CLV.

   Enter:  its grandeur overwhelms thee not;
   And why? it is not lessened; but thy mind,
   Expanded by the genius of the spot,
   Has grown colossal, and can only find
   A fit abode wherein appear enshrined
   Thy hopes of immortality; and thou
   Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined,
   See thy God face to face, as thou dost now
His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by his brow.

CLVI.

   Thou movest—­but increasing with th’ advance,
   Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise,
   Deceived by its gigantic elegance;
   Vastness which grows—­but grows to harmonise —
   All musical in its immensities;
   Rich marbles—­richer painting—­shrines where flame
   The lamps of gold—­and haughty dome which vies
   In air with Earth’s chief structures, though their frame
Sits on the firm-set ground—­and this the clouds must claim.

CLVII.

   Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break
   To separate contemplation, the great whole;
   And as the ocean many bays will make,
   That ask the eye—­so here condense thy soul
   To more immediate objects, and control
   Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart
   Its eloquent proportions, and unroll
   In mighty graduations, part by part,
The glory which at once upon thee did not dart.

CLVIII.

   Not by its fault—­but thine:  Our outward sense
   Is but of gradual grasp—­and as it is
   That what we have of feeling most intense
   Outstrips our faint expression; e’en so this
   Outshining and o’erwhelming edifice
   Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great
   Defies at first our nature’s littleness,
   Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate
Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate.

CLIX.

   Then pause and be enlightened; there is more
   In such a survey than the sating gaze
   Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore
   The worship of the place, or the mere praise
   Of art and its great masters, who could raise
   What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan;
   The fountain of sublimity displays
   Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man
Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can.

CLX.

   Or, turning to the Vatican, go see
   Laocoon’s torture dignifying pain —
   A father’s love and mortal’s agony
   With an immortal’s patience blending:  —­Vain
   The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain
   And gripe, and deepening of the dragon’s grasp,
   The old man’s clench; the long envenomed chain
   Rivets the living links,—­the enormous asp
Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp.