| |
(From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)
BUT Arno wins us to the fair white walls, | |
| Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps | |
| A softer feeling for her fairy halls. | |
| Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps | |
| Her corn and wine and oil, and Plenty leaps | 5 |
| To laughing life, with her redundant horn. | |
| Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps | |
| Was modern luxury of commerce born, | |
| And buried learning rose, redeemed to a new morn. | |
| |
| There, too, the Goddess loves in stone, and fills | 10 |
| The air around with beauty; we inhale | |
| The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils | |
| Part of its immortality; the veil | |
| Of heaven is half undrawn; within the pale | |
| We stand, and in that form and face behold | 15 |
| What mind can make, when Nature’s self would fail; | |
| And to the fond idolaters of old | |
| Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould. | |
| |
| We gaze and turn away, and know not where, | |
| Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart | 20 |
| Reels with its fulness; there, forever there, | |
| Chained to the chariot of triumphal art, | |
| We stand as captives, and would not depart. | |
| Away! there need no words, nor terms precise, | |
| The paltry jargon of the marble mart, | 25 |
| Where pedantry gulls folly,—we have eyes: | |
| Blood, pulse, and breast confirm the Dardan Shepherd’s prize. | |
| |
| Appearedst thou not to Paris in this guise? | |
| Or to more deeply blest Anchises? or, | |
| In all thy perfect goddess-ship, when lies | 30 |
| Before thee thy own vanquished lord of war? | |
| And gazing in thy face as toward a star, | |
| Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn, | |
| Feeding on thy sweet cheek! while thy lips are | |
| With lava kisses melting while they burn, | 35 |
| Showered on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn! | |
| |
| Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love, | |
| Their full divinity inadequate | |
| That feeling to express, or to improve, | |
| The gods become as mortals, and man’s fate | 40 |
| Has moments like their brightest; but the weight | |
| Of earth recoils upon us;—let it go! | |
| We can recall such visions, and create, | |
| From what has been, or might be, things which grow | |
| Into thy statue’s form, and look like gods below. | 45 |
| |
