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(From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)
I ROAM | |
| By Thrasimene’s lake, in the defiles | |
| Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home; | |
| For there the Carthaginian’s warlike wiles | |
| Come back before me, as his skill beguiles | 5 |
| The host between the mountains and the shore, | |
| Where Courage falls in her despairing files, | |
| And torrents, swollen to rivers with their gore, | |
| Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scattered o’er, | |
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| Like to a forest felled by mountain winds; | 10 |
| And such the storm of battle on this day, | |
| And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds | |
| To all save carnage, that beneath the fray | |
| An earthquake reeled unheededly away! | |
| None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet, | 15 |
| And yawning forth a grave for those who lay | |
| Upon their bucklers for a winding-sheet; | |
| Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet! | |
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| The earth to them was as a rolling bark | |
| Which bore them to eternity; they saw | 20 |
| The ocean round, but had no time to mark | |
| The motions of their vessel; Nature’s law, | |
| In them suspended, recked not of the awe | |
| Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds | |
| Plunge in the clouds for refuge and withdraw | 25 |
| From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds | |
| Stumble o’er heaving plains, and man’s dread hath no words. | |
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| Far other scene is Thrasimene now; | |
| Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain | |
| Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough; | 30 |
| Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain | |
| Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta’en, | |
| A little rill of scanty stream and bed— | |
| A name of blood from that day’s sanguine rain; | |
| And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead | 35 |
| Made the earth wet, and turned the unwilling waters red. | |
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