XXXI

Pause here, where like a golden exhalation
O'er the green bank Clitumnus rears his shrine;
Is that all delicate temple the creation
Of human hands? As clasps the elm the vine,
The acanthus leaves round those fair columns twine,
The Roman owned the river god, and paid
His tributary gratitude; divine
Those olden faiths when the heart, grateful, made
An altar-place of earth, love's natural faith obeyed.

XXXII

A gorge cleft through the mountain's mighty heart,
Is 't her volcanic breathing that we hear,
Or pent-up winds, or earth's spasmodic start?
No, 'tis the cleaving Terni's wild career;
On, where the clouds like shrouded giants rear
Their shapes in azure distance, while the swell
Of the strife thundering on the startled ear
The sounds of their eternal conflict tell,
Loud as o'er distant storms the thunder's sinking knell.

XXXIII

Lo! hurrying on enwreathed in mist and foam,
His robes caught upward in delirious flight,
Velino rushes from his mountain home,
In beauty and in terror; from the height
One desperate bound hath hurled him, flashing might,
And wrath, and madness, from his skyey throne
Shot like a flying minister of light;
High o'er the whirlpool wreck his crown is shown
For ever hovering there in glittering state alone;

XXXIV

A glory haloing his ruin! there
Tortured and writhing in the abyss he lies,
Yet on his shivered forehead he doth bear
The flickering hues and light of his lost skies;
Behold in eddying wreaths how o'er him rise
The smoke, the mist, the steam of his fierce breath,
And the gleam flashed forth from his arrowy eyes;
How lend they, darkening 'gainst the mountain heath,
A horror to the scene, that war of life and death!

XXXV

Voice of the desert, echo of a truth
From every leaf responded, fare thee well!
Thou, like Time glorying in immortal youth,
Dost sweep resistless down the craggy dell,
Conquering or crushing down each obstacle,
Until like settling age, with brow o'ercast,
Thou glidest toward the deep; stern Oracle!
Thou dost proclaim the strifes of manhood past;
Our race began like thine, be thine our rest at last.

XXXVI

Mid-day burns o'er the waste; the sky around
Is flame, earth stilled, and lifeless as if death
Had passed along, blasting the shadowless ground;
Air vibrating in lightning gives no breath;
The red-eyed buffalos gasp on the heath,
Or wheeling round in narrowing circles gain
Where shrunken Tiber reeks his weeds beneath;
The spirit of fire doth on his altar reign,
Life felt that he was there, and hid her face in vain!

XXXVII

Stamp what thou look'st on in thy inmost soul;
Behold where Rome on her arena found
No foe that sinking owned not her control;
She who rose mightier with Antaean bound,
Until earth's diadem her temples crowned;
She whom kings made their tributary home,
Whose legions' standards were by victory wound;
Whose eagles crossed o'er ocean's furthest foam,
Founder and grave of empires, she, the almighty Rome!

XXXVIII

And here and there a solitary tower
Rises, the record of departed days,
The skeletons of disembodied power;
And the wild goat and buffalo now graze,
Where the up-pointing grassy turf o'erlays
The dust of heroes; on its arches based
The Aqueduct from hollow brows doth gaze
Through its black fissures, shattered and defaced,
Stretching with giant strides along the desolate waste.

XXXIX

There, where afar the eternal City rears
Her spires, and sevenfold hill, and crowning dome,
That like a nation's monument appears
Above a nation's sepulchre; the gloom
No life dispels, we walk as o'er a tomb.
Hark! the ground answers to the hollow tread;
Grey mounds their mouldering ashes disinhume;
Pointing the moral of their greatness fled,
Fit prelude as ye near the mansions of the dead!

XL

Awake — awake! thou stand'st on sacred ground;
Is not earth sacred formed of human bones
That blood hath deluged, nor avenger found,
Save in that cold oblivion which atones,
Till the Archangel summons prostrate thrones?
Here pageants passed until they swelled the sum
Of thrice a hundred triumphs; here the groans
Of captives died amid the exulting hum
Of myriads, vanquished, victors, now for ever dumb.