|
(From The Widow of Crescentius) MIDST Tivolis luxuriant glades, | |
Bright-foaming falls, and olive shades, | |
Where dwelt, in days departed long, | |
The sons of battle and of song, | |
No tree, no shrub, its foliage rears; | 5 |
But oer the wrecks of other years, | |
Temples and domes, which long have been | |
The soil of that enchanted scene. | |
|
There the wild fig-tree and the vine | |
Oer Hadrians mouldering villa twine; | 10 |
The cypress, in funereal grace, | |
Usurps the vanished columns place; | |
Oer fallen shrine and ruined frieze | |
The wall-flower rustles in the breeze; | |
Acanthus leaves the marble hide | 15 |
They once adorned in sculptured pride, | |
And Nature hath resumed her throne | |
Oer the vast works of ages flown. | |
|
Was it for this that many a pile, | |
Pride of Ilissus and of Nile, | 20 |
To Anios banks the image lent | |
Of each imperial monument? | |
Now Athens weeps her shattered fanes, | |
Thy temples, Egypt, strew thy plains; | |
And the proud fabrics Hadrian reared | 25 |
From Tibers vale have disappeared. | |
We need no prescient sibyl there | |
The doom of grandeur to declare; | |
Each stone, where weeds and ivy climb, | |
Reveals some oracle of time; | 30 |
Each relic utters Fates decree, | |
The future as the past shall be. | |
|
Halls of the dead! in Tibers vale | |
Who now shall tell your lofty tale? | |
Who trace the high patricians dome, | 35 |
The bards retreat, the heros home? | |
When moss-clad wrecks alone record | |
There dwelt the worlds departed lord, | |
In scenes where verdures rich array | |
Still sheds young beauty or decay, | 40 |
And sunshine on each glowing hill | |
Midst ruins finds a dwelling still. | |
|
Sunk is thy palace, but thy tomb, | |
Hadrian! hath shared a prouder doom. | |
Though vanished with the days of old | 45 |
Its pillars of Corinthian mould; | |
Though the fair forms by sculpture wrought, | |
Each bodying some immortal thought, | |
Which oer that temple of the dead | |
Serene but solemn beauty shed, | 50 |
Have found, like glorys self, a grave | |
In times abyss or Tibers wave; | |
Yet dreams more lofty and more fair | |
Than Arts bold hand hath imaged eer, | |
High thoughts of many a mighty mind | 55 |
Expanding when all else declined, | |
In twilight years, when only they | |
Recalled the radiance passed away, | |
Have made that ancient pile their home, | |
Fortress of freedom and of Rome. * * * * * | 60 |
|