| |
| ’T WAS on a Sabbath morning that we wandered in the wood, | |
| Where near three thousand years ago the ancient Veii stood; | |
| There ’s not a sound of life there now, where wandering alleys meet, | |
| The cyclamen and violet grow purple in the street! | |
| The glens are deep and leafy, the fields are green and bare, | 5 |
| And only scattered pottery tells that arts and trade were there, | |
| And looking towards the Alban Mount across the solemn plains, | |
| The ground on which we stand is all of Veii that remains. | |
| A hundred thousand people once dwelt upon this hill, | |
| Within their many towered walls the hum was never still. | 10 |
| The sculptor and the armorer worked as soon as it was light, | |
| And watchman unto watchman called through all the starry night. | |
| They had laws, and arts, and customs, and altars to revere; | |
| They buried with a solemn care the dead whom they held dear, | |
| Whom they crowned with golden ivy and with oak-leaves never sear. | 15 |
| And the city on the hill-top where this people had their home | |
| Was a larger town than Athens and a mightier town than Rome. | |
| A wondrous place is Veii, and the grandeur of her past | |
| Will linger in these solitudes and crown her to the last. | |
| Still I see her in a vision, though her very streets are ploughed, | 20 |
| See the faces of her people, hear the voices of her crowd, | |
| See the waving of her banners, hear the tramp of armed men, | |
| Where nothing but the waterfall is dashing down the glen. | |
| Other cities have their columned hills and fragments of their walls, | |
| Or at least their ruined temples, on which the moonlight falls. | 25 |
| Other cities have their solemn sights, to which the pilgrim turns, | |
| And some altar of tradition where a lamp forever burns; | |
| A ballad or a legend, or a few memorial stones, | |
| And a breath of living history to reanimate their bones. | |
| But of Veii, strong and beautiful, these silent stones are all, | 30 |
| Save her graves within the hillside and a patch of ruined wall, | |
| And the rocks cut sheer to guard her, and the streams that flow the same, | |
| And (foreign to the pilgrim’s lips) the accents of her name! | |
| |
