
| Of all their beauty, and their hair and hue, | 20 |
| The life of their sweet eyes, with all its error, | |
| Should be absorbed, till they to marble grew. | | | | |
|
|
