XLI

What were thy thoughts contemplating thy home,
The eternal city rearing her fair brow?
That thy all matchless eloquence saved Rome
From fire and sword, yea, from the razing plough
That cleaves the soil which hides her ruins now.
How much of life was crowded in thy span!
All that ambition's heart can hope below;
Wisdom's last truth untaught, thyself to scan,
The inconstant faiths and fears that made thee erring man.

XLII

Thou gav'st Rome freedom, thy great task was done;
The shouts that would have hailed with the same tone
Tyrant or freeman, broke not moments won
From solitude, the joy to be alone;
What wealth could for their sacrifice atone?
The peace, the rapturous lull of thy full breast,
The mind reposing, kinglike, on its throne;
Conscious of innate worth in thee confessed,
The patriot's crown attained, that makes fame's wreath a jest.

XLIII

Leave not too hastily the height above,
Gentler amenities have sanctified
The place with memory and confiding love;
There where you olive-bosomed hills divide,
Fronting the sun on each declining side,
Where the wild cornels and the hawthorn bloom,
With his own verse immortally allied,
Could'st thou, grey earth, the record disinhume,
Stood the low decent cot where Horace built his tomb!

XLIV

Poet of human nature! for all ages
Thou speakest, to all hearts; through every clime
Thy voice is heard, thy lay excites, assuages,
Gentle, sad, wayward, playful, or sublime.
Well didst thou match thy fame against all time;
The prescient spirit thine that stamped the life
Of our humanities within thy rhyme;
Our fleeting joys and loves, the jealous strife
Echoed of hopes and fears with which thy hours were rife.

XLV

Who felt man's nothingness and vanity
Profoundly as thyself? thou all hadst tried,
The passionate impulse and satiety.
Who to its roots hath probed our weaker pride,
Or forged us moral armour to abide
The strokes of fortune? who, like thee, hath shown
The wisdom to enjoy life's eventide,
The blessing of existence while our own,
Ere yet the shadow, time, with life, be from us flown?

XLVI

How much of time is lost in petty strife
With trifles! Here unmoved by hope, or fear,
I commune with myself, true, genuine life,
Grateful and honourable rest more dear
Than noblest offices. Thou nurse severe
Of solemn thought, that dost all thought sustain,
How hast thou, Solitude! informed me here,
Not idly of life's blessing to complain,
But stamp upon the age my impress, not in vain.

XLVII

And where breathes Nature deeper oracles
Than in thy depths, inspiring Tivoli!
Here, where the Spirit of past ages dwells,
Lulled by the waters' voice of prophecy,
Endiademed with craggy majesty,
And plumed with woods that shed a horror round?
From the deep olive-grove lift up thine eye;
Lo, on yon azure cliff's aerial bound
The Sibyl's temple reared against the blue profound.

XLVIII

Where the wrecked image of the beautiful,
Conscious of faded hues and self-decline,
Looks eloquence that doth the heart o'er-rule
Beyond all earthlier utterance, though divine
Were he who spake; full swells the flowing line
Of light and delicate proportion there;
Time's grey tints, mellowing that ruined shrine,
Impart a speaking sadness to its air,
A venerable grace that doth its wrongs repair.

XLIX

Or wouldst thou choose a spot where sterner nature
Awes not as here, but woos thee in her guise
Of Syren-beauty, where each softened feature
Breathes tenderness, and speaks in melodies
Entering thy heart that to its spell replies,
Filling the bosom with that love profound
That binds the universe in holiest ties?
Turn where, revealed beside yon mural mound,
The wreck of Hadrian's villa glorifies the ground.

L

Retreat of tired ambition satiate;
The stage or left in hate or scorn, the cry
Of the crowds loathed, whose shouts alike await
Victor or vanquished; when the goal on high
Toward which through life had strained the aspiring eye
Is won, for what? to feel the strength o'erstrained,
Youth buried in the grave of apathy,
The lightness of the bauble prize attained;
Such the reward that waits power's toilsome summit gained.