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(From The Widow of Crescentius)
MIDST Tivoli’s 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 o’er the wrecks of other years, | |
| Temples and domes, which long have been | |
| The soil of that enchanted scene. | |
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| There the wild fig-tree and the vine | |
| O’er Hadrian’s mouldering villa twine; | 10 |
| The cypress, in funereal grace, | |
| Usurps the vanished column’s place; | |
| O’er 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 | |
| O’er the vast works of ages flown. | |
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| Was it for this that many a pile, | |
| Pride of Ilissus and of Nile, | 20 |
| To Anio’s 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 Tiber’s 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 Fate’s decree,— | |
| The future as the past shall be. | |
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| Halls of the dead! in Tiber’s vale | |
| Who now shall tell your lofty tale? | |
| Who trace the high patrician’s dome, | 35 |
| The bard’s retreat, the hero’s home? | |
| When moss-clad wrecks alone record | |
| There dwelt the world’s departed lord, | |
| In scenes where verdure’s rich array | |
| Still sheds young beauty or decay, | 40 |
| And sunshine on each glowing hill | |
| Midst ruins finds a dwelling still. | |
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| 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 o’er that temple of the dead | |
| Serene but solemn beauty shed, | 50 |
| Have found, like glory’s self, a grave | |
| In time’s abyss or Tiber’s wave; | |
| Yet dreams more lofty and more fair | |
| Than Art’s bold hand hath imaged e’er, | |
| 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 |
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