XLIII.

   Then mightst thou more appal; or, less desired,
   Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored
   For thy destructive charms; then, still untired,
   Would not be seen the armed torrents poured
   Down the deep Alps; nor would the hostile horde
   Of many-nationed spoilers from the Po
   Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger’s sword
   Be thy sad weapon of defence, and so,
Victor or vanquished, thou the slave of friend or foe.

XLIV.

   Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him,
   The Roman friend of Rome’s least mortal mind,
   The friend of Tully:  as my bark did skim
   The bright blue waters with a fanning wind,
   Came Megara before me, and behind
   AEgina lay, Piraeus on the right,
   And Corinth on the left; I lay reclined
   Along the prow, and saw all these unite
In ruin, even as he had seen the desolate sight;

XLV.

   For time hath not rebuilt them, but upreared
   Barbaric dwellings on their shattered site,
   Which only make more mourned and more endeared
   The few last rays of their far-scattered light,
   And the crushed relics of their vanished might. 
   The Roman saw these tombs in his own age,
   These sepulchres of cities, which excite
   Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page
The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage.

XLVI.

   That page is now before me, and on mine
   his country’s ruin added to the mass
   Of perished states he mourned in their decline,
   And I in desolation:  all that was
   Of then destruction is; and now, alas! 
   Rome—­Rome imperial, bows her to the storm,
   In the same dust and blackness, and we pass
   The skeleton of her Titanic form,
Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm.

XLVII.

   Yet, Italy! through every other land
   Thy wrongs should ring, and shall, from side to side;
   Mother of Arts! as once of Arms; thy hand
   Was then our Guardian, and is still our guide;
   Parent of our religion! whom the wide
   Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven! 
   Europe, repentant of her parricide,
   Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven,
Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven.

XLVIII.

   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
   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.