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| LO, the Campagna! How those startling words | |
| Sweep like swift fingers o’er enchanted cords, | |
| Thrilling the heart with infinite delight! | |
| Lo, the Campagna! The incredulous sight! | |
| Sailing from this, the eagle’s wild domain | 5 |
| Cleaves the far blue of the historic plain, | |
| Fainting with pleasure. How, on this high bar, | |
| The soul dilates, and trembles like a star | |
| New born! And, lo! as in a sea of rest | |
| Rome lies, a palmy island of the blest, | 10 |
| Glowing with glory. Lo! the aspiring dome, | |
| The smaller sky that overarches Rome,— | |
| Rome, and the minds of millions,—till it grows | |
| Greater than that it emulates, and shows | |
| How Power still sways, with her titanic will, | 15 |
| The ancestral sceptre on her sevenfold hill! | |
| Here, where I stand, the weary pilgrim line | |
| Drops on its knees before the long-sought shrine. | |
| The way-worn mother, with her rapture wild, | |
| Holds towards the Dome the wide-eyed, wondering child. | 20 |
| Here youths and maidens kneel, with marvellous stare, | |
| With pleasure taking precedence of prayer; | |
| Drinking the sight, of which, in some far year, | |
| The curious grandchild at their side shall hear. | |
| Here manhood, from some foreign harvest-field, | 25 |
| Kneels, as beside his mother’s feet he kneeled; | |
| And age, with white locks, bowing to the dust, | |
| Salutes the goal, the temple of his trust, | |
| His old arms crossed upon his tranquil breast, | |
| Where all the passions lie in pious rest; | 30 |
| The lamb and lion,—and the child’s control,— | |
| The reign of peace. Millennium of the soul! | |
| How beautiful! Old pilgrim, here by thee | |
| The heretic within me bows the knee. | |
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